66 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



groups. The Creator, however, according to Agassiz, can 

 only move within six groups or categories : the species, 

 genus, family, order, class, and type. More than these six 

 categories do not exist for him. 



When we read Agassiz's book on classification, and see 

 how he carries out and establishes these strange ideas, we can 

 scarcely understand how, with all the appearance of scien- 

 tific earnestness, he can persevere in his idea of the divine 

 Creator as a man-like being (anthropomorphism), for by his 

 explanation of details he produces a picture of the most 

 absurd nonsense. In the whole series of these suppositions 

 the Creator is nothing but an all-mighty man, who, plagued 

 with ennui, amuses himself with planning and constructing 

 most varied toys in the shape of organic species. After 

 having diverted himself with these for thousands of years, 

 they become tiresome to him, he destroys them by a general 

 revolution of the earth's surface, and thus throws the whole 

 of the useless toys in heaps together; then, in order to 

 while away his time with something new and better, he 

 calls a new and more perfect animal and vegetable world 

 into existence. But in order not to have the trouble of 

 beginning the work of creation over again, he keeps, in the 

 main, to his original plan of creation, and creates merely 

 new species, or at most only new genera, and much more 

 rarely new families, new orders, or classes. He never suc- 

 ceeds in producing a new style or type, and always keeps 

 strictly within the six categories or graduated groups. 



When, according to Agassiz, the Creator has thus amused 

 himself for thousands of millions of years with constructing 

 and destroying a series of difierent creations, at last (but 

 very late) he is struck with the happy thought of creating 



