38 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



which runs through it, and which contrasts favourably 

 with the confused mythology of creation current among 

 most of the other ancient nations. First the Lord God 

 creates the earth as an inorganic body ; then he separates 

 light from darkness, then water from the dry land. Now 

 the earth has become inhabitable for organisms, and plants 

 are first created, animals later — and among the latter the 

 inhabitants of the water and the air first, afterwards the 

 inhabitants of the dry land. Finally God creates man, the 

 last of all organisms, in his own image, and as the ruler of 

 the earth. 



Two gTeat and fundamental ideas, common also to the 

 non-miraculous theory of development, meet us in this 

 Mosaic hypothesis of creation, with surprising clearness and 

 simplicity — the idea of separation or differentiation, and the 

 idea of progressive development or ])erfecting. Although 

 Moses looks upon the results of the great laws of organic 

 development (which we shall later point out as the necessary 

 conclusions of the Doctrine of Descent) as the direct actions 

 of a constructing Creator, yet in his theory there lies hidden 

 the ruling idea of a progressive development and a difieren- 

 tiation of the originally simple matter. We can therefore 

 bestow our just and sincere admiration on the Jewish 

 lawgiver's gTand insight into natui^e, and his simple and 

 natural hypothesis of creation, without discovering in it a 

 so-called " divine revelation," That it cannot be such is clear 

 from the fact that two great fundamental errors are asserted 

 in it, namely, first, the geocentric error that the earth is the 

 fixed central point of the whole universe, round which the 

 sun, moon, and stars move; and secondly, the anthropocentric 

 error, that man is the premeditated aim of the creation of 



