THE MOSAIC COSMOGENY. 33 



organic creation, and the coming into existence of the many 

 animal and vegetable species. In doing this I have no inten- 

 tion of entertaining the reader with a statement of all 

 the innumerable stories about the creation which have 

 been current among the different human species, races, or 

 tribes. However interesting and gratifying this task would 

 be, from an ethnographical point of view, as well as in a 

 history of civilization, it would lead us here much too far 

 from our subject. Besides, the great majority of all these 

 legends about creation bear too clearly the stamp of arbi- 

 trary fiction, and of a want of a close observance of nature, to 

 be of interest in a scientific treatment of the history of crea- 

 tion. I shall therefore only select the Mosaic history from 

 among those that are not founded on scientific investigation, 

 on account of the unparalleled influence which it has gained 

 in the western civilized world ; and then I shall immedi- 

 ately take up the scientific hypothesis about creation, which 

 originated with Linnseus as late as the commencement of 

 last century. 



All the different conceptions which man has ever formed 

 about the coming into existence of the diflferent animal and 

 vegetable species may conveniently be divided into two 

 great contrasted groups — the natural and supernatural his- 

 tories of creation. 



These two groups, on the whole, correspond with the two 

 different principal forms of the human notions of the uni- 

 verse which we have already contrasted as the ruionistic and 

 the dualistic conception of nature. In the usual dualistic or 

 teleological (vital) conception of the universe, organic nature 

 is regarded as the purposely executed production of a Creator 

 working according to a definite plan. Its adherents see in 



