miliar to us. We cannot really I^now. Accordingly, some persons frankly 

 ascribe the beginning of life upon the earth to a "miracle", a direct act of 

 "creation". In different stages of civilization, among different types of people, 

 this miracle was described in different ways. Sometimes these descriptions 

 involve religious ideas and sentiments. Sometimes they are straightforward 

 attempts to explain the world as a natural process. It is interesting to compare 

 these different explanations, although they tell us less about how the world 

 and life originated than they do about how the human mind thinks. 



For certain purposes it is convenient to suppose that all species were 

 created at about the same time, and that each species has remained from the 

 beginning exactly as we now find it. For "like produces like". This was, in 

 fact, the assumption of Carl Linnaeus, the great Swedish naturalist (see page 

 34). This point of view leaves many questions unanswered, but it is not in 

 itself impossible. Indeed, it is the most common view among the populations 

 of Europe and America. 



In one form the direct-creation theory supposes that every detail which 

 we can observe was made just as it is to fit into some general scheme. In an- 

 other form the theory declares merely that the universe was so created that 

 in due course it brought about life of various forms, and in time man himself. 

 According to this view, which was held by Saint Augustine, Christian scholar 

 of the fifth century, the creation did not finish making the world and its in- 

 habitants; it merely started things off on a long course of constant change. 

 Everything that has happened from the beginning has followed naturally 

 and automatically from the way the world was made to go. 



Many Creations A still different conception of the creation miracle was 

 proposed by Georges Cuvier, the great French naturalist (see page 176). 

 According to this view, the many different forms of life that have inhabited 

 the earth at various times were separately created. Each new species was 

 unrelated to any that had existed before. In the course of time, too, some of 

 the species died out. All the great changes in the history of the world which 

 we infer from a study of the crust of the earth, Cuvier explained as the results 

 of special violent events, or cataclysms — inundations, volcanic eruptions, 

 earthquakes, and the like. 



Cuvier and Saint Augustine seem to have been better informed than Lin- 

 naeus concerning the great changes in the earth's inhabitants that evidently 

 took place through the course of ages. They agreed with Linnaeus, however, 

 that the parade of living things was started by an act of creation. Cuvier did 

 not agree with Saint Augustine on one important point. Whereas Saint 

 Augustine thought that the creation set going a process in the course of which 

 new species eventually arose, Cuvier thought that new species were being 

 created from time to time, following earlier forms but not descended from 

 them (see table on page 448). 



447 



