PROEM TO GENESIS. 621 



tion now before us ;* that it is not an account of the extinct species 

 which we should consider the Mosaic writer as intending to convey ; 

 that while his words are capable of covering them, as the oilcoumenl 

 of the New Testament covers the red and yellow man, the rules of 

 rational construction recommend and require our assigning to them a 

 more limited meaning, which I will presently describe. 



Another material point in Professor Huxley's interpretation ap- 

 pears to me to lie altogether beyond the natural force of the words, 

 and to be of an arbitrary character. He includes in it the proposition 

 that the production of the respective orders was effected (p. 457) dur- 

 ing each of "three distinct and successive periods of time ; and only 

 during those periods of time ; " or again, in one of these, " and not 

 at any other of these ; " as, in a series of games at chess, one is done be- 

 fore another begins ; or as in a " march-past," one regiment goes before 

 another comes. No doubt there may be a degree of literalism which 

 will even suffice to show that, as " every winged fowl " was produced 

 on the fourth day of the Hexaemeron, therefore the birth of new fowls 

 continually is a contradiction to the text of Genesis. But does not 

 the equity of common sense require us to understand simply that the 

 order of "winged fowl," whatever that may mean, took its place in 

 creation at a certain time, and that from that time its various compo- 

 nent classes were in course of production ? Is it not the fact that in 

 synoptical statements of successive events, distributed in time for the 

 sake of producing easy and clear impressions, general truth is aimed 

 at, and periods are allowed to overlap ? If, with such a view, we ar- 

 range the schools of Greek philosophy in numerical order, according 

 to the dates of their inception, we do not mean that one expired be- 

 fore another was founded. If the archaeologist describes to us as suc- 

 cessive in time the ages of stone, bronze, and iron,f he certainly does 

 not mean that no kinds of stone implement were invented after bronze 

 began, or no kinds of bronze after iron began. When Thucydides 

 said that the ancient limited monarchies were succeeded by tyrannies, 

 he did not mean that all the monarchs died at once, and a set of ty- 

 rants, like Deucalion's men, rose up and took their places. "Woe be, I 

 should say, to any one who tries summarily to present in series the 

 phases of ancient facts, if they are to be judged under the rule of 

 Professor Huxley. 



Proceeding, on what I hold to be open ground, to state my own 

 idea of the true key to the meaning of the Mosaic record, I suggest that 



* Because my argument in no way requires universal accordance, what bearing the 

 scorpion may have on any current scientific hypothesis, it is not for me to say. 



■j- I use this enumeration to illustrate an argument, but I must, even in so using it, en- 

 ter a caveat against its particulars. I do not conceive it to be cither probable or histori- 

 cal that, as a general rule, mankind passed from the use of stone implements to the use 

 of bronze, a composite metal, without passing through some intermediate (longer or 

 shorter) period of copper. 



