Grote.] 0£i£i [Sept. L9, 



a belief thai domestic animals were created in a state of domestication. 

 The Hebrew word b'hemah means cattle, i- e., domesticated animals, in 

 contradistinction to wild animals. The other term chayafi means wild 

 beasts, in contradistinction to tame animals. The use of both terms shows 

 thai botb kinds were believed to have been created 'after their kind.' 



and as distincl species. There is nothing contradictory in the conclusion 

 thai the statement was at one time believed in, because savage man still 

 believes in parallel assertions, and this particular belief was generally 

 current in Europe before naturalists had shown its contrary to be true, 

 and that all domestic animals were originally wild and by man's selec- 

 tion have been changed from their original physical condition. A vege- 

 table diet is also assigned at first to beasts and man, but the physiologist 

 knows that carnivorous animals have always existed and that the instincts 

 of animals are true to their teeth. 



"The story of Genesis takes no account of the different races of man- 

 kind nor of prehistoric man. Its chronology is recent and special. All 

 attempts to consider it as merely omitting to mention these facts, which it 

 could as well have given, must be rejected as defective reasoning. If it 

 could go so far as to note the creation of cultivated races of beasts, such as 

 cattle, it should not have failed to note the more important races of man- 

 kind. The character of the fauna of the country in which the myth 

 originated is stamped on the face of the recital. All attempts to consider 

 it as the true Genesis of the white, or Semitic and Aryan races, and there- 

 fore as reliable to this extent, must likewise fail. The history of the 

 descent of man is not yet written, but, so far as we have the facts, they 

 make for the view that the negro is a geographical variety, thrown off from 

 an ancient stock of mankind, and therefore not an older stem through 

 which mankind has passed to become white. 



"Finally, at no time can it be true to say that ' thus the heavens and 

 earth were finished and all the hosts of them." Change in all nature is 

 the well attested truth, and this change has never relaxed its endless pro- 

 cession. 



"Unessential as much of the scientific criticism directed against the 

 ethical portions of the Scripture is seen to be, such criticism must be appro- 

 priate when directed against a portion which deals almost exclusively with 

 statements of facts. 



The Gods of the two accounts in Genesis expressed by nouns plural in 

 form mark a reminiscence of a preceding plurality of deities and are plainly 

 not coincident with our modern conception of the Deity. The notions of 

 the Bible writers about God are not the same as the notions of the Israelites 

 during the times of which the Bible writers treat. And our notions about 

 God are not the same as those of the Bible writers. There has been on 

 the one hand a growth in the direction of a recognition of an universal 

 God, Who at one time was tribal and national; and on the other hand 

 there has been a progress in the direction of a recognition of one God, the 

 final cause of Nature, who has absorbed the minor deities into himself. 



