ii2 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



We may first notice what history can tell of the 

 palanthropic age, supposing this to be the same with 

 that historically known as antediluvian. The account 

 of creation in the first chapter of Genesis is altogether 

 general, and has no local colouring. It evidently 

 refers to the whole history of the making of the 

 earth. The second chapter, on the other hand, begins 

 at verse 4 the special history of man, and opens with 

 a picture which is not, as some have rashly supposed, 

 a repetition of the previous general account of 

 creation, and still less contradictory to it, but a state- 

 ment that immediately before the introduction of 

 man the earth had been in a desolate and compara- 

 tively untenanted state, that state to which we know 

 it had been reduced by the glacial cold and sub- 

 mergence. 



Thus the two accounts of the creation of man, 

 that in which he appears in his chronological position 

 in the general development, and that in which he 

 takes a first place, as introductory to his special 

 history, are not contradictory, but complementary to 

 each other ; and the latter refers wholly to man and 

 the creatures contemporary with him in the palan- 

 thropic age. It is in accordance with this, and no 

 doubt intended by the editor to mark this distinc- 

 tion, that the name Elohim is used in the general 

 narrative, and Jehovah Elohim in the special one. 

 The failure of so many critics to notice this distinc- 

 tion, which must have been so plain to the primitive 

 historian himself, is a marked illustration of the 



