132 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



had produced an innumerable multitude of individuals ; 

 a small number were found constructed so that the parts 

 of the animal could satisfy their wants ; in an infinitely 

 greater number there was neither convenience nor order ; 

 all these last have perished. 



" This hypothesis of a groping of Nature, and of a 

 period of disordered parturition, said to have preceded 

 rational productions such as we see them now, is con- 

 trary to all that we know of the processes of Nature. 

 No trace subsists of this period of chaos, and everything 

 leads to the belief that, if Nature had begun by chaos, it 

 would never have come out of it." ^ 



His idea appears to have been general in ancient 

 cosmogonies, that as long as a chaotic state of things 

 existed, nothing but monstrous beings could be or were 

 produced. Hence, the strange beings described by 

 Berossos : " There was a time in which all was darkness 

 and water, and in these were generated monstrous 

 creatures having mixed forms. Men were born with 

 two and some with four wings, bulls were produced 

 having human heads, and dogs with four bodies having 

 fishes' tails . . . and horses with dogs' heads, and 

 other creatures having the shape of all sorts of beasts," 

 etc.^ 



But this is only a concrete ideal representation of a 

 fundamental conception, that order is incompatible with 

 chaos or chance, i.e., the undesigned and undirected 

 clashing of Nature's forces. And although expressed in 

 so quaint a form, it undeniably involves a great truth, 

 which was early grasped by the mind of man. 



' Pp. 205, 206. 



'^ Quoted from Max Miiller's Lectures on the Science of Religion, ^. 

 50. See also Sayce's The Religions 0/ Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, p. 



377- 



