io EVOLUTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



human observation, while the utter destruction 

 of the entire solar system would leave a void, 

 as compared with the universe, infinitely less 

 than would be produced in the earth by the loss 

 of a single grain of sand from the sea shore. 



Again, as the ancients had no conception of 

 space, so also had they none of time. The 

 world was thought to have come into existence, 

 either just before or just after the gods, accord- 

 ing to whether the gods were believed to have 

 sprung from the world, or the world from the 

 gods. Nearly all the early religions point to a 

 very recent creation of man by the gods, or to 

 his descent from them within a few generations. 

 Queen Victoria can trace back her ancestry till 

 two or three converging lines meet in Woden 

 (or Othin) within much less than two thousand 

 years. The more philosophical mythologies, such 

 as the Persian and Scandinavian, represented that 

 the earth would be destroyed at some future 

 period, and subsequently renewed. But the 

 ancients had no conception of the real age of 

 the earth, although geological time is as nothing 

 compared with astronomical. Now, however, 

 our ablest geologists reckon the period of man's 

 existence on earth (though perhaps geologically 



