THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD. 239 



supernatural power, or has it been evolved by a natural 

 process ? What are the causes and the manner of 

 this evolution ? If we succeed in finding the correct 

 answer to one of these questions, we have, according 

 to our monistic conception of the world, cast a bril- 

 liant light on the solution of them all, and on the 

 entire cosmic problem. 



The current opinion as to the origin of the world in 

 earlier ages was almost an universal belief in creation. 

 This belief has been expressed in thousands of inte- 

 resting, more or less fabulous, legends, poems, cosmo- 

 gonies, and myths. A few great philosophers were 

 devoid of it, especially those remarkable free-thinkers 

 of classical antiquity who first conceived the idea of 

 natural evolution. All the creation -myths, on the 

 contrary, were of a supernatural, miraculous, and 

 transcendental character. Incompetent, as it was, to 

 investigate for itself the nature of the world and its 

 origin by natural causes, the undeveloped mind 

 naturally had recourse to the idea of miracle. In 

 most of these creation-myths anthropism was blended 

 with the belief in the miraculous. The creator was 

 supposed to have constructed the world on a definite 

 plan, just as man accomplishes his artificial con- 

 structions ; the conception of the creator was 

 generally completely anthropomorphic, a palpable 

 " anthropistic creationism." The " all-mighty maker 

 of heaven and earth," as he is called in Genesis and 

 the Catechism, is just as humanly conceived as the 

 modern creator of Agassiz and Reinke, or the intel- 

 ligent " engineer " of other recent biologists. 



Entering more fully into the notion of creation, we 

 can distinguish as two entirely different acts the pro- 

 duction of the universe as a whole and the successive 



