io THE HUMAN SPECIES 



occupying a still more prominent position in those doctrines of 

 creation held by all polytheistic races, whether civilised or un- 

 civilised. As a rule all phenomena of the universe, man not 

 excepted, are attributed to the union of two primitive beings, a 

 male and a female. Signs of this belief are found even among 

 those races who believe man to have simply arisen from the 

 earth. 



The Indians of New Holland in North America believe that 

 they were literally bom from the earth as from a human 

 mother ; they believe that before the beginning of things there 

 existed a creative force, in female form, which first bore a stag, 

 a bear and a wolf, and uniting 'in turn with each produced the 

 most diverse offspring, till lastly man was born. Naturally, 

 where a female creative force was imagined the idea of a male 

 being was necessarily associated therewith. This belief is held 

 by the Comanches of North America, by the natives of Sumatra, 

 the New Zealanders and the inhabitants of the Marien Islands, 

 and it is invariably through the union of a god, or hero, with a 

 female deity (the Earth) that man has originated. 



To regard the creation of the world and man as resulting 

 from a process of generation is so entirely natural and consist- 

 ent a point of view for the untaught mind, which necessarily 

 judges everything by its own surroundings, that it is not sur- 

 prising that the priests and philosophers of the older civilisations 

 presented the doctrine of creation in anthropomorphous form, in 

 order to bring it. nearer to the general mind (or perhaps with 

 precisely the opposite aim ?). According to the Egyptian, 

 Babylonian and Phoenician cosmogony, the creation of the 

 world and man results from the union of two primitive beings, 

 the male fair, the female dark. Among all branches of the 

 Aryan race we likewise find the idea of all living beings having 

 descended from two parents ; thus the Indians have Brahm and 

 Brahwani, the Greeks Zeus TraTijp and 4v)/j,iJTvjp, the Romanic 

 nations Jupiter and Rhea. As early as in the Rig- Veda we 

 find the legend of the great parents Dyauspitar and Prthivi 

 matar, and Tacitus mentions the ancient Teutonic legend of 

 the god Tuisco being the son of Heaven and Earth. Among 

 nations of the Mongolian stock, particularly the Chinese and 

 Japanese, it is but natural to meet with the same fundamental 



