66 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
groups. The Creator, however, according to Agassiz, can 
only move within six groups or categories: the species, 
genus, family, order, class, and type. More than these six 
categories do not exist for him. 
When we read Agassiz’s book on classification, and see 
how he carries out and establishes these strange ideas, we can 
scarcely understand how, with all the appearance of scien- 
tific earnestness, he can persevere in his idea of the divine 
Creator as a man-like being (anthropomorphism), for by his 
explanation of details he produces a picture of the most 
absurd nonsense. In the whole series of these suppositions 
the Creator is nothing but an all-mighty man, who, plagued 
with ennui, amuses himself with planning and constructing 
most varied toys in the shape of organic species. After 
having diverted himself with these for thousands of years, 
they become tiresome to him, he destroys them by a general 
revolution of the earth’s surface, and thus throws the whole 
of the useless toys in heaps together; then, in order to 
while away his time with something new and better, he 
calls a new and more perfect animal and vegetable world 
into existence. But in order not to have the trouble of 
beginning the work of creation over again, he keeps, in the 
main, to his original plan of creation, and creates merely 
new species, or at most only new genera, and much more 
rarely new families, new orders, or classes. He never suc- 
ceeds in producing a new style or type, and always keeps 
strictly within the six categories or graduated groups. 
When, according to Agassiz, the Creator has thus amused 
himself for thousands of millions of years with constructing 
and destroying a series of different creations, at last (but 
very late) he is struck with the happy thought of creating 
