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has invented theories and offered opinions. Whence 

 are ve ? is a question that has occurred alike to the 

 untutored savage and the learned philosopher. The 

 African Negro helieves that his race must have had a 

 first mother ; the Eed Indians that they came from 

 the " rising sun," or east, meaning they were the 

 adopted children of some divine personage who 

 emanated from thence. The Thibetians believe that 

 mankind descended from the ape ; and in Borneo the 

 myth is that man was created from the dust of the 

 earth, and that woman was formed from the great toe 

 of the man. The Pelasgians and Greeks believed 

 themselves to have sprung from the ground, a belief 

 participated in by other Eastern nations, and largely 

 underlying the whole of the earlier and Oriental 

 cosmogonies. In the Phoenician cosmogony, chaos is 

 transformed into order or cosmos by thunder and light- 

 ning, and man is awakened from the earth by the rattle 

 of the primal thunders ; in the Chaldaean, Belus cuts off 

 his own head, but the gods mingle the blood which 

 flows with the dust of the earth, and out of this red 

 earth man is formed, and from this origin is rational 

 and participates in the divine reason. According to 

 the second version of the Hebrew Genesis, Adam, the 

 man (by some commentators said to signify " red 

 earth "), is formed out of the dust of the ground, and 

 Eve, the woman, is fashioned from a rib taken out of 



