170 Primitive Theories of the Origin of Man 
various and divergent views which primitive man has taken of his 
own origin. I have confined myself to collecting examples of two 
radically different views, which may be distinguished as the theory of 
creation and the theory of evolution. According to the one, man was 
fashioned in his existing shape by a god or other powerful being ; 
according to the other he was evolved by a natural process out of 
lower forms of animal life. Roughly speaking, these two theories 
still divide the civilised world between them. The partisans of each 
can appeal in support of their view to a large consensus of opinion ; 
and if truth were to be decided by weighing the one consensus 
against the other, with Genesis in the one scale and The Origin of 
Species in the other, it might perhaps be found, when the scales 
were finally trimmed, that the balance hung very even between 
creation and evolution. 
