THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 5 



fully at his work, and, covered with perspiration, carves 

 out the crust of the globe, at the same time that he clears 

 a path through a wilderness of rocky masses. 



One shudders at the relative feebleness of the workman 

 to the immensity of the task. Well nigh lost amidst 

 enormous masses of shattered stone, which surround him 

 on every side and encumber the picture, he is scarcely 

 seen — a real pigmy executing a herculean task. 



On the other hand, the people of the North, looking 

 uj)on their land so often devastated by floods, thought 

 that some god in his anger had broken up the surface of 

 it, and gathered the debris into heaps. But to the children 

 of Scandinavia this deity was not a trembling used-up old 

 man; they required a divinity endowed with their own 

 savage energy. In their eyes it was the god of tempests; 

 the redoubtable and gigantic Thor, who, armed with a 

 blacksmith's hammer, and suspended over the abyss, 

 with mighty blows broke up the crust of the earth, and 

 fashioned out the rocks and mountains with the splinters. 

 Here we see already an advance upon the feeble old 

 Pan-Kou-Chd; virility is substituted for the impotence 

 of old age. It is a reminiscence of the ancient epic 

 poesy. Thor shows like a revolted giant, raging and 

 shattering everything that falls Avithin his reach. 



To us, accustomed to bow before an all-powerful 

 Creator, such images appear very puerile. Instead of 

 these old men and giants laboriously occupied in ham- 

 mering out the globe, we only trace everywhere the in- 

 visible hand of God. In one place, with a delicacy which 

 passes all conception, it animates the insect with the 

 breath of life ; in another, expanding itself to vast dimen- 

 sions, it reins the worlds scattered through space, con- 

 vulses or annihilates them. It is at such times that, in 



