382 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



every people who have attained to a philosophic system, 

 the contrary belief has been prevalent. The existing order 

 of Nature has been regarded as temporary, and the flow of 

 terrestrial and even of cosmical events has been conceived 

 as destined to be broken up by universal revolutions. 



The Chaldeans, according to Berosus, held that the world 

 is periodically destroyed by deluges and conflagrations. 

 The deluges they believed to result from a great conjunc- 

 tion of the planets in the constellation Capricorn, and the 

 conflagrations from a similar conjunction in the constella- 

 tion Cancer. Some of the Christian fathers adopted these 

 views. The Chaldeans also calculated the end of the world 

 from the period occupied in the retrograde movement of 

 the stars through one complete circumference— a phenom 

 enon due to the precession of the equinoxes, and accom- 

 plished, as modern science has shown, in a period of 21,000 

 to 26,000 years. 



The Chaldean philosophers had also their Annus Magnus, 

 or Great Year, at the end of which the present terrestrial 

 and cosmical order would be brought to a termination by 

 an ordeal of fire, after which it would be again renewed. 



The ancient Scythians, in their dispute with the Egyp- 

 tians in reference to the relative antiquity of their respect- 

 ive nations, reminded them that the world undergoes revo- 

 lutions both by fire and water. 



The Egyptians, according to Plato, fancied that the heav- 

 ens and earth originated in a promiscuous pulp. From this 

 the elements separated of their own accord ; fire sprang 

 from the upper regions ; the air began to move. The 

 warmth of the sun bred living creatures innumerable in 

 the plastic mud, and these, according to the predominance 

 of the various elements, betook themselves to the air, the 

 water, or the solid land. Man was generated from {he 

 slime of the river Nile. By a gradual improvement of the 



