Parallels in the Cosmogonies of the Old 

 World and the New 



By I. M. Casanowicz 



ROM the earliest times men have shown curiosity in regard 



^to the origin of things that lie about them, and an impulse 

 jp|§| to find some solution for the mysteries which they daily 

 witness. In the presence of heaven and earth, trees and 

 rivers, sun, moon, and stars, beasts and human beings, 

 they have felt the necessity of accounting for all these objects. Cos- 

 mogonies, or theories respecting the genesis of the visible universe, 

 and the manner and order in which the various forms of life came into 

 being, are therefore found among nearly all races. They are mostly 

 spontaneous productions of the folk-fancy and are therefore unsyste- 

 matic and disconnected, and the explanations which they offer are 

 often crude, childish, and even grotesque; but they furnish an impor- 

 tant contribution to the history of early opinion, scientific and relig- 

 ious. The questions which the primitive peoples ask and answer, as 

 best they can, in these myths are usually the same that we ourselves 

 are asking and endeavoring to answer in our scientific studies. Take 

 as an instance the most generally known account of beginnings, that 

 in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis, which undertakes to 

 answer such questions as: "Whence come heaven and earth and their 

 fulness? Whence are man's body and mind? Whence his reason and 

 mortality? Whence his language? Whence the love of the sexes? 

 Whence does it come that woman brings forth with pain, and man 

 must gain his bread from the stubborn soil by the sweat of his brow?" 

 and so on. 



Thus we find in these tales the beginnings of human science, 

 humble beginnings, to be sure, but just on that account venerable and 

 attractive, nay, touching, because in them the ancient peoples have 

 sometimes revealed their most intimate feelings, their fears and hopes, 

 clothing them in the bright garb of poetry. 



Out of the multifarious and variegated speculations on this sub- 

 ject, a few more or less kindred conceptions in traditions of the Old 

 and New Worlds will be pointed out in the following notes. 



[44] 



