IN THE CREATION STORY OP GENESIS. 



83 



The land-fauna reached its full development, culminating in 

 tlie genus Homo during the Tertiary and Quaternary Periods, 

 in the latter of which the Homo first appeared, so far as any 

 trustworthy evidence carries us.* The fact, that some of the i 

 largest mammals (like the whale) acquired aquatic habits of j 

 life, is a matter of detail, of no more significance than the ' 

 converse fact, that many molluscs have acquired a terrestrial 

 mode of existence, so far as the general view here adopted is 

 concerned ; and this is all that we can reasonably expect to be 

 recognised in verses 24-26 of the poem under consideration. 



The Evolutionary Cycle was completed, and it only needed the 

 superaddition of the mental and spiritual faculties, with whicli 

 man is endowed, to give to him that place in creation which is 

 assigned to him in the remaining verses. These tell of his 

 moving since on a different flane of evolution to the rest of the 

 created series, during that " seventh day " loithoiU cm evening 

 and a mor7iing," in which we are left by the inspired writer to 

 believe we are still living, the period in the history of our 

 planet marked by the progressive " illumination of the human 

 spirit." 



In looking at the Creation Story as we have done in this 

 paper, the orderly sequeiice of essential facts, as they are stated, 

 has been regarded as of primary importance. In the Story 

 itself some of the statements that occur are parenthetical, they 

 add to the details of the picture, but form no part of its 

 essential outlines. The introduction of "an evening and a 

 morning, one day, a second day " (E.V.), and so on, may fairly 

 be regarded as the frames, in which the story is presented in a 

 series of minor pictures, as a great help to the memory when 

 writing was rare, intended to serve and at the same time to 

 indicate certain recognisable stages in the unbroken forward 

 movement of the whole, tying it on to things and associations 

 of ordinary human experience, but of no temporal co7inection 

 with those stages or "days." Those stages are further 

 emphasized by the poetic expression "God said," as if to 

 remind us (at each advance in the general evolution of " the 

 things that are made") that it was ail the result of the 

 continued operation of one and the same Creative and Directive 



* The evidence supposed to be furnished by "eoUths" has now 

 completely broken down. -See Prof. M. Boule in V Anthropologie, tome 

 xvi, No. 3, 19o5. The present writer has long maintained that owing to 

 the vitreosity of the sihca of flint, all the features presented by so called 

 " eoliths " can be explained as accidental. 



