OF THE M^M°¥^^%&%'^ ^ ^' ^6re;5TI0I]. ^ Gladstone, F)UXLEY, fflilLLBI^, I^EVILLE, LlINiITON. New York ^^1>^'■4-*^^t^/^HE TRUTH SEEKER CO. Pifi* ^'ij,-''^''^^ 3. Clinton Placf <^- ■ '*, BS 651 .073 The order of creation MAR 26 1910 THE A'.. /CAL Sei '>\V cV" ^V ORDER OF CREATION CONFLICT BETWEEN GENESIS AND GEOLOGY. A Controversy between the HoN.W. E.GLADSTONE, Prof. MAX MULLER, Prof. T. H. HUXLEY, ' M. REVILLE, E. LYNN LINTON. New York : THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY, 33 Clinton Place. CONTENTS. Dawn of Creation and of Worship. By Hon. W. E. ^Gladstone, . . . . . 5 The Interpreters ot Genesis jmd the Interpreters of Nature. By Prof. T. H. Huxley, . . 43 V Postscript to Solar Myths. By Prof. Max MUllee, 64 Proem to Genesis : A Plea for a Fair Trial. By Hon. W. E. Gladstone, . . . .70 " Dawn of Creation" — An Answer to Mr. Gladstone. By Albert Reville, D.D., . . . 107 Mr. Gladstone and Genesis. By Prof. T. H. Huxley, 134 A Protest and a Plea. By Mrs. E. Lynn Linton, . IGl / THE ORDER OF CREATION. BAWJV OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. BY W. E. GLADSTONE. Among recent works on the origin and history of rehgions by distinguished authors, a somewhat con- spicuous place may be awarded to the Prol'egoynhies de V Uistorie cles Religions, by Dr. Reville, profes- sor in the College of France, and Hibbert Lectiu'er in 1884. The volume has been translated into EngHsh by IVlr. Squh-e, and the translation* comes forth with all the advantage, and it is great, which can be conferred by an introduction from the pen of Professor Max Miiller. It apjDears, if I may presume to speak of it, to be characterized, among other merits, by marked ingenuity and acuteness, breadth of field, great felicity of phrase, evident candor of in- tention, and abundant courtesy. Whether its contents are properly placed as prol- egomena may at once be questioned ; for sui'ely the proper office of prolegomena is to present prelimi- naries, and not results. Such is not, however, the aim of this work. It starts from assuming the subject- ive origin of all religions, which are viewed as so *In his Prolegomena to the History of Religions. My refer- ences throughout are to the translation by Mr. Squire (Wil- liams & Norgate, 1884). THE OEDEK OF CREATION. many answers to the call of a strong human appetite for that kind of food, and ai'e examined as the several varieties of one and the same species. The conclusions of opiDOsing inquirers, however, are not left to be con- futed by a collection of facts and testimonies drawn from historical investigation, but are thi'ust out of the way beforehand in the preface (for, after all, "prolegom- ena can be nothing but a less homely phrase for a pref- ace). These inquirers are so many pretenders, who have obstructed the passage of the rightful heir to his throne, and they ai'e to be put summarily out of the way as disturbers of the public peace. The method piu'sued appears to be not to allow the facts and arguments to dispose of them, but to condemn them before the cause is heard. I do not know how to reconcile this method vdth Dr. Reville's declai'a- tion that he aims at proceeding in a "strictly scientific spirit." It might be held that such a sj^irit required the regular presentation of the evidence before the delivery of the verdict upon it. In any case I vent- ure to observe that these are not truly prolego)nefia, but epilegomena to a history of rehgions not yet placed before us. The first enemy whom Dr. Reville dispatches is M. de Bonald, as the champion of the doctrine that "in the very beginning of the human race the creat- ive power revealed to the first men by supei'natiu-al means the essential principles of religious truth," together with " language and even the art of writing " (pp. 35, 36). ■ In passing, Dr. Reville observes that "therehgious schools, which maintain the truth of a primitive revelation, are guided by a very evident theological interest" (Ibid.); the Protestant, to fortify the DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. ( authority of the Bible ; and the Roman Catholic, to j)rop the infallibility of the church. It is doubtless true that the doctrine of a prim- itive revelation tends to fortify the authority of re- ligion. But is it not equally true, and equally obvious, that the denial of a primitive revelation tends to undermine if? and, if so, might it not be retorted upon the school of Dr. Reville that the schools which deny a primitive revelation are guided by a very evi- dent anti-theological interests Against this antagonist Dr. Reville observes, inter alia (p. 37), that an appeal to the supernatui-al is^jjer se inadmissible ; that a divine revelation, containing the subhme doctrines of the piu'est inspii'ation, given to man at an age indefinitely remote, and in a state of "absolute ignorance," is '^'infinitely hard" to im- agine ; that it is not favored by analogy ; and that it contradicts all that we know of prehistoric man (p. 40). Thus far it might perhaps be contended in re- ply, (1) that the preliminary objection to the super- natural is a pure petitio jyrincipii, and wholly re- pugnant to "scientific method;" (2) that it is not inconceivable that revelation might be indefinitely graduated, as well as human knowledge and condi- tion ; (3) that it is in no way repugnant to analogy, if the .greatest master of analogy. Bishop Butler {Analogy, P. II. ch. ii. § 2) may be heard upon the subject ; and (4) that our earliest information about the races from which we are least remote, Ai-yan, Semitic, Accadian, or Egyptian, offers no con- tradiction and no obstacle to the idea of their having received, or inherited, portions of some knowledge divinely revealed. But I do not now enter upon these topics, as I 8 THE ORDER OF CREATION. have a more immediate and defined concern with the work of Dr. Reville. It only came within the last few months to my knowledge that, at a period when my cares and labors of a distinct order were much too absorbing to allow of any attention to archeological history, Dr. Reville had done me the honor to select me as the representative of those writers who find warrant for the assertion of a primitive revelation in the tes- timony of the holy scriptui'es. This is a distinction which I do not at all deserve ; first, because Dr. Reville might have placed in the field champions much more competent and learned* than myself; secondly, because I have never at- tempted to give the proof of such a warrant. I have never written exprqfesso on the subject of it; but it is true that in a work published nearly thirty years ago, when destructive criticism was less ad- vanced than it is now, I assumed it as a thing gener- ally received, at least in this country. Upon some of the points which group themselves round that as- sumption my views, like those of many other inquir- ers, have been stated more crudely at an early, and more matui'ely at more than one later period. I admit that variation or develoj)ment imposes a hardship upon critics, notwithstanding all their desii'e to be just; especially, may I say, upon such critics as, traversing ground of almost boundless ex- tent, can hardly, except in the rarest cases, be mi- nutely and closely acquainted with every portion of it. * I will only name one of the most recent, Dr. Reusch, the author of " Bibel undNatur" (Bonn, 1876). DA'WN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 9 I also admit to Dr. Keville, and indeed I contend by his side, that in a historical inquu-y the author- ity of scripture cannot be alleged in proof of the ex- istence of a primitive revelation. So to allege it is a preliminary assumption of the supernatiu'al, and is, in my view, a manifest departiu'e from the laws of " scientific" procedure; as palpable a departure, may I ventvu'e to say, as that jDreliminary exclusion of the supernatiu-al which I have already presumed to notice. My own offense, if it be one, was of another character; and was committed in the early days of Homeric study, when my eyes, perhaps, were dazzled with the amazing richness and variety of the results which reward all close investigation of the text of Homer, so that objects were blui'red for a time in my view, which soon came to stand more clear before me. I had better, perhaj)s, state at once what my con- tention really is. It is, first, that many important pictures drawn and indications given in the Homeric poems supply evidence that cannot be confuted not only of an ideal, but of a historical relationship to the Hebrew traditions, (1) and mainly, as they are recorded in the book of Genesis; (2) as less authen- tically to be gathered from the later Hebrew learn- ing ; (3) as illustrated from extraneous soiu'ces. Sec- ondly, any attempt to expound the Olympian myth- ology of Homer by simple reference to a solar theory, or even to nature- worship in a larger sense, is simply a plea for a verdict against the evidence. It is also true that I have an imshaken belief in a divine revela- tion, not resting on assumption, but made obligatory upon me by reason. But I hold the last of these convictions entirely apart from the others, and I de- rived the first and second not from preconception, of 10 THE ORDER OF CREATION. which I had not a grain, but from the poems them- selves, as purely as I derived my knovs^ledge of the Pelopomiesian war from Thucydides, or his inter- preters. The great importance of this contention I do not deny. I have produced in its favor a great mass of evidence, which, as far as I have seen, there has been no serious endeavor, if, indeed, any endeavor, to repel. Dr. Reville observes that my views have been sub- jected to " very profound criticism " by Sir G. Cox, in his learned work on Aryan mythology (p. 41). That is, indeed, a very able criticism, but it is ad- dressed entii'ely to the statements of my earliest Homeric work.* Now, apart from the question whether those statements have been rightly under- stood (which I cannot admit), that which he attacks is beyond and outside of the proposition which I have given above. Sir G. Cox has not attempted to de- cide the question whether there was a primitive reve- lation, or whether it may be traced in Homer. And I may say that I am myself so little satisfied with the precise form in which my general conclusions were originally clothed that I have not reprinted and shall not reprint the work, which has become very rare, only appearing now and then in some catalogue, and at a high price. When there are representatives, liv- ing and awake, why disturb the ashes of the dead ? In later works, reaching from 1865 to 1875,t I have * " Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. 3 vols. Ox- ford, 1858. t ' ' Address to the University of Edinburgh " (Murray, 1865); "Juventus Mimdi " (Macmillan, 1868) ; "Primer of Homer" (Macmillan, 1878); especially see Preface to "Ju- ventus Mundi," p. I. DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 11 confessed to the modification of my results, and have stated the case in terms ■which appear to me, using the common phrase, to be those yielded by the legit- imate study of comparative religion. But v^rhy should those who think it a sound method of comparative religion to match together the Vedas, the Norse legends, and the Egyptian remains, think it to be no process of comparative religion to bring together, not vaguely and loosely, but in seai'ching detail, cer- tain traditions of the book of Genesis and those re- corded in the Homeric Poems, and to argue that their resemblances may afford proof of a common origin, without any anticipatory assumption as to what that origin may be ? It will hardly excite surprise, after what has now been written, when I say I am imable to accept as mine any one of the propositions which Dr. Reville (pp. 41-2) affiliates to me. (1) I do not hold that there was a " systematic " or wilful corruption of a primitive rehgion. (2) I do not hold that all the mythologies are due to any such con-uption, systematic or other- wise. (3) I do not hold that no part of them sprang out of the deification of natxu-al facts. (4) I do not hold that the ideas conveyed in the book of Genesis, or in any Hebrew tradition, were developed in the form of dogma, as is said by Sir G. Cox, or in " six great doctrines " as is conceived by Dr. Keville ; and (5) I am so far from ever having held that there was a " primitive orthodoxy " revealed to the first men (p. 43) that I have carefully from the first referred not to developed doctrine, but to rudimentary indi- cations of what are now developed and established truths. So that, although Dr. Reville asks me for proof, I decline to supply proofs of what I disbe- 12 THE ORDER OF CREATION. lieve. What I have suppHed proofs of is the appearance in the Poems of a number of traits, in- congruous in various degrees with their immediate environment, but having such mai'ked and character- istic resemblances to the Hebrew tradition as to requii-e of us, in the character of rational inquirers, the admission of a common origin, just as the mark- ings which we sometimes notice ujoon the coats of horses and donkeys are held to requii'e the admission of their relationship to the zebra. It thus ai)pears that Dr. Eeville has discharged his pistol in the air, for my Homeric propositions involve no assumption as to a revelation contained in the book of Genesis, while he has exprofesso contested my statements of a historical relationship between some traditions of that book and those of the Homeric poems. But I will now briefly examine (1) the man- ner in which Dr. Reville handles the book of Genesis, and (2) the manner in which he undertakes, by way of specimen, to construe the mythology of Homer, and enlist it, by comparison, in the support of his system of interpretation. And first with the first- named of these two subjects. Entering a protest against assigning to the book " a dictatorial authority," that is, I presume, against its containing a divine revelation to anybody, he passes on to examine its contents. It contains, he says, scientific errors, of which (p. 42, n.) he sj^ecifies three. His charges are that (1) it speaks of the heaven as a solid vault ; (2) it j)laces the creation of the stars after that of the earth, and so places them solely for its use; (3) it introduces the vegetable kingdom before that kingdom could be subjected to the action of solar light. All these condemnations DAWN OF CEEATION AND OF WORSHIP. 13 are quietly enunciated in a note, as if they were sub- ject to no dispute. Let us see. As to the first : if our scholars are right ia their judgment, just made known to the world by the recent revision of the Old Testament, the " firma- ment " is, in the Hebrew original, not a sohd vault, but an expanse. As to the second (a) it is 7iot said in the sacred text that the stars were made solely for the use of the earth ; {b) it is true that no other use is mentioned. But we must here inquire what was the purpose of the narrative ? Not to rear cosmic philosophers, but to furnish ordinary men with some idea of what the Creator had done in the way of providing for them a home, and giving them a place in nature. The advantage afforded by the stars to them is named alone, they having no interest in any other purpose for which the stars may exist. The assertion that the stars ai'e stated to have been " created " after the earth is more serious. But here it becomes necessary first of all to notice the recital in this part of the indictment. In the language of Dr. Reville, the book speaks of the creation of the stars after the formation of the earth. Now, curiously enough, the book says nothing either of the " forma- tion" of the earth, or of the " creation" of the stars. It says in its first line that " iu the beginning God created the heaven and the eai'th." It says f mother on (Gen. i, 16), " He made the stars also." Can it be ui'ged that this is a fanciful distinction between creating on the one hand, and making, forming, or fashioning on the other "? Dante did not think so, for speaking of the divine will, he says : Cio ch' Ella cria, e che Natura face. — Paradiso, iii, 87. li THE OKDER OF CREATION. Luther did not think so, for he uses schuf in the first verse, and machte in the sixteenth. The Enghsh translators and theu' revisers did not think so, for they use the words "created" and "made" in the two passages respectively. The main question, how- ever, is what did the author of the book think, and what did he intend to convey ? The LXX drew no distinction, probably for the simple reason that, as the idea of creation proper was not familial* to the Greeks, their language conveyed no word better than poiein to express it, which is also the proper word for fashioning or making. But the Hebrew, it seems, had the distinction, and by the writer of Genesis i it has been strictly, to Dr. Reville I might almost say scientifically, followed. He uses the word " created " on the thi'ee grand occasions (1) of the beginning of the mighty work (v. 1) ; (2) of the beginning of ani- mal life (v. 21) "And God created great whales," and every living creatiu-e that peoples the waters ; (3) of the yet more important beginning of rational and spuitual life ; "so God created man in his own image " (v. 27). In every other instance the simple command is recited, or a word imiDlying less than creation is employed. From this very marked mode of use, it is surely plain that a mai'ked distinction of sense was intended by the sacred wiiter. I will not attempt a definition of the distinction further than this, that the one phrase points more to calling into a separate or indi- vidual existence, the other more to shaping and fashioning the conditions of that existence ; the one to quid, the other to quale. Our earth, created in V. 1, undergoes structural change, different arrange- ment of material, in v. 9. After this, and in the fourth DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WOESHIP 15 day, comes not the original creation, but the location in the firmament of the sun and the moon. On their " creation " nothing particular has been said ; for no use, palpable to man, was associated with it before their perfect equipment. Does it not seem allowable to suppose that in the "heavens"* (v. 1), of which after the first outset we hear no more, were included the heavenly bodies ? In any case what is afterwards conveyed is not the calling into existence of the sun and moon, but the assignment to them of a certain place and orbit respectively, with a light-giving power. Is there the smallest inconsistency in a statement which j^laces the emergence of our land, and its separation from the sea, and the commence- ment of vegetable life, before the final and full concentration of light upon the sun, and its reflection on the moon and the planets ? In the gradual sever- ance of other elements would not the severance of the luminous body, or force, be gradual also "? And why, let me ask of Dr. Eeville, as there would plainly be light diffused before there was light concentrated, why may not that light diffused have been sufficient for the purposes of vegetation ? There was soil, there was atmosphere, there was moistui'e, there was light. "What more could be requii-ed ? Need we go beyond our constant experience to be aware that the process of vegetation, though it may be suspended, is not arrested, when, through the presence of cloud and *In our translation, and in the recent revision, the singular is used. But we are assured that the Hebrew word is plural (Bishop of Winchester on Genesis i, 1, in the Speaker's Bible). If so taken, we have the creation, visible to us, treated con- jointly in verses 1-5, distributively in verses 6-19 ; surely a most orderly arrangement. 16 THE ORDER OF CREATION. vapor, the sun's globe becomes to us invisible? The same observations ajjply to the Ught of the planets ; while as to the other stars, such as were then percep- tible to the human eye, we know nothing. The planets, being luminous bodies only through the action of the sun, could not be luminous until such a degree of light, or of light-force, was accumulated upon or in the sun, as to make them luminous, instead of being silent as the moon, When she deserts the night Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. Is it not then the fact, thus far, that the impeachment of the book has fallen to the ground ? There remains to add only one remark, the propriety of which is, I think,- indisputable. Easy comjDrehension and im- pressive force are the objects to be aimed at in a composition at once popular and summary ; but these cannot be always had without some departure from acciu'ate classification, and the order of minute detail. It seems much more easy to justify the language of the opening verses of Genesis than, for example, the convenient usage by which we affirm that the sun rises, or mounts above the horizon, and sets, or de- scends below it, when we know perfectly well that he does neither the one nor the other. As to the third charge of scientific error, that the vegetable kingdom appeared before it could be subjected to the action of solar light, it has been virtually disposed of. If the light now approj^riated to the sun alone was gradually gathering toward and round him, why may it not have performed its proper office in contributing to vegetation when once the necessary degree of sev- erance between solid and fluid, between wet and dry, DA^YN OF CEEATIOK AND OF WORSHIP. 17 had been effected? And this is just what had been described in the formation of the firmament, and the separation of land from sea. More singular still seems to be the next observation offered by Dr. Reville in his compound labor to sat- isfy his reader^, first, that there is no revelation in Genesis, and secondly that, if there be, it is one which has no serious or relevant meaning. He comes to the remarkable expression in v. 26, " Let us make man in our own image." There has, it appeal's, been much difference of opinion even among the Jews on the meaning of this verse." The Almighty ad- dresses, as some think, his own powers ; as others think, the angels; others, the earth; other writers, especially, as it appears, Germans, have understood this to be a plural of dignity, after the manner of kings. Others, of the rationalizing school, conceive the word Elohim to be a relic of polytheism. The ancient Christian interpreters,* from the apostle Bar- nabas onw^ard, find in these words an indication of a plurality in the divine unity. Dr. Eeville (p. 43) holds that this is " simply the royal plui-al used in Hebrew as in many other languages," or else, " and more probably," that it is an appeal to the Bene Elohim or angels. But is not this latter meaning a direct assavdt upon the supreme truth of the unity of God? If he chooses the former, from whence does he derive his knowledge that this " royal plural " was used in Hebrew ? Will the royal plural account for (Gen. iii, 22) " when the man is become as one of us ? " *0n this expression, I refer again to the commentary of Bishop Harold Browne. Bishop Mant supplies an mterest- ing list of testimonies. 18 THE ORDER OF CREATION. and ■u'ould George II., if saying of Cbai'les Edward " tlie man is become as one of us." have intended to convey a singular or a plural meaning ? Can we dis- prove the assertion of Bishop Hai-old Browne, that this plurality of dignity is unknown to the language of scriptiu'e ? And fui'ther, if we make the violent assumption that the Christian Church with its one voice is wrong and Dr. Reville right, and that the words were not meant to convey the idea of pltu'ality, yet, if they have been such as to lead all Christendom to see in them this idea through 1,800 years, how can he be sui'e that they did not convey a hke significa- tion to the earhest hearers or readers of the book of Genesis ? The rest of Dr. Reville' s criticism is directed rather to the significance or propriety than to the truth of the record. It is not necessai'y to follow his remarks in detail, but it will help the reader to judge how far even a perfectly upright member of the scientific and compai'ative school can indulge an unconscious bias, if notice be taken in a single instance of his method of compai'ing. He comj)ai'es together the two pai'ts of the prediction that the seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent, and that the serpent shall bruise the heel of the seed of the woman (iii, 15); and he conceives the head and the heel to be so much upon a par in their relation to the faculties and the vitality of a man that he can find here nothing to in- dicate which shall get the better, or, in his own words, '• on which side shall be the final victory " (p. 45). St. Paul seems to have taken a different view when he wi'ote : " The God of peace shall biniise Satan under your feet shortly " (Rom. xvi, 20). Moreover, " otu* author " (in Dr. Reville' s phrase) DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 19 is censured because he " takes special care to point out [p. 44] that the first pair are as yet strangers to the most elementary notions of morality," inasmuch as they are unclothed, yet without shame ; nay, even as he feelingly says, " without the least shame." In what the morality of the first pair consisted, this is hardly the place to discuss. But let us suppose for a moment that then- morality was simply the morality of a little child, the undeveloped morality of obedi- ence, without distinctly formed conceptions of an ethical or abstract standard. Is it not plain that their feelings would have been exactly what the book describes (Gen. ii, 25), and yet that in theu* loving obedience to theu' father and creator they would cer- tainly have had a germ, let me say an opening bud, of morahty 1 But this proposition, taken alone, by no means does justice to the case. Dr. Reville would prob- ably put aside with indifference or contempt all that depends upon the dogma of the Fall. And yet there can be no more rational idea, no idea more paljDably sustained, whether by philosophy or by experience. Namely, this idea : that the commission of sin, that is, the act of deliberately breaking a loiown law of duty, injxu'es the nature and composition of the being who commits it. It injui'es that nature in deranging it, in altering the projDortion of its parts and powers, in introducing an inward disorder and rebellion of the lower against the higher, too moui-nfully correspond- ing with that disorder and rebellion produced with- out, as toward God, of which the first sin was the fountain-head. Such is, I believe, the language of Christian theology, and in particular of St. Augus- tine, one of its prime masters. On this matter I ap- prehend that Dr. Reville, when judging the author of 20 *HE ORDER OF CREATlOJf. Genesis, judges him without regard to his fundamen- tal ideas and aims, one of which was to convey that before sinning man was a being morally and physi- cally balanced, and nobly pm-e in every faculty ; and that, by and from his sinning, the sense of shame foiind a projDcr and necessaiy place in a nature which before was only open to the sense of duty and of reverence. One fui'ther observation only. Dr. Reville seems to " score one " when he finds (Gen. iv, 26) that Seth had a son, and that "then began men to call on the name of the Lord ;" " but not," he adds, " as the re- sult of a recorded revelation." Here at last he has found, or seemed to find, the beginning of rehgion, and that beginning subjective, not revealed. So has- tily, from the first aspect of the text, does he gather a verbal advantage, which, ujjon the slightest inquiry, would have disappeai-ed like dew in the morning sun. He assumes the rendering of a text which has been the subject of every kind of question and dispute, the only thing apparently agreed on being that his interpretation is wholly excluded. Upon a disputed original, and a disputed interpretation of the dis- puted original, he founds a signification in flat con- tradiction to the whole of the former narrative, to Elohist and Jehovist ahke ; which narrative, if it rep- resents anything, represents a continuity of active reciprocal relation between God and man both before and after the transgression. Not to mention differ- erences of translation, which essentially change the meaning of the words, the text itself is given by the double authority of the Samaritan Pentateuch* and * See Bishop of Winchester's " Commentary." DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 21 of the Septuagint in the singular number, which of itself wholly destroys the construction of Dr. Reville. I do not enter uj)on the difficult question of conflict- ing authorities ; but I tu'ge that is unsafe to build an important conclusion upon a seriously controverted reading.* There is nothing, then, in the ciiticisms of Dr. Reville but what rather tends to confirm than to im- j)au' the old-fashioned belief that there is a revelation in the book of Genesis. With his argument outside this proposition I have not dealt. I make no assump- tion as to what is termed a verbal inspii'ation, and of course in admitting the vaiiety I give up the abso- lute integrity of the text. Upon the presumable age of the book and its compilation I do not enter — not even to contest the opinion which brings it down below the age of Solomon — beyond observing that in every j)age it apppears from internal evidence to be- long to a remote antiquity. There is here no ques- tion of the chronology, or of the date of man, or of knowledge or ignorance in the primitiv man, or whether the element of parable enters into any por- tion of the narrative ; or whether every statement of fact contained in the text of the book can now be made good. It is enough for my present pru'pose to point to the cosmogony, and the foru*fold succession of the hving organisms as entu-ely harmonizing, ac- cording to present knowledge, with belief in a revela- * This perplexed question is discussed, in a sense adverse totlie Septuagint, by the critics of the recent Revision, in the Quarterly Revieio for October, No. 322. Tlie revisers of the Old Testament state (Preface, p. vi) that in a few cases of ex- treme difficulty they have set aside the Massoretic Text in favor of a readingr from one of the ancient versions. 22 THE OEDER OF CREATION. tion, and as presenting to the rejector of that belief a problem which demands solution at his hands, and which he has not yet been able to solve. Whether this revelation was conveyed to the ancestors of the whole human race who have at the time or since ex- isted, I do not know, and the scriptm-es do not appear to me to make the afiu'mation, even if they do not con- vey certain indications which favor a contrary opin- ion. Again, whether it contains the whole of the knowledge specially vouchsafed to the j)arents of the Noachian races may be very doubtful ; though of coui'se great caution must be exercised in regard to the pai'ticulars of any primeval tradition not derived from the text of the eai'hest among the sacred books. I have thus far confined myself to rebutting objec- tions. But I will now add some positive considera- tions which apj)eai' to me to sustain the ancient and, as I am persuaded, impregnable belief of Christians and of Jews concerning the inspu'ation of the book. I offer 'them as one wholly destitute of that kind of knowledge which caiTies authority, and who speaks derivitively as best he can, after listening to teachers of repute and such as practice rational methods. I understand the pages of the majestic process de- scribed in the book of Genesis to be m general out- line as follows : 1. The point of departure is the formless mass, created by God, out of which the earth was shaped and constituted a thing of individual existence (verses 1, 2). 2. The detachment and collection of light, leaving in darkness as it proceeded the still chaotic mass from which it was detached (verses 3-5). The narrative DAWN OF CREATION AND OF \VOKSHIP. 23 assigning a space of time to each process appears to show that each was gradual, not instantaneous. 2. The detachment of Hght from darkness is fol- lowed by the detachment of wet from di'y, and of sohd from liquid in. the firmament and on the face of the earth. Each of these operations occupies a " day," and the conditions of vegetable life, as known to us by exj)erience, being now provided, the order of the vegetable kingdom had begun (verses 6-13). 4. Next comes the presentation to us of the heav- enly bodies, sun, moon, and stars, in their final forms, when the completion of the process of light-collection, and concentration in the sun, and the due clearing of the intervening spaces, had enabled the central orb to illuminate us both with dii'ect and with reflected light (verses 14-19). 5. So far, we have been busy only with the adjust- ment of material agencies. We now arrive at the dawn of animated being ; and a great transition seems to be marked as a kind of recommencement of the work, for the name of creation is again intro- duced. God created (a) The water-population ; (b) The air-population. And they receive his benediction (verses 20-23). 6. Pursuing this regulai- pi'ogression from the lower to the higher, from the simple to the complex, the text now gives us the work of the sixth " day," which supplies the land-poj)ulation, air and water having already been supplied. But in it there is a sub-division, and the transition from (c) animal to {d) man, like the transition from animate to inanimate, is again marked as a great occasion, a kind of recom- mencement. For this purpose the word " create " is 24 THE OKDER OF CREATION. a third time employed. " God created man in his own image," and once more he gave benediction to this the final work of his hands, and endowed our race with its high dominion over what lived and what did not hve (verses 24-31). I do not dwell on the cessation of the Almighty from the creating and (ii, 1) "finishing" work, which is the " rest " and mai'ks the seventh " day," because it introduces another order of considerations. But glancing back at the narrative which now forms the first chapter, I offer perhaps a prejudiced and in any case no more than a passing remark. If we view it as a popular narrative, it is singularly vivid, forcible, and effective ; if we take it as as a poem, it is indeed sublime. No wonder if it became classical and reap- peared in the glorious devotions of the Hebrew people,* pursuing, in a great degree, the same order of topics as in the book of Genesis. But the question is not here of a lofty jDoem, or a skilfully constructed nai'rative ; it is whether natural science, in the patient exercise of its high calling to examine facts, finds that the works of God cry out against what we have fondly believed to be his word, and tell another tale, or whether, in this nineteenth centvu'y of Christian progress, it substantially echoes back the majestic soimd which, before it existed as a pursuit, went forth into all lands. Fh'st, looking largely at the latter portion of the narrative, which describes the creation of hviiig organ- isms, and waiving details, on some of which (as in verse 24) the Septuagint seems to vary from the * Ps. civ, 2-20, cxxxvi, 5-9, and the Song of the Three Children in verses 57-60. DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 25 Hebrew, there is a gi-ancl foui-fold division set forth m an orderly succession of times as follows : on the fifth day 1. The water-population ; 2. The aii'-population ; and, on the sixth day, 3. The land-population of animals ; 4. The land-population consummated in man. Now this same fourfold order is understood to have been so affirmed in our time by natural science that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and estabhshed fact. Then, I ask, how came Moses, or, not to cavil on the word, how came the author of the first chapter of Genesis, to know that order, to possess knowledge which natural science has only within the present centu.ry for the first time dug out of the bowels of the eai'th ? It is surely impossible to avoid the conclusion, first, that either this writer was gifted with faculties passing all human experi- ence, or else his knowledge was divine. The first branch of the alternative is truly nominal and unreal. We know the sphere within which human inquiry toils. We know the heights to which the intuitions of genius may soar. We know that in certain cases genius anticipates science ; as Homer, for example, in his account of the conflict of the four winds in the sea-storms. But even in these anticipations, mar- velous, and, so to speak, imperial as they are, genius cannot escape from one inexorable law. It must have materials of sense or experience to work with, and a Ttov (Trc5 from whence to take its flight ; and genius can no more tell, apart from some at least of the I'esults attained by inquiry, what are the contents of 2G THE OKDEK OF CREATION. the crust of the earth, than it could square the circle or annihilate a fact.* So stands a plea for a revelation of truth from God, a plea only to be met by questioning its possibility ; that is, as Dr. Salmon (Introduction of the New Testament, p. ix. Mui'ray, 1885) has observed with great force in a recent work, by suggesting that a being, able to make man, is unable to communicate with the creature he has made. If, on the other hand, the objector confine himself to a merely nega- tive position, and cast the burden of proof on those who beheve in revelation, it is obvious to reply by a reference to the actual constitution of things. Had that constitution been normal or morally undisturbed, it might have been held that revelation as an achnini- culum, in addition to oui' natural faculties, would itself have been a distvu'bance. But the disturbance has in truth been created in the other scale of the balance by departure from the suj)reme will, by the introduction of sin ; and revelation, as a special rem- edy for a special evil, is a contribution towai'd symmetry, and toward restoration of the original equihbrium. Thus far only the fovu'fold succession of the living orders has been noticed. But among the persons of very high authority in natural science quoted by Dr. Ileusch,t who held the general accordance of the *In conversation with Miss Burney (Diary i, 576), Johnson, using language which sounds more disparaging than it reallj- is, declares that "genius is nothing more than knowing the use of tools ; but then there must be tools for it to use." tBibel und Natur, pp. 2, 63. The words of Cuvier are : " Moyses hat uns eine Kosmogenie hinterlassen, deren Ge- nauigkeit mit jedem Tage in einer bewunderungswiirdigern DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP 27 Mosaic cosmogony with the results of modern in- quiry, ai-e Cuvier and Sii- John Herschel. The words of Cuvier show he conceived that " every day " fresh confirmation from the purely human source accrued to the credit of scrij)ture. And since his day, for he cannot now be called a recent authority, this opinion appeal's to have received some remarkable illustra- tions. Half a century ago Dr. Whew^ell (Wliewell's Astron- omy and General Physics, 1834, p. 181, seqq.) dis- cussed, under the name of the nebular hypothesis, that theory of rotation which had been indicated by Herschel, and more largely taught by Laplace, as the probable method through which the solar system has taken its form. Cai'efully abstaining, at that early date, from a formal judgment on the hypothesis, he aj)pears to discuss it with favor ; and he shows that this hypothesis, w-hich assumes " a beginning of the present state of things" (Whewell, o/:>. cit. p. 20G), is in no way adverse to the Mosaic cosmogony. The theory has received marked support from opposite quarters. In the " Vestiges of Creation " it is frankly adopted ; the very curious experiment of Professor Plateau is detailed at length on its behalf (Ves- tiges, etc., pp. 11-15) ; and the author considers, with Laplace, that the zodiacal light, on which Humboldt in his " Kosmos " has dwelt at large, may be a remnant of the liuninous atmosphere originally diffused around the sun. Dr. McCaul, in his very able argument on the Mosaic record, quotes (Aids to Faith, p. 210) Humboldt, Pfaff and Madler — a famous German Weise bestatigt ist." The declaration of Sir John Herschel was in 1864. 28 THE ORDER OF CREATIOiSr. astronomer — as adhering to it. It appears on the whole to be in possession of the field ; and Mr. McCaul observes (ibid) that, " had it been devised for the express purjDose of removing the supposed difficiilties of the Mosaic record, it could hardly have been more to the purpose." Even if we conceive, with Dr. Eeville, that the " creation," the first gift of separate existences to the planets, is declared to have been subsequent to that of the earth, there seems to be no known law which excludes such a supposition, especially with respect to the larger and more distant of their number. These, it is to be noticed, are of great rarity as compared with the earth. Why should it be declared impossible that they should have taken a longer time in condensation, like in this poiut to the comets, which still continue in a state of excessive rarity? "Want of space forbids me to enter into further explanation ; but it requires much more serious efforts and objections than those of Dr Re- ville to confute the statement that the extension of knowledge and of inquiry has confirmed the Mosaic record. One word, however, upon the " days " of Genesis. We do not hear the authority of scriptuie impeached on the ground that it assigns to the Almighty eyes and ears, hands, arms, and feet ; nay, even the emo- tions of the human being. This being so, I am unable to understand why any disparagement to the credit of the sacred books should ensue because, to describe the order and successive stages of the divine working, these have been distributed into " days." What was the thing required in order to make this great pro- cession of acts intelligible and impressive ? Surely it was to distribute the parts each into some integral t)A\\N OF CKEATION AND OF WORSHIP. 29 division of time, having the character of something complete in itself, of a revolution, or outset and return. There are but three such divisions familiarly known to man. Of these the day was the most famil- iar to human perceptions ; and probably on this account its figurative use is admitted to be found in prophetic texts, as, indeed, it largely j)ervades ancient and modern speech. Given the object in view, which indeed can hardly be questioned, does it not appear that the " day," more definitely separated than either month or year from what precedes and what follows, was appropriately chosen for the purpose of convey- ing the idea of development by gradation in the process, which the book sets forth ? I now come to the last portion of my task, which is to follow Dr. Reville into his exposition of the Oiymi^ian mythology. Not, indeed, the Homeric or Greek religion alone, for he has considered the case of all religions, and disposes of them with equal facility. Of any other system than the Olympian it would be presumption in me to speak, as I have, be- yond this limit, none but the most vague and superficial knowledge. But on the Olympian system in its eai'Uest and least adulterated, namely its Ho- meric development, whether with success or not, I have freely employed a large shai'e of such leisui-e as more than thirty years of my Parliamentaiy life, passed in freedom from the calls of office, have sup- plied. I hope that there is not in Dr. Reville's treatment of other systems that slightness of texture, and that facihty and rapidity of conclusion, which seem to me to mai'k his performances in the Olympian field. In the main he follows what is called the solar 30 THE ORDER OF CREATION. theory. In his widest view he embraces no more than" "the religion of nature" (pj). 94, 100), and he holds that all religion has sprung from the worship of objects visible and sensible. His fii'st essay is upon Heracles, whom I have found to be one of the most difficvdt and, so to speak, uTeducible characters in the Olympian mythology. In the Tyrian system Heracles, as Melkart, says Dr. Reville in p. 95, is " a brazen god, the devourer of children, the terror of men ; " but, without any loss of identity, he becomes in the Greek system, " the great lawgiver, the tamer of monsters, the peace- maker, the liberator." I am deeply impressed with the danger that Im-ks in these summary and easy solutions ; and I will offer a few words first on the Greek Heracles generally, next on the Homeric pre- sentation of the character. Dr. L. Schmidt has contributed to Smith's great dictionary a large and careful article on Heracles ; an article which may almost be called a treatise. Unlike Dr. Reville, to whom the matter is so clear, he finds himself out of his depth in attempting to deal with this highly incongruous character, which meets us at so many j^oints, as a whole. But he perceives in the Heracles of Greece a mixtui'e of fabulous and historic elements : and the mythical basis is not, according to him, a transplanted Melkart, but is essentially Greek (Smith's Diet, ii, 400). He refers to Buttmann's " Mythologus " and Miiller's "Dorians" as the best treatises on the subject, " both of which regard the hero as a pui-ely Greek character." Thus Dr. Reville appears to be in conflict with the leading authorities, whom he does not confute, but simply ignores. Homer himself may have felt the difficulty which DAAVN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 31 Dr. Reville does not feel, for he presents to us, in one and tlie same passage, a divided Heracles. Whatever of him is not eidolon (Od. xi, GOl-4) dwells among the Olympian gods. This eidolon, however, is no mere shade, but something that sees and speaks, that moui'ns and threatens ; no " lawgiver," or " peace- maker," or " liberator," but one from whom the other shades fly in terror, set in the place and company of sinners suffering for then- sins, and presumably him- self in the same predicament, as the sense of grief is assigned to him : it is in wailing that he addresses Odysseus (Od. xi, 605-16). Accordingly, whil« on earth, he is thrasumemnon (Od. xi, 267), huperthu- mos (II. xiv, 250), a doer of megala erga (Od. xxi, 26), which with Homer commonly are crimes. He is profane, for he wounded Here, the specially Achaian goddess (II. V. 392) ; and he is treacherous, for he killed Iphitos, his host, in order to carry off his horses (Od. xxi, 26-30). A mixed character, no doubt, or he would not have had Hebe for a partner ; but those which I have stated are some of the diffi- culties which Dr Reville quietly rides over to describe him as a lawgiver, peacemaker, and hberator. But I proceed. Nearly everything, with Dr. Reville, and, indeed, with his school, has to be pressed into the service of the solar theory ; and if the evidence will not bear it, so much the worse for the e-sddence. Thus Ixion, tortui'ed in the later Greek system on a wheel, which is sometimes represented as a burning wheel, is made (p. 105) to be the sun ; the luminary whose splendor and benificence had rendered him, according to the theory, the center of all Aryan worship. A sorry use to put him to ; but let that pass. Now the occasion 32 THE ORDER OF CREATION. that supplies an Ixion and a biu-ning wheel available for solarism — a system which prides itself above all things on its exhibiting the primitive state of things — is that Ixion has loved unlawfully the wife of Zeus. And first as to the wheel. We hear of it in Pindar (Pyth. ii, 39) ; but as a. winged, not a burning wheel. This " solar " featui'e appears, I beheve, nowhere but in the latest and most defaced and adulterated mythology. Next as to the punishment. It is of a more respectable antiquity. But some heed should surely be taken of the fact that the oldest authority upon Ixion is Homer; and that Homer affords no plea for a burning or any other wheel, for according to him (II. xiv, 317), instead of Ixion's loving the wife of Zeus, it was Zeus who loved the wife of Ixion. Errors, conveyed without testimony in a sentence, commonly require many sentences to confute them. I will not dwell on minor cases, or those j)ui-ely fanci- ful ; for mere fancies, which may be admired or the reverse, are imj)alpable to the clutch of argument, and thus are hardly subjects for confutation. Jr*aulb majora canamus. I continue to tread the field of Greek mythology, because it is the favorite sporting- grormd of the exclusivists of the solar theory. We ai'e told (p. 80) that because waves with rounded backs may have the aiDpearance (but query) of horses or sheep throwing themselves tumultuously upon one anothei*, therefore "in maritime regions, the god of the liquid element, Poseidon or Neptune, is the breeder, protector, and trainer of horses." Then why is he not also the breeder, protector, and trainer of sheep ? They have qviite as good a mari- time title ; according to the first line of Ai'iosto : Muggendo van per mare, i gran montoni. DAWN OF CEKATION AND OF WORSHIP. 33 I am altogether skeptical about these rounded backs of horses, which, more, it seems, than other backs, become conspicuous like a wave. The resem- blance, I believe, has commonly been di'awn between the horse, as regards his mane, and the foam-tipped waves, which are still sometimes called white horses. But we have here, at best, a case of great super- structure built upon a slight foundation ; when it is attempted, on the groundwork of a mere simile, hav- ing reference to a state of sea which in the Mediter- ranean is not the rule but the rare exception, to frame an explanation of the close, pervading, and almost profound relation of the Homeric Poseidon to the horse. Long and careful investigation has shown me that this is an ethnical relation, and a key to impor- tant parts of the ethnography of Homer. But the proof of this proposition would require an essay of itself. I will, therefore, only refer to the reason which leads Dr. Reville to construct this (let me say) castle in the aii\ It is because he thinks he is accounting hereby for a fact, which would in- deed, if established, be a startling one, that the god of the hquid element should also be the god of the horse. We are dealing now especially with the Homeric Poseidon, for it is in Homer that the rela- tion to the horse is developed ; and the way to a true explanation is opened when we observe that the Homeric Poseidon is 7iot the god of the liquid element at all. The truth is that the Olympian and ruling gods of Homer are not elemental. Some few of them bear the marks of having been elemental in other systems ; but, on admission into the Achaian heaven, they are divested of their elemental featm-es. In the case of 34 THE ORDER OF CREATION. Poseidon there is no sign that he ever had these elemental features. The signs are unequivocal that he had been worshiped as supreme, as the Zeus-Po- seidon, by certain races and in certain, viz. in far southern, countries. Certainly he has a special rela- tion to the sea. Once, and once only, do we hear of his having habitation under the water (II. xiii, 17-31). It is in n. xiii where he fetches his horses from it, to repair to the Trojan j)lain. He seems to have been an habitual absentee; the prototype, he might be called, of that ill-starred, ill-favored class. We heai" of him in Samothrace, on the Solyman mountains, as visiting the Ethiopians (Od. i, 25, 26), who wor- shipped him, and the reek of whose offerings he preferred at such times to the society of the Olympian gods debating on Helenic affau's ; though, when we are in the zone of the outer geography, we find him actually presiding in an Olympian assembly marked with foreign associations (Od. viii, 321-66). Now compare with this great mundane figure the true elemental gods of Homer ; first Okeanos, a venerable figure, who dwells appropriately by the fiu'thest (II. xiv, 201) bound of earth, the bank of the Ocean river, and who is not summoned (II. xx, 7) even to the great Olympian assembly of the twentieth book ; and sec- ondly, the graybeard of the sea, whom only from the patronymic of his Nereid daughters we know to have been called Nereus, and who, when reference is made to him and his train, is on each occasion (II. i, 358 ; xviii, 36) to be found in one and the same place, the deep recesses of the Mediterranean waters. If Dr. Reville still doubts who was for Homer the elemental god of water, let him note the fact that while neros is old Greek for wet, nero is, down to this DAWN 01' CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 35 very day, the people's word for water. But, con- clusive as are these considerations, their force will be most fully appreciated only by those who have closely observed that Homer's entire thevu'gic system is res- olutely exclusive or nature-worship, except in its lowest and most colorless orders, and that where he has to deal with a nature-power of , serious pretensions, such as the water-god would be, he is apt to pursue a method of quiet suppression, by local banishment or otherwise, that space may be left him to play out upon his board the gorgeous and imposing figures of his theanthi'opic system. As a siu'geon performs the most terrible operation in a few seconds, and with unbroken calm, so does the school of Dr. Reville, at least within the Homeric precinct, marshal, label, and transmute the personages that are found there. In touching on the "log," by which Dr. Reville says Hera was represented for ages, she is quietly described as the "queen of the shining heaven" (p. 79). For this assumption, so naively made, I am aware of no authority whatever among the Greeks — a somewhat formidable difficulty for others than solarists, as we are dealing with an eminently Greek conception. Euripides, a rather late authority, says (Eurip. Helena, 109), she dwells among the stars, as all deities might be said, ex officio, to do ; but gives no indication either of identity or of queenship. Ety- mology, stoutly disputed, may aiford a refuge. Schmidt (Smith's Diet., art, " Hera") refers the name to the Latin hera; Curtius (Griech. Etymol., p. 119) and Preller (PreUer, Griech. Mythol. i, 121) to the Sanscrit svar, meaning the heaven; and Welcker (Griech. Gotterlehi-e i, 362-3), with others, to what 36 THE OKDEE OF CREATION. appears the more obvious form of, epa, the earth. Dr. Reville, I presume, makes choice of the Sanscrit svar. Such etymologies, however, are, though greatly in favor with the solarists, most uncertain guides to Greek interj)retation. The effect of trusting to them is that, if a deity has in some foreign or anterior sys- tem had a certain place or office, and if this place or office has been altered to suit the exigencies of a composite mytholygy, the Greek idea is totally mis- conceived. If we take the pre-name of the Homeric Apollo, we may with some plausibihty say the Phoi- hos of the poet is the sun ; but we are landed at once in the absurd consequence that we have got a sun already (See infra.) and that the two are joint actors in a scene of the eighth " Odyssey" (Od. viii, 302, 334). Strange, indeed, will be the effect of such a system if apj)lied to our own case at some date in the far-off future ; for it will be shown, hiter alia, that there were no jDi'iests, but only presbyters, in any portion of Western Christendom ; that our dukes were simply generals leading us in war; that we broke our fast at eight in the evening (for diner iBhui a compression of dejewier); and even, possibly, that one of the noblest and most famous of English houses pursued habitually the humble occupation of a pig-di'iver. The character of Hera, or Here, has received from Homer a full and elaborate development. There is in it absolutely no trace whatever of "the queen of the shining heaven." In the action of the " Odyssey" she has no share at all — a fact absolutely unaccount- able if her function was one for which the voyages of that poem give much more scope than is supplied by the " Iliad." The fact is that there is no queen of DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 37 heaven in the Achaian system ; nor could there be without altering its whole genius. It is a curious in- cidental fact that, although Homer recognizes to some extent humanity in the stars (I refer to Orion and Leucothee, both of them foreign personages of the outer geogi'aphy), he never even approximates to a personification of the real queen of heaven, namely, the moon. There happens to be one marked incident of the action of Hera, which stands in rather ludicrous contrast with this lucent queenship. On one occasion when, in vktue of her bu-th and station, she exercises some sujjreme prerogative, she directs the sun (surely not so to her lord and master) to set, and he reluctantly obeys (II. xviii, 239, 240). Her character has not any pronounced moral elements ; it exhibits pride and passion ; it is pervaded intensely with policy and nationalism ; she is beyond all others the Achaian goddess, and it is sarcastically imputed to her by Zeus that she would cut the Trojans if she could, and eat them without requii'ing in the first instance any culinary process (II. iv, 35). I humbly protest against mauling and disfigiu'ing this work; against what great Walter Scott would, I think, have called " mashackering and mis juggling " it, after the manner of Nicol Muschat, when he put an end to his wife Ailie (Heart of IMidlothian) at the spot afterward marked by his name. "Why blur the picture so charged alike with imaginative power and with his- toric meaning, by the violent obtrusion of ideas, which, whatever force they may have had among other peoples or in other systems, it was one of the main piu'poses of Homer, in his marvelous theurgic work, to expel from all high place in the order of 38 THE oEDEK OF CREATION. ideas, and from every corner, every loft and every cellar, so to speak, of liis Olympian palaces ? If the Hera of Homer is to own a relationship out- side the Achaian system, like that of Apollo to the Sim, it is undoubtedly with Gaia, the earth, that it can be most easily established. The all-producing function of Gaia in the Theogony of Hesiod (Theog. 116-136) and her marriage with Oui'anos, the heaven, who has a partial relation to Zeus, jDoints to Hera as the majestic successor who in the Olympian scheme, as the great mother and guardian of maternity, bore an analogical resemblance to the female head of one or more of the Pelasgian or Achaic theogonies that it had deposed. I have now done with the treatment of details, and I must not quit them without saying that there axe some of the chapters, and many of the sentences, of Dr. Reville which appear to me to deserve our thanks. And much as I differ from him concerning an essen- tial part of the historic basis of religion, I trust that nothing which I have said can appear to impute to him any hostility or indifference to the substance of rehgion itself. I make, indeed, no question that the solai' theory has a most important place in solving the problems presented by many or some of the Aryan rehgions ; but whether it explains their first inception is a totally different matter. "When it is ruthlessly applied, in the teeth of evidence, to them all, in the last resort it stifles facts, and reduces observation and reasoning to a mockery. Sir George Cox, its able advocate, fastens upon the admission that some one particular method is not available for all the phenomena, and asks, Why not adopt for the Greek system, for the DA^VN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 39 Aryan systems at lai-ge, perhaps for a still wider range, " a clear and simple explanation," namely, the solar theory (Mythology of Aryan Nations, i, 18)* The plain answer to the question is that this must not be done, because, if it is done, we do not follow the facts, nor are led by them ; but to use the remai'k- able phrase of ^schylus, we ride them down, we trample them under foot. Mankind has long been too familiar with a race of j)ractitioners, whom cour- tesy forbids to name, and whose single medicine is alike available to deal with every one of the thousand figiu'es of disease. There are sui'ely many sources to which the old religions are referable. We have solar worship, earth worship, astronomic worship, the wor- ship of animals, the worship of evil powers, the worship of abstractions, the worship of the dead, the foul and polluting worship of bodily organs, so wide- spread in the world, and especially in the East ; last, but not least, I will name terminal worship, the remai'kable and most important scheme which grew up, perhaps first on the Nile, in connection with the stones used for marking boundaries, which finds its principal representative in the god Hermes, and which is very lai'gely traced and exhibited in the first volume of the work of M. Dulaure (Histoire abregee de differens Cultes. Seconde edition. Paris, 1825.) on ancient religions. But none of these circumstances discredits or im- pairs the proof that in the book, of which Genesis is the opening section, there is conveyed special knowl- edge to meet the special need everywhere so palpable in the state and history of our race. Far indeed am I from asserting that this precious gift, or that any process known to me, disposes of all the problems, 40 THE ORDEE OF CREATION. either insoluble or ixasolved, by which we are sur- rounded; of 4 the burden and the mystery Of all this unintelligible world. But I own my surprise not only at the fact, but at the manner in which in this day, writers, whose name is legion, unimpeached in character and abounding in talent, not only put away from them, cast into a shadow or into the very gulf of negation itself, the conception of a deity, an acting and a rul- ing deity. Of this belief, which has satisfied the doubts and wij)ed away the tears, and found guid- ance for the footstejDS of so many a weary wanderer on earth, which among the best and greatest of oiu* race has been so cherished by those who had it, and so longed and sought for by those who had it not, we might suppose that if at length we had discovered that it was in the light of truth untenable, that the accumulated testimony of man was worthless, and that his wisdom was but folly, yet at least the decen- cies of moui'ning would be vouchsafed to this irre- parable loss. Instead of this, it is with a joy and exultation that might almost recall the frantic orgies of the Commune, that this, at least at fii'st sight, ter- rific and overwhelming calamity is accepted, and re- corded as a gain. One recent, and in many ways respected writer — a woman long wont to unshiiD creed as sailors discharge excess of cargo in a storm, and passing at length into formal Atheism — rejoices to find herself on the open, free, and "breezy com- mon of humanity." Another, also a woman,* and dealing only with the workings and manifestations of * I do not quote names, but I refer to a very recent article in one of our monthly periodicals. DAWN OF CEEATIOX AND OF WORSHIP. 41 God, finds in the theory of a physical evolution as recently developed by Mi\ Darv\^in, and received with extensive favor, both an emancipation from error and a novelty in kind. She rejoices to think that now at last Dai'win " shows life as a harmonious whole, and makes the future stride possible by the past advance." Evolution, that is, physical evolution, which alone is in view, may be true (like the solar theory), may be delightful and wonderful, in its right l^lace ; but are we really to understand that varieties of animals brought about thi-ough domestication, the wasting of organs (for instance, the tails of men) by disuse, that natural selection and the siu'vival of the fittest, all in the physical order, exhibit to us the great ai'canuni of creation, the sun and center of life, so that mind and spirit are dethi'oned from their old supremacy, are no longer sovereign by right, but may find somewhere by charity a placed assigned them, as appendages, perhaps only as excrescences, of the material creation ? I contend that evolution in its highest form has not been a thing heretofore unknown to history, to philosophy, or to theology. I contend that it was before the mind of St. Paul when he taught that in the fulness of time God sent forth his son, and of Eusebius, when he wrote the " Prepara- tion for the Gospel," and of Augustine, when he composed the " City of God ; " and, beautiful and splendid as are the lessons taught by natural objects, they are, for Chiistendom at least, indefinitely beneath the sublime unfolding of the great drama of human action, in which, through long ages, Greece was making ready a language and an intellectual type, and Rome a framework of order and an idea of law, . such that in them were to be shaped and fashioned 42 THE OEDER OF CREATION. the destinies of a regenerated world. For those who believe that the old foundations are unshaken still, and that the fabric built upon them will look down for ages on the floating wreck of many a modem and boastful theory, it is difficult to see anything but in- fatuation in the destructive temperament which leads to the notion that to substitute a blind mechanism for the hand of God in the affair's of life is to enlarge the scope of remedial agency ; that to dismiss the highest of all inspii-ations is to elevate the strain of human thought and life ; and that each of us is to rejoice that our several units are to be disintegrated at death into " cotmtless millions of organisms;" for such, it seems, is the latest " revelation " dehvered from the fragile tripod of a modern Delphi. Assuredly on the minds of those who believe, or else on the minds of those who after this fashion disbeUeve, there lies some deep judicial darkness, a darkness that may be felt. While disbelief in the eyes of faith is a sore calamity, this kind of disbelief, which renounces and repudiates with more than satisfaction what is brightest and best in the inheritance of man, is astounding, and might be deemed incredible. Nay, some will say, rather than accept the flimsy and hollow consolations which it makes bold to offer, might we not go back to solar adoration, or, with Goethe, to the hollows of Olympus "? Wenu die Funke spriilit, Weun die Asclie gliilit, Eilen wir den alten Gottern zu. * W. E. Gladstone. ♦Literally: When the sparkles flow, When the ashes glow, Hasten we the olden gods unto. —Bride of Cwinth. THE INTERPRETERS OF GENESIS AND THE INTERPRETERS OF NATURE. A EEPLY TO MR. GLADSTONE'S " DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP." BY PROF. T. H. HUXLEY. Our fabulist warns " those who in quarrels inter- pose" of the fate which is probably in store for them; and, in venturing to place myself between so power- ful a controversialist as Mr. Gladstone and the emi- nent divine whom he assaults with such vigor in the last number of this Heoieio, I am fully aware that I run great danger of verifying Gay's prediction. Moreover, it is quite possible that my zeal in offering aid to a combatant so extremely well able to take care of himself as M. Reville may be thought to savor of indiscretion. Two considerations, however, have led me to face the double risk. The one is that though, in my judgment, M. Reville is wholly in the right in that pai't of the controversy to which I propose to restrict my observations, nevertheless, he, as a foreigner, has very httle chance of making the truth prevail with Englishmen against the authority and the dialectic skill of the gTeatest master of persuasive rhetoric among Enghsh- speaking men of oiu- time. As the queen's proctor intervenes, in certain cases, between two litigants ra the interests of justice, so it may be permitted me to interj^ose as a sort of uncommis- sioned science j)i'octor. My second excuse for my 44 THE INTERPRETEKS OF GEISTESIS meddlesomeness is that important questions of nat- ui'al science — respecting whicli neither of tlie combat- ants professes to speak as an expert — are involved in the controversy ; and I think it is desirable that the pubhc should know what it is that natural science really has to say on these toj)ics, to the best belief of one who has been a diligent student of natm-al science for the last forty yeai's. The original Prole,gomhies de I'histoire des Relig- ions has not come in my way; but I have read the translation of M. Reville's work, published in Eng- land imder the auspices of Prof. Max Miiller, with very great interest. It puts more fau'ly and clearly than any book previously known to me the view which a man of strong religious feelings, but at the same time possessing the information and the reason- ing power which enable him to estimate the strength of scientific methods of inqmiy, and the weight of scientific truth, may be expected to take of the rela- tion between science and religion. In the chajDter on "The Primitive Revelation," the scientific worth of the account of creation given in the book of Genesis is estimated in terms which are as unquestionably respectful as, in my judgment, they are just; and, at the end of the chaj)ter on " Primitive Tradition," M. Reville appraises the value of pentateuchal anthropology in a way which I should have thought sure of enhsting the assent of all com- l^etent judges, even if it were extended to the whole of the cosmogony and biology of Genesis : As, however, the original traditions of nations sprang up in an epoch less remote than our own from the primitive life, it is indispensable to consult them, to compare them, and to associate them with other sources of information which are AKD THE INTEBPRETERS OF NATURE. 45 available. From this point of view, the traditions recorded in Genesis possess, in addition to their own peculiar charm, a value of the highest order ; but we cannot ultimately see in them more than a venerable fragment, well deserving at- tention, of the great genesis of mankind. Mi\ Gladstone is of a different mind. He dissents from M. Eeville's views respecting the proper estima- tion of the pentateuchal traditions no less than he does from his interpretation of those Homeric myths which have been the object of his own special study. In the latter case, Mr. Gladstone tells M. Reville that he is wrong on his own authority, to which, in such a matter, all will pay due respect ; in the former, he affirms himself to be "wholly destitute of that kind of knowledge which carries authority," and his rebuke is administered in the name and by the authority of natural science. An ail' of magisterial gravity hangs about the fol- lowing passage : But the question is not here of a lofty poem, or a skilfully constructed narrative; it is whether natural science, in the patient exercise of its high calling to examine facts, finds that the works of God cry out against what we have fondly be- lieved to be his word, and tell another tale ; or whether, in this nineteenth century of Christian progress, it substantially echoes back the majestic sound, which, before it existed as a pursuit, went forth into all lands. First, looking largely at the latter portion of the narrative, which describes the creation of living organisms, and waiv- ing details, on some of which (as in verse 24) the Septuagint seems to vary from the Hebrew, there is a grand fourfold division, set forth in an orderly succession of times as follows : on the fifth day. 1. The water-population, 2. The air-population, and, on the sixth day. 46 THE INTEEtEETEES OF GENESIS 3. The land-population of animals, ■ 4. The land-population consummated in man. Now this same fourfold order is understood to have been so affirmed in our time by natural science that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact (p. 696). "Understood?" By wliom? I cannot bring my- self to imagine that Mr. Gladstone has made so solemn and authoritative a statement on a matter of this im- portance without due inquhy — without being able to found himself uj)on recognized scientific authority. But I wish he had thought fit to name the soui'ce from whence he has derived his information, as in that case I could have dealt with his authority, and I should have thereby escaped the appeai'ance of making an attack on Mr. Gladstone himself, which is in every way distasteful to me. For I can meet the statement in the last paragraph of the above citation with nothing but a direct nega- tive. If I know anything at all about the results attained by the natui'al science of our time, it is " a demonstrated conclusion and established fact " that the "foui'fold order" given by Mr. Gladstone is not that in which the evidence at our clisposal tends to show that the water, au", and land populations of the globe have made theu* appearance. Pei'haps I may be told that Mr. Gladstone does give his authority — that he cites Cuvier, Sir John Her- schel, and Dr. "Whewell in support of his case. If that has been Mi\ Gladstone's intention in mention- ing these eminent names, I may remark that, on this particular question, the only relevant authority is that of Cuvier. But, great as Cuvier was, it is to be remembered that, as Mi-. Gladstone incidentally re- marks, he cannot now be called a recent authority. AND THE INTERPRETERS OI" NATURE. 47 In fact, he has been dead more than half a century, and the paleontology of oxu- day is related to that of his very much as the geography of the sixteenth century is related to that of the fourteenth. Since 1832, when Cuvier died, not only a new world, but new worlds, of ancient life have been discovered ; and those who have most faithfully carried on the work of the chief founder of paleontology have done most to invaUdate the essentially negative grounds of his spec- ulative adherence to tradition. If Mr. Gladstone's latest information on these mat- ters is derived from the famous discourse prefixed to the Ossemens JFossiles, I can understand the position he has taken up ; if he has ever opened a respectable modern manual of paleontology or geology, I cannot. For the facts which demolish his whole argument are of the commonest notoriety. But before proceeding to consider the evidence for this assertion we must be clear about the meaning of the phraseology em- ployed. I apprehend that when Mx. Gladstone uses the term " water-population " he means those animals wliich in Genesis i, 21 (Revised Version) are spoken of as " the great sea monsters and every living creat- ui'e that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind." And I presmne that it will be agreed that whales and j)orpoises, sea fishes, and the innumerable hosts of marine invertebrated animals, are meant thereby. So " au' -population " must be the equivalent of " fowl " in verse 20, and " every winged fowl after its kind," verse 21. I sup- pose I may take it for granted that by " fowl" we have here to understand bu'ds — at any rate, primarily. Secondarily, it may be that bats, and the extinct pter- 48 THE INTEKPEETEEj OF GENESIS odactyles, which were flying reptiles, come vmder the same head. But whether all insects are "creeping things" of the land-population, or whether flying insects are to be included under the denomination of " winged fowl," is a point for the decision of Hebrew exegetes. Lastly, I supjDOse I may assume that "land-population" signifies "the cattle" and "the beast of the earth," and " every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth," in verses 25 and 26 ; pre- sumably it comprehends all kinds of terrestrial ani- mals, vertebrate and invertebrate, except such as may be comprised under the head of the " au--population." Now, what I want to make cleai* is this, that if the terms, " water-population," " au--population," and " land-population," are understood in the senses here defined, natural science has nothing to say in favor of the proposition that they succeeded one another in the order given by Mi*. Gladstone ; but that, on the contrai'y, all the evidence we possess goes to prove that they did not. Whence it will follow that, if Mr. Gladstone has interpreted Genesis rightly (on which point I am most anxious to be understood to offer no oj)inion), that interpretation is wholly irrec- oncilable with the conclusions at present accepted by the interpreters of natiu'e — with everything that can be called " a demonstrated conclusion and estab- Hshed fact " of natural science. And be it observed that I am not here dealing with a question of specu- lation, but with a question of fact. Either the geological record is sufficiently com- plete to afford us a means of determining the order in which animals have made their appearance on the globe or it is not. If it is, the determination of that order is little more than a mere matter of observa- AND THE INTEEPKETEES OF NATTJEE. 49 tion; if it is not, then natui'al science neither affirms nor refutes the "foiu'fold order," but is simply silent, The series of the fossiliferous deposits, which con- tain the remains of the animals which have lived on the earth in past ages of its history, and which can alone aiford the evidence required by natui-al science of the order of ajipeai-ance of their different si^ecies, may be grouped in the manner shown ia the left-hand column of the following table, the oldest being at the bottom : FORMATIONS. FIRST KNOWN APPEARANCE OF Quaternary. Pliocene. Miocene. Eocene. Cretaceous. Jurassic. Triassic. Upper Paleozoic. Middle Paleozoic. Lower Paleozoic. Silurian. Cambrian. Vertebrate air-population (bats). Vertebrate air-population (birds and pter- odactyles). Vertebrate land-population (amphibia, reptilia[?'\) . Vertebrate water-population (fishes). Invertebrate air and laud population (fly- ing insects and scorpions). Invertebrate water-population (much ear- lier, if eozoon is animal). In the right-hand column I have noted the group of strata in which, according to our present informa- tion, the land, air, and %cater populations appear for the first time ; and, in consequence of the ambiguity about the meaning of "fowl," I have separately indi- cated the first appeai'ance of bats, buds, flying rep- tUes, and flying insects. It will be observed that, if " fowl " means only " bird," or at most flying verte- brate, then the fii'st certain evidence of the latter, in the Jiu-assic epoch, is posterior to the first appear- ance of truly teiTestrial amphibia, and posslby of true 50 THE INTERPRETEKS OF GENESIS reptiles, in the Carboniferous epoch (Middle Paleo- zoic) by a prodigious interval of time. The water-population of vertebrated animals first appeal's in the Uj)per Silurian. Therefore, if we found ourselves on vertebrated animals, and take " fowl " to mean birds only, or at most flying verte- brates, nattu'al science says that the order of succes- sion was water, land, and air-population, and not — as Ml'. Gladstone, founding himself on Genesis, says — water, air, land-population. If a chronicler of Greece affirmed that the age of Alexander preceded that of Pericles, and immediately succeeded that of the Tro- jan war. Ml'. Gladstone would hai'dly say that this order is "understood to have been so affirmed by his- torical science that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact." Yet natural sci- ence "affirms" his "four-fold order" to exactly the same extent — neither more nor less. Suppose, however, that " fowl " is to be taken to include flying insects. In that case the first appear- ance of an air-population must be shifted back for long ages, recent discovery having shown that they occur in rocks of Silurian age. Hence there might still have been hope for the f om'f old order were it not that the fates unkindly determined that scorpions — " creeping things that creep on the earth " par excel- lence — turned up in Silui'ian strata nearly at the same time. So that if the word in the original Hebrew translated "fowl" should really after all mean "cock- roach " — and I have great faith in the elasticity of that tongue in the hands of bibhcal exegetes — the order primarily suggested by the existing evidence : 2. Land and air-population, 1. Water-population, AND THE INTEEPKETEKS OF NATUEE. 61 and Mr. Gladstone's order: 3. Land-population, 2. Air-popnlation, 1. Water-population, can by no means be made to coincide. As a matter of fact, then, the statement so confidently j^ut for- ward turns out to be devoid of foundation and ia direct contradiction of the evidence at present at our disposal.* If, stepping beyond that which may be learned from the facts of the successive appearance of the forms of animal life upon the surface of the globe, in so far as they are yet made known to us by natural science, we apply our reasoning faculties to the task of find- ing out what those observed facts mean, the present conclusions of the interpreters of nature appear to be no less dii'ectly in conflict with those of the latest in- terpreters of Genesis. * It may be objected that I have not put the case fairly, in- asmiich as the solitary insect's wing which was discovered twelve months ago in Silurian rocks, and which is at present the sole evidence of insects older than the Devonian epoch, came from strata of Middle Silurian age, and is therefore older than the scorpions which within the last two years have been found in Upper Silurian strata in Sweden, Britain, and the United States. But no one who comprehends the nature of the evidence afforded by fossil remains would venture to say that the non-discovery of scorpions in the Middle Silurian strata up to this time affords any more ground for supposing that they did not exist than the non-discovery of flying in- sects in the Upper Silurian strata up to this time throws any doubt on the certainty that they existed, wiiich is derived from the occurrence of the wing in the Middle Silurian. In fact, I have stretched a point in admitting that these fossils afford a colorable pretext for the assumption that the land and aix-population were of contemporaneous origin. 52 THE INTEEPKETEKS OF GENESIS Mi\ Gladstone appears to admit that there is some truth in the doctrine of evolution, and indeed places it under very high patronage : I contend that evolution in its highest form has not been a thing iieretofore unlvnowu to history, to philosophy, or to the- ology. I contend that it was before the mind of St. Paul when he taught that in the fulness of time God sent forth his son, and of Eusebius, when he wrote the " Preparation for the Gospel," and of Augustine when he composed the " City of God " (p. 706). Has any one ever disputed the contention thus solemnly enunciated that the doctrine of evolution was not invented the day before yesterday T Has any one ever dreamed of claiming it as a modern innovation ? Is there any one so ignorant of the history of phi- losophy as to be unaware that it is one of the forms in which speculation embodied itself long before the time either of the BishojD of Hippo or the AjDOstle to the Gentiles ? Is Mr. Gladstone, of all people in the w^orld, dis^DOsed to ignore the founders of Greek phi- losophy, to say nothing of Indian sages to whom evo- lution was a familiar notion ages before Paul of Tar- sus was born ? Bu.t it is ungrateful to cavil at even the most oblique admission of the possible value of one of those affirmations of natural science which really may be said to be "a demonstrated conclusion and established fact." I note it with pleasure, if only for the pui'pose of introducing the observation that if there is any truth whatever in the doctrine of evo- lution as applied to animals, IVIi-. Gladstone's gloss on Genesis in the following passage is hardly happy : God created — (a) The water-population; (b) The air-population. AND THE INTEEPRETEKS OF NATURE. 53 And they receive his benediction (verses 20-23). Pursuing this regular progression from the lower to the higher, from the simple to the complex, the text now gives us the work of the sixth " day," which supplies the land popu- lation, air and water having been already supplied (pp. 695, 696). The gloss to which I refer is the assumption that the " au'-population " forms a term in the order of progression from lower to higher, from simple to complex — the place of which lies between the water- population below and the land-population above — and I speak of it as a " gloss " because the pentateuchal wiiter is nowise responsible for it. But it is not true that the air-population, as a whole, is " lower " or less " complex " than the land- l^opulation. On the contrary, every beginner ia the study of animal morphology is aware that the organ- ization of a bat, of a bird, or of a pterodactyle, pre- supposes that of a terrestrial quadi-uped, and that it is intelligible only as an extreme modification of the organization of a terrestrial mammal or reptile. In the same way, winged insects (if they are to be counted among the "air-population") presuppose in- sects which were wingless, and therefore, as " creep- ing things," were part of the land-population. Thus theory is as much opposed as observation to the ad- mission that natural science indorses the succession of animal life which Mr. Gladstone finds in Genesis. On the contrary, a good many representatives of nat- ui'al science would be prepared to say, on theoretical grounds alone, that it is incredible that the "air- population " should have appeai'ed before the " land- population," and that if this assertion is to be found 54 THE INTERPEETERS OF GENESIS in Genesis, it merely demonstrates the scientific worthlessness of the story of which it forms a part. Indeed, we may go further. It is not even admis- sible to say that the water-population, as a whole, ap- peared before the air and the land-populations. Ac- cording to the authorized version, Genesis especially mentions among the the animals created on the fifth day " great whales," in place of which the revised version reads " great sea monsters." Far be it from me to give an opinion which rendeiing is right, or whether either is right. All I desire to remark is, that if whales andpoi-poises,dugongs and.manatees, are to be regarded as members of the water-population (and if they are not, what animals can claim the designation?), then that much of the water-popula- tion has as certainly originated later than the land- population as bats and birds have. For I am not aware that any competent judge would hesitate to admit that the organization of these animals shows the most obvious signs of their descent from ten-est- rial quadi'upeds. A similar criticism appUes to IMi*. Gladstone's as- sumption that, as the fourth act of that " orderly suc- cession of times," enunciated in Genesis, " the land- population consummated in man." If this means simply that man is the final term in the evolutional series of which he forms a part, I do not suppose that any objection will be raised to that state- ment on the part of students of natural science. But if the pentateuchal author goes f ai'ther than this, and intends to say that which is ascribed to him by Mr. Gladstone, I think natural science will have to enter a caveat. It is not by any means certain that man — I mean the species Homo sapiens of zoological termi- AND THE INTEEPEETEES OF NATUEE. 55 nology — has "consummated" the land-population in the sense of appearing at a later period of time than any other. Let me make my meaning clear by an ex- ample. From a morphological point of view, our beautiful and useful contemporary — I might call him colleague — the horse {Equus caballus), is the last term of the evolutional series to which he belongs, just as Homo sapiens is the last term of the series of which he is a member. If I want to know whether the species Equus caballus made its appearance on the surface of the globe before or after Homo sapiens, deduction from known law does not help me. There is no reason that I know of why one should have ap- peared sooner or later than the other. If I tirni to observation, I find abundant remains of Equus cabal- lus in Quaternary strata, perhaps a little earher. The existence of Homo sapiens in the Quaternary epoch is also cert;3in. Evidence has been adduced in favor of man's existence in the Pliocene, or even in the Miocene epoch. It does not satisfy me ; but I have no reason to doubt that the fact may be so, nevei'the- less. Indeed, I think it is quite possible that further research will show that Horno sapiens existed, not only before Equus caballus, but before many other of the existing forms of animal life ; so that, if all the species of animals have been separately created, man, in this case, would by no means be the " consumma- tion " of the land-population. I am raising no objection to the position of the fourth term in Mi-. Gladstone's " order " — on the facts, as they stand, it is quite open to anyone to hold, as a jjious opinion, that the fabrication of man was the acme and final achievement of the process of peopling the globe. But it must not be said that 56 THE INTERPEETERS OF GENESIS natural science counts tliis opinion among her "demonstrated conclusions and estabKshed facts," for there would be just as much, or as httle, reason for ranging the contraiy opinion among them. It may seem suj)erfluous to add to the evidence that Ml'. Gladstone has been utterly misled in sup- posing that his interpretation of Genesis receives any support from natvu-al science. But it is as well to do one's work thoroughly while one is about it; and I bhink it may be advisable to point out that the facts, as they are at present kaown, not only refute Mr. Gladstone's interpretation of Genesis in detail, but are opposed to the central idea on which it appears to be based. There must be some position from which the rec- oncilers of science and Genesis will not retreat, some central idea the maintenance of which is vital and its refutation fatal. Even if they now allow that the words " the evening and the morning " have not the least reference to a natiu'al day, but mean a period of any number of millions of years that may be neces- sary ; even if they are di'iven to admit that the word " creation," which so many millions of pious Jews and Chiistians have held, and still hold, to mean a sudden act of the deity, signifies a process of gradual evolution of one species from another, extending through immeasurable time ; even if they are willing to grant that the asserted coincidence of the order of nature with the "fourfold order" ascribed to Genesis is an obvious error instead of an established truth — they are sui'ely prepared to make a last stand upon the conception which underlies the whole, and which constitutes the essence of Mr. Gladstone's "four-fold division, set forth in an orderly succession of times." AND THE INTERPKETEES OF NATURE. 57 It is, that the animal species which compose the water-population, the aii'-poptilation, and the land- population, respectively, originated diu'ing thi-ee dis- tinct and successive periods of time, and only during those periods of time. This statement appears to me to be the interpreta- tion of Genesis which MJr. Gladstone supports, re- duced to its simplest expression. " Period of time" is substituted for " day ;" " originated " is substi- tuted for " created ;" and any order required for that adopted by Mi'. Gladstone. It is necessary to make this proviso, for if "day" may mean a few million yeai's, and " creation " may mean evolution, then it is obvious that the order (1) water-population, (2) au*-population, (3) land-population, may also meart (1) water-pojDulation, (2) land-population, (3) air-pop- ulation; and it would be unkind to bind down the reconcilers to this detail when one has parted with so many others to oblige them. But even this sublimated essence of the penta- teuchal doctrine (if it be such) remains as discordant with natural science as ever. It is not true that the species composing any one of the thi'ee populations originated during any one of three successive periods of time, and not at any other of these. Undoubtedly, it is in the highest degree probable that animal life appeared first under aquatic condi- tions ; that ten-estrial forms appeared later, and flying animals only after land animals ; but it is, at the same time, testified by all the evidence we possess that the great majority, if not the whole, of the primordial species of each division have long since died out and have been replaced by a vast succession of new forms. 58 THE INTEEPEETEES OF GENESIS Hundreds of thousands of animal species, as distinct as tliose whicli now compose our water, land, and air populations, have come into existence and died out again, throughout the eons of geological time which separate us from the lower Paleozoic epoch, when, as I have pointed out, oiu* present evidence of the exist- ence of such distinct populations connnences. If the species of animals have all been separately created, then it follows that hundreds of thousands of acts of creative energy have occui'red at intervals thi'oughout the whole time recorded by the fossiliferous rocks ; and, during the greater part of that time, the " crea- tion" of the members of the water, land, and aii' pop- ulations must have gone on contem2)oraneously. . If we represent the water, land, and air populations by a, h, and c respectively, and take vertical succession on the page to indicate order in time, then the fol- lowing schemes will roughly shadow forth the con- trast I have been endeavoring to explain : Genesis (as interpreted Nature (as interpi'eted by Mr. Gladstone). by natural science). b b b c'-a^b^ c c c c a^ b^ a a a b a^ b a a a So far as I can see, there is only one resoiu'ce left for those modern representatives of Sisyphus, the rec- oncilers of Genesis with science; and it has the ad- vantage of being founded on a jDerfectly legitimate appeal to our ignorance. It has been seen that, on any interpretation of the terms " water- j)oj)ulation " and "land-population," it must be admitted that invertebrate representatives of these populations ex- isted during the lower Paleozoic epoch. No evolu- tionist can hesitate to admit that other land animals AND THE INTERPRETERS OF NATURE. 59 (and possibly vertebrates among them) may have ex- isted dui'ing that time, of the history of which we know so httle ; and, fui'ther, that scorpions are ani- mals of such high organization that it is highly prob- able theii" existence indicates that of a long antece- dent land-po]Dulation of a similar character. Then, since the land-population is said not to have been created until the sixth day, it necessarily fol- lows that the evidence of the order in which animals appeared must be sought in the record of those older Paleozoic times in which only traces of the water- population have as yet been discovered. Therefore, if anyone chooses to say that the creative work took place in the Cambrian or Lauren- tian epoch in exactly that manner which Mr. Glad- stone does, and natui'al science does not, affirm, nat- ural science is not in a position to disprove the accm'acy of the statement. Only one cannot have one's cake and eat it too, and such safety from the contradiction of science means the forfeitui-e of her support. Whether the account of the work of the first, sec- ond, and third days in Genesis would be confirmed by the demonstration of the truth of the nebulai* hy- pothesis ; whether it is corroborated by what is known of the natui-e and probable relative antiquity of the heavenly bodies ; whether, if the Hebrew word translated " firmament " in the Authorized Ver- sion really means " expanse," the assertion that the waters are partly under this " expanse " and jDartly above it would be any more confirmed by the ascer- tained facts of physical geography and meteorology than it was before ; whether the creation of the whole vegetable world, and especially of "grass, herb 60 THE INTEEPEETERS OF GENESIS yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fruit," before any kind of animal is " affirmed " by the appar- ently plain teaching of botanical paleontology, that grasses and fruit-trees originated long subsequently to animals — all these are questions which, if I mis- take not, would be answered decisively in the negative by those who are specially conversant with the sci- ences involved. And it must be recollected that the issue raised by Mr. Gladstone is not whether, by some effort of ingenuity, the pentateuchal story can be shown to be not disprovable by scientific knowl- edge, but whether it is supported thereby. There is nothing, then, in the criticisms of Dr. R^ville, but wliat rather tends to confirm than to impair the old-fash- ioned belief that there is a revelation in the book of Genesis. The form into which Mr. Gladstone has thought fit to throw this opinion leaves me in doubt as to its substance. I do not understand how a hostile criti- cism can, under any circumstances, tend to confirm that which it attacks. If, however, Mr. Gladstone merely means to exj)ress his personal impression, " as one wholly destitute of that kind of knowledge which carries authority," that he has destroyed the value of these criticisms, I have neither the wish nor the right to disturb his faith. On the other hand, I may be permitted to state my own conviction that, so far as natural science is involved, M. Eeville's observations retain the exact value they possessed before ]\Ir. Gladstone attacked them. Trusting that I have now said enough to secure the author of a wise and moderate disquisition upon a topic which seems fated to stir unwisdom and fanat- icism to then depths, a fuller measure of justice than AND THE INTERPRETERS OF NATURE. 61 has hitherto been accorded to him, I retire from my self-appointed championship, with the hope that I shall not hereafter be called upon by M. Eeville to apologize for damage done to his strong case by im- perfect or impulsive advocacy. But perhaps I may be permitted to add a word or two, on my own account, in reference to the great question of the relations between science and religion, since it is one about which I have thought a good deal ever since I have been able to think at all, and about which I have ven- tured to express my views publicly more than once in the course of the last thirty years. The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be jDurely factitious, fabricated on the one hand by short-sighted religious people, who confound a cer- tain branch of science, theology, with religion ; and on the other by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its prcsdnce only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual compre- hension, and that outside the boundaries of that prov- ince they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance. It seems to me that the moral and intellectual life of the civilized nations of Eui'ope is the product of that interaction, sometimes in the way of antago- nism, sometimes in that of profitable interchange of the Semitic and Aiyan races, which commenced with the dawn of history, when Greek and Phoenician came in contact, and has been continued by Cai'tha- ginian and Roman, by Jew and gentile, down to the present day. Our art (except, perhaps, music) and our science are the contributions of the Ai'yan ; but the essence of our religion is derived from the 62 THE INTERPRETERS OF GENESIS Semite. In the eighth century e.g., in the heart of a world of idolatrous polytheists, the Hebrew proph- ets put forth a conception of rehgion which appeal's to me to be as wonderful an inspu-ation of genius as the art of Pheidias or the science of Aristotle. " And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God r If any so-called religion takes away from this great saying of IVIicah, I think it wantonly mutilates, while if it adds thereto, I think it obscures, the perfect ideal of religion. But what extent of knowledge, what acuteness of scientific criticism, can touch this, if anyone possessed of knowledge or acuteness could be absurd enough to make the attempt 1 Will the progress of research prove that justice is worthless and mercy hateful 1 Will it ever soften the bitter contrast between our actions and our aspii'ations, or show us the bounds of the universe, and bid us say, " Go to, now we com- prehend the infinite T' A faculty of wrath lay in those ancient Israehtes, and sui'ely the prophet's staff would have made swift acquaintance with the head of the scholar who had asked Micah whether, peradventure, the Lord further required of him an imphcit behef in the acciu-acy of the cosmogony of Genesis ! What we are usually pleased to call religion now- adays is, for the most part, Hellenized Judaism; and not unfrequently the Hellenic element carries with it a mighty remnant of old-world paganism and a great infusion of the worst and weakest products of Greek scientific speculation ; while fi'agments of Persian and AND THE INTEEPRETEKS OF NATURE. 63 Babylonian, or rather Accadian, mythology burden the Judaic contribution to the common stock. The antagonism of science is not to religion, but to the heathen sui'vivals and the bad philosophy un- der which religion herself is often well-nigh crushed. And, for my part, I trust that this antagonism will never cease, but that to the end of time time science will continue to fulfil one of her most beneficent functions, that of relieving men from the burden of false science which is imposed upon them in the name of rehgion. This is the work that M. Reville and men such as he are doing for us; this is the work which his op- ponents are endeavoring, consciously or uncon- sciously, to hinder. T. H. Huxley. P0ST8CBIPT TO SOLAB MYTHS. A KEPLT TO W. E. GLADSTONE. BY F. _ MAX MtJLLEK. I find it difficult, and should consider it almost dis- courteous, to order the last revise of my article on " Solar Myths " for press without saying a few words in rei^ly to Mr. Gladstone's essay on the " Dawn of Creation and of Worship," published in the November number of this Hevieic. Mr. Gladstone's arguments, it is true, are chiefly dii'ected against M. Reville's " Prolegomenes de I'Histoire des Rehgions," a work which I felt it an honor to introduce to the favorable notice of the English pubhc by adding -a small preface to the English translation. Nor should I have thought it incumbent upon myself, or respectful to so eminent a theologian as M. Reville has long proved himself to be both as an active clergyman and as the first professor of the science of religion at the College de France, to step in between him and Mr. Glad- stone, while these two eloquent pleaders are discuss- ing theii" own pecuhar views on the origin of the Pentateuch or on the exact meaning of certain con- tested passages in the book of Genesis. But when Mr. Gladstone proceeds to attack, with what seems to me in some passages parliamentary rather than academic eloquence, the fundamental prin- ciples of comparative mythology, and more particu- larly that theory which he calls Solarism, it might show discretion indeed, but hai'dly valor, were I to POSTSCEIPT TO SOLAR MYTHS. 65 hide myself behind M. Beville, who has so boldly come f orwaxd as the champion of a theory the jjater- nity of which I could not, and, if I could, I would not deny. Solarisin, however, is used by Mr. Gladstone in a sense very different from that in which I should use it. He apphes it to a theory according to which ctU mythology has a solar origin, ali gods are solar gods, all heroes solar heroes, all myths and legends but half-forgotten stories about the sun as the giver of light and life, or as the lord of days and months and seasons and years. Mine has been a much humbler task, and I have never attempted more than to prove that certain portions of ancient mythology have a dh-ectly solar origin. Nor have I ever done so except in cases where, either by etymological analysis or by a comparison of Greek and Roman with Vedic myths, I imagined I could make it clear that certain stories which seemed ii'rational or UTeverent, when told of gods such as Jupiter or Apollo or Athene, became perfectly intelligible if accej)ted as they were told originally of the sky or the sun or the dawn. I have protested again and again against the theory that there is but one key to unlock all the secret drawers of ancient mythology. As little as the sun is the whole of natui-e is ancient mythology wholly solar. But as certainly as the sun, with all that is dependent on it, forms the most prominent, half natui'al, and half supernatiu'al object in the thoughts of the ancient and even of the modern world, are solar myths a most- important ingredient in the language, the traditions, and the rehgion of the whole human race. If in working out this theory my interpretation of passages in Homer or in the Veda has been vsrong, if my ap- 66 POSTSCEIPT TO SOLAR MYTHS. plication of phonetic rules has ever been inaccurate, let it be proved. Nothing delights me more than when I am proved to have been wi'ong, for in that case I always carry away something that is worth having. If, for instance, Mr. Gladstone or any other Greek scholar could prove that in Greek short £ without the spiritus asjjer can ever become the long ?/ with the spiritus asper, then I should confess that my protest against deriving the name of Hera from era., the earth, was futile, and I should as readily ac- cept the original chthonic character of the wife of Zeus as I should accept Mr. Gladstone's identification of breakfast and dinner, provided always that he can produce one single case from the whole of the French language in which dt or dis (in diner or disner) rep- resents an original dejeu (in dejeuner. That there ai'e chthonic elements in the chai'acter of Hera I readily allow ; but that does not prove that one of her names might not have been the heavenly or the brill- iant goddess, just as in Latin she is called Juno, the female counterpart of Ju-piter, her heavenly consort. Earth as well as heaven, nay, every part of nature, is hable to mythological metamorphosis ; and I have tried to show how many old sayings concerning heaven, earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, day and night, months, seasons and years, rivers and mountains, men and animals, the spiiits of the departed, or even mere abstractions, such as honor or vii'tue, have been rolled up in time into that curious conglomerate of ancient thought which, for want of a better name, we call mythology. This view I am prepared to defend with the same firm conviction with which I started it nearly forty years ago. Nor do I see that Mr. Gladstone's argu- POSTSCRIPT TO SOLAE MYTHS. 67 ments have shattered or even touched my old position. He maintains that in the Olympian mythology, such as we find it in the Homeric poems, the Greek gods ai'e no longer mere representatives of physical phenomena, but genuine " theanthromorphic " con- cejDtions. This is the very view which I have defended, though I confess I have sometimes won- dered whether the ancient popular poets had really no suspicion whatever of the original character of their gods, while some of the earliest Greek phi- losophers were so fully conscious of it. But however that may be, the Homeric mythology, as well as the Homeric language, has surely its antecedents. Many of its anomalous legends and its irregular verbs did not even spring into existence on Greek soil, for they can be traced in India and even in Iceland, though certainly not, as Mi'. Gladstone implies (page 11), in Egypt, still less in Palestine. It is with these antecedents, with the prehistoric of Ai'yan mythology, that comparative mythologists are chiefly concerned, and siu'ely Mr. Gladstone would be the last scholar to be satisfied with merely superficial comparisons. There is a true radicalism in scholarship, too, which despises all measures which do not go to the roots of things. Mr. Gladstone warns us not to trust too much to etymology ; he might as well warn the ex- plorer of Oxford clay not to believe too much in that sohd granite which each honest digger will find, if only he digs deep enough. Etymology represents the prehistoric period in human language and human thought, and the light which it has shed on later periods is certainly not less important than the lessons which geology and paleontology have added to the study of mankind. As in the beautiful Campo 68 POSTSCRIPT TO SOLAR MYTHS. Santo of Bologna we find, beneath the monuments erected by the loving care of living mourners, tomb- stones — discovered, one might faMy say, by the divining rod and disinterred by the indefatigable spade of Zannoni — which reveal to us the daily life and the daily struggles, the hopes and fears, of races, whom we call prehistoric, but who were once as truly historic as their conquerors and successors, whether Umbrian, Etruscan, or Roman — the vast Ai'yan cem- etery of language and myth, too, as explored by many patient diggers, has sxuTendered tombstones which tell us of the thoughts, of the faith and hope, of those whose descendants we are, however difificult we find it to understand their language and to think their thoughts. Does Mr. Gladstone believe that words are ever without an etymology, or that ■ myths are ever without reason ? And, if not, does he think it is of no importance to know why Zeus was first, called Zeus, or why Achilleus, like other Ai'yan heroes, was believed to be vulnerable in one point only? Mr. Gladstone seems afraid that prehistoric ideas might be transferred to historic times, and, speaking of the future, he writes : " Strange, indeed, will be the effect of such a system, if applied to our own case at some date in the far-off future ; for it will be shown hiter alia, that there were no priests, but only pres- byters, in any portion of Western Chi'istendom ; that our dukes were simply generals leading us in war ; that we broke our fast at eight in the evening (for diner is but a compression of dejeuner) ; and even, possibly, that one of the noblest and most famous English houses pursued habitually the humble occu- pation of a pig-driver." I do not anticipate any such anachronisms ; as Kttle POSTSCRIPT TO SOLAR MYTHS. 69 do I expect that futui-e histoiians Avill mistake oiu* lords for bread-givers {hldf-ord) or otu: paiiiamentary whips for pig-di'ivers. And yet every one of the words which Mr. Gladstone quotes, if but rightly in- terpreted, has some important lessons to teach those who will come after us. It is well that they should know that originally priests were not diiferent from laymen, and that they were well satisfied with the simple title of presbyters or elders, being elders not only in age, but in wis- dom, self-denial, and in tolerance. It is well that they should know, if it is so, that the ancestor of one of the noblest and most famous EngHsh houses was a pig-diiver, if thus they may learn that there was a time when a noble career was oj)en in England even to the humblest ranks. It is well that they should know that dukes were not always mere possessors of large wealth which they had not earned themselves, but that originally they were in very deed leaders in battle, leaders in thought, and ready to coiu't the place of danger, whether against battahons or against the tumult of vulgar error and prejudice. ]VIi\ Gladstone need not be afraid that future historians will ever mistake him for a merely titular duke, though they will speak of him, as we do, as oiu* leader, as a true Duca e Maes- tro, if not always against the tiunult of vulgar error and prejudice, yet, without fail, whenever any vsrongs had to be righted, effete privileges to be abolished, and lessons of wisdom and moderation, however dis- tasteful, to be taught to the strong and the weak, to the rich and the poor. F. Max Muller. Florence, November 7, 1885. PROEM TO GENESIS: A PLEA FOR A FAIR TRIAL. A EEPLY TO PROFESSORS HTTXLEY AND MULLER. BY W. E. GLADSTONE. Vous avez une inanihre si amiable cVannoncer les plus mauvaises nouvelles, qic'elles perdent par Id de leurs des agrenient* So wrote, de haut en has,^ the Ducliess of York to Beau Brummell, sixty or sev- enty yeai's back (Life, by Jesse, i, 260) ; and so write I, de has en haut,X to the two very eminent champions who have in the Nineteenth Century of December entered appearances on behalf of Dr. Eeville's Prol'e- gonihnes, with a decisiveness of tone, at all events, which admits of no mistake — Professor Huxley and Professor Max Mtiller. My first duty is to acknowl- edge in both cases the abundant courtesy and indulgence with which I am j^ersonally treated. And my first thought is that, where even disagreement is made in a manner pleasant, it will be a duty to search and see if there be any points of agreement or ap- proximation, which will be more pleasant still. This indulgence and coui'tesy deserves in the case of Pro- fessor Huxley a special warmth of acknowledgment, because, while thus more than liberal to the individ- ual, he has for the class of Reconcilers, in which he places me, an unconcealed and unmeasured scorn. These are they who impose upon man a burden of * You have so charming a manner of telling the worst news that it loses its disagreeableness. t The high to the low. J The low to the high. PEOEM TO GENESIS. 71 false science in the name of religion, who dictate as a divine command "an implicit belief in the cos- mogony of Genesis ; " and who " stir unwisdom and fanaticism to their depths." Judgments so severe should surely be supported by citation or other evi- dence, for which I look in vain. To some they might suggest the idea that passion may sometimes un- awares intrude even within the precincts of the temple of science. But I admit that a greater master of his art may well be provoked, when he finds his materials tumbled about by incapable hands, and may mistake for u-reverence what is only want of skill. While acknowledging the great courtesy with which Professor Huxley treats his antagonists indi- vidually, and while simply listening to his denuncia- tions of the Reconcilers as one listens to distant thunders, with a sort of sense that after all they will do no great harm, I must presume to animadvert with considerable freedom upon his method ; upon the sweeping character of his advocacy ; upon his perceptible exaggeration of jDoints in controversy ; upon his mode of dealing with authorities ; and upon the curious fallacy of substitution by which he enables himself to found the widest proscriptions of the claim of the book of Genesis to contain a divine rec- ord upon a reasoned impeachment of its scientific accui'acy in, as I shall show, a single particular. As to the first of these topics, nothing can be more equitable than Professor Huxley's intention to inter- vene as a " science proctor " in that part of the debate raised by M. Reville, " to which he proposes to restrict his observations." This is the part on which he proposes in his first page to report as a student — and every reader will inwardly add, as one 72 PROEM TO GENESIS. of the most eminent among all students — of natural science. Now this is not the cosmogonical part of the account in Genesis. On Genesis i, 1-19, contain- ing the cosmogony, he does not report as an expert, but refers us to " those who are specially conversant with the sciences involved ; " adding his opinion about then- ojDinions. Yet in his second page, without making any reference to thi^ broad distinction, he at once forgets the just limitation of his first, and oui" "proctor for science " pronounces on M. Reville's estimate, not of the fourfold succession in the strati- fication of the earth, but of "the account of the creation given in the book of Genesis," that its terms are as "respectful as in his judgment they are just." Thus the proctorship for science, justly assumed for matters within his jorovince as a student, is rather hastily extended to matters which he himself declares to be beyond it. In truth it will appear that as there are many roads to heaven with one end- ing, so, provided only a man arrives at the conclusion that the great Proem of Genesis lends no support to the argument for revelation, it does not much matter how he gets there. For in this "just" account of the creation I have shown that M. Reville supports his accusation of scientific error by three particulars: that in the first he contradicts the judgment of schol- ars on the sense of the original ; in the second he both misquotes (by inadvertence) the terms of the text, and overlooks the distinction made so jDalpable (if not earlier) half a centui'y ago, by the work of Dr. Buckland (Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i, pp. 19-28), be- tween hara and asa; while the third proceeds on the assumption that there could be no light to produce veg- etation, except light derived from a visible sun. These PROEM TO GENESIS. 73 three charges constitute the head and front of M. Keville's indictment against the cosmogony ; and the fatal flaws in them, without any notice or defense, are now all taken under the mantle of our science proctor, who returns to the charge at the close of his article, and again dismisses with comprehensive honor as " wise and moderate " what he had ushered in as reverent and just. So much for the sweepingj un dis- criminating chai'acter of an advocacy which, in a scientific writex', we might perhaps have expected to be carefully limited and defined. I take next the exaggeration which appears to me to mark unhappily Professor Huxley's method. Un- der this head I include all needless multiplication of points of controversy, whether in the form of over- stating differences, or rmderstating agreements, with an adversary. As I have lived for more than half a century in an atmosphere of contention, my stock of controversial fire has perhaps become abnormally low ; while Pro- fessor Huxley, who has been inhabiting the Elysian regions of science, the edita docirind sapientum templa serena (Lucr. ii, 8), may be enjoying all the freshness of an tmjaded appetite. Certainly one of the lessons life has taught me is that where there is known to be a common object, the pursuit of truth, there should also be a studious desu-e to interpret the adversary in the best sense his words will fauiy bear ; to avoid whatever widens the breach ; and to make the most of whatever tends to narrow it. These I hold to be part of the laws of knightly tournament. I do not, therefore, fully understand why Professor Huxley makes it a matter of objection to me that, in rebuking a writer who had treated evolution whole- 74 PEOEM TO GENESIS. sale as a novelty in the world, I cited a few old instances of moral and historical evolution only, and did not extend my front by examining English sages and the founders of Greek philosophy. Nor why, when I have spoken of physical evolution as of a thing to me most acceptable, but not yet in its rigor (to my knowledge) proved, we have only the rather niggardly acknowledgment that I have made " the most oblique admissions of a possible value." Thus it is when agreement is threatened, but far otherwise when differences are to be blazoned. "When I have spoken of the succession of orders in the most general terms only, this is declared a sharply divided succession in which the last species of one cannot overlaj) the fii'st species of another. When I have pleaded on simple grounds of reasoning for the supposition of a sub- stantial correspondence between Genesis i and science, have waived all questions of a verbal inspiration, all question whether the whole of the statements can now be made good, I am treated as one of those who impose " in the name of religion " as a divine requisi- tion " an implicit belief in the accui-acy of the cos- mogony of Genesis," and who deserve to have their heads broken in consequence. I have vu-ged notliing " in the name of rehgion." I have sought to adduce probable evidence that a guidance more than human lies within the great Proem of the book of Genesis, just as I might adduce probable evidence to show that Francis did or did not write Junius, that William the Third was or was not responsible for the massacre of Glencoe ; I have ex- pressly excepted detail, and have stated that in my inquiry " the authority of scripture cannot be alleged in proof of a primitive revelation." I object to all PEOEM TO GENESIS. 75 these exaggerations of charge, as savoring of the spirit of the Inquisition, and as restraints on Hterary freedom. My next observation as to the professor's method refers to his treatment of authorities. In one passage (p. 46) Mi\ Huxley expresses his re- gret that I have not named my authority for the state- ment made concerning the fourfold succession, in order that he might have transferred his attentions from myself to a new delinquent. Now, published works ai'e (as I may show) a fau' subject for reference. But as to pointing out any person who might have favored me with his views in private coiTespondence, I own that I should have some scruple in handing him over to be pilloried as a Reconciler, and to be pelted with charges of unwisdom and fanaticism, which I myself, from long use, am perfectly content to beai\ I did refer to three great and famous names: those of Cuvier, Sir John Herschel, and Whewell. Mr. Huxley speaks of me as having qiioted them in support of my case on the fourfold succession ; and at the same time notices that I admitted Cuvier not to be a recent authority, which in geology proper is, I believe, nearly equivalent to saying he is, for par- ticulars, no authority at all. This recital is siugu- larly inaccurate. I cited them, not with reference to the fourfold succession, but generally for " the gen- eral accordance of the Mosaic cosmogony with the results of modern inquiry," and pai'ticularly in con- nection with the nebular hypothesis. It is the cos- mogony (Gen. i, 1-19), not the fourfold succession, which was the sole object of Reville's attack, and the main object of my defense, and which is the largest portion of the whole subject. Will Mr. Huxley vent- 76 PKOEM TO GENESIS. ure to say that Cuvier is an unavailable authority, or that Herscliel and Whewell are other than great and venerable names, with reference to the cosmogony f Yet he has quietly set them aside without notice ; and they with many more are inclusively bespattered with the charges which he has launched against the pestilent tribe of Reconcilers. My fourth and last observation on the " method" of Professor Huxley is that, after discussing a part, and that not the most considerable part, of the Proem of Genesis, he has broadly pronounced upon the whole. This is a mode of reasoning which logic re- jects, and which I presume to savor more of license than of science. The fourfold succession is con- demned with ai'gument; the cosmogony is thi'own into the baigain. True, IVIi-. Huxley refers in a single sentence to thi'ee detached points of it partially touched in my observations (p. 50). But all my ai*- gument, the chief argument of my paper, leads up to the nebulai" or rotary hypothesis. This hypothesis, with the authorities cited — of whom one is the author of "Vestiges of Creation " — is inclusively condemned, and without a word vouchsafed to it. I shall jDresently express my gratitude for the scien- tific part of Mr. Huxley's paper. But there are two sides to the question. The whole matter at issue is : 1. A comparison between the probable meaning of the Proem to Genesis and the results of cosmological and geological science ; 2. The question whether this comparison favors or does not favor the belief that an element of divine knowledge — knowledge which was not accessible to the simple action of the human faculties — is conveyed to us in this Proem. It is not enough to be accurate in one term of a comparison, PEOEM TO GENESIS. 77 unless we are accurate iu both. A master of English may speak the vilest and most blundering French. I do not think Mr. Huxley has ever endeavored to understand what is the idea, what is the intention, which his opponent ascribes to the Mosaic vmter, or what is the conception which his opponent forms of the weighty word Revelation. He holds the wiiter responsible for scientific precision ; I look for nothing of the kind, but assign to him a statement general, which admits exceptions ; popular, which aims mainly at producing moral impressions ; summary, which can not but be open to more or less of criticism in detail. He thinks it is a lectvu'e. I think it is a sermon. He describes living creatures by structure. The Mosaic wi'iter describes them by habitat. Both I suppose are right. I suppose that description by habitat would be unavailing for the purposes of science. I feel stu'e that description by structure, stich as the geologists supply, would have been unavailing for the purpose of summary teaching with religious aim. Of Revelation I will speak by and by. In order to institute with profit the compaiison now in view, the very first thing necessaiy is to de- termine, so far as the subject-matter allows, what it was that the Pentateuchal or Mosaic writer designed to convey to the minds of those for whom he wi'ote. The case is, in more ways than one, I conceive, the dii'ect reverse of that which the professor has alleged. It is not bringing Science to be tried at the bar of Religion." It is bringing Rehgion, so far as it is rep- resented by this part of the holy scriptures, to be tried at the bar of Science. The indictment against the Pentateuchal writer is, that he has written what is scientifically untrue. "SVe have to find then in the 78 tKOEM TO GEKESIS. fii'st place what it is that he has written, according to the text, not an inerrable text, as it now stands be- fore us. First, I assume there is no dispute that in Genesis i, 20-27, he has represented a fourfold sequence or succession of living- organisms. Aware of my own inability to define in any tolerable manner the classes of these organisms, I resorted to the general phrases water - population, aii* - population, land - population. The immediate purpose of these phrases was not to correspond with the classifications of Science, but to bring together in brief and convenient form the lai'ger and more varied modes of expression used in verses 20, 21, 24, 25, of the chapter. I think, however, I have been to blame for having brought into a contact with science, which was not sufficiently defined, terms that have no scientific meaning: water -population, au'-po^Dulation, and (two- fold) land-population. I shall now discard them and shall substitute others, which have the double advan- tage of being used by geologists, and perhaps of ex- j)ressing better than my phrases what was in the mind of the Mosaic writer. These are the words : 1, fishes ; 2, bu'ds ; 3, mammals ;* 4, man. By all, I think, it will be felt that the first object is to know what the Pentateuchal writer means. The relation of his meaning to science is essential, but, in orderly argumentation, subsequent. The matter now before us is a matter of reasonable and probable interpreta- tion. What is the projoer key to this hermeneutic work ? In my opinion it is to be found in a just esti- *I wish to be understood as speaking liere of tlie higlier or ordinary mammals, which alone I assume to have been prob- ablv known to the Mosaic writer. PEOEM TO GENESIS. 79 mate of the purjDOse with which the author wrote, and with which the book of Genesis was, in this part of it, either composed or compiled. If this be the true point of departm-e, it opens up a question of extreme interest, at which I have but faintly glanced in my paper, and which is nowhere touched in the reply to me. What proper place has such a composition as the first chapter of Genesis in such a work as the scriptures of the Old Testament ? They ai'e indisputably written with a religious aim ; and their sub-matter is rehgious. We may describe this aim in vaiious ways. For the present pru'pose, suffice it to say they are conversant with belief in God, with inculcation of duties founded on that behef, with history and prophecy obviously having it for theu* central point. But this chapter, at the least down to verse 25, and perhaps throughout, stands on a different ground. In concise and raj)id outline, it traverses a vast region of physics. It is easy to understand St. Paul when he speaks of the world as bearing witness to God (Acts xiv, 17 ; Ro- mans i, 20). What he said was capable of being ver- ified or tested by the common experimental knowl- edge of all who heard him. Of it, of our savior's mention of the lilies — and may it not be said gener- ally of the references in scripture to natirral knowl- edge ? — they ai'e at once accoimted for by the posi- tions in which they stand. But this first chapter of Genesis professes to set out in its own way a large and comprehensive scheme of physical facts: the transition from chaos to kosmos, from the inani- mate to Hfe, from life in its lower orders to man. Being knowledge of an order anterior to the creation f Adamic man, it was beyond verification, as being 80 tKOEM TO GENESIS. beyond experience. As a physical exposition in min- iatiu'e, it stands alone in the sacred record. And, as this singular composition is solitary in the Bible, so it seems to be hardly less sohtary in the sacred books of the world. " The only imj)ortant resemblance of any ancient cosmogony with the scriptural account, is to be found in the Persian or Zoroastrian ;" this Bishop Browne (Note on Gen. i, 5) proceeds to ac- count for on the following among other grounds: that Zoroaster was probably brought into contact with the Hebrews, and even perhaps with the prophet Daniel ; a suj^position which suj)plies the groundwork of a recent and remarkable romance, not proceeding from a Chi'istian school (" Zoroaster," by F. M. Craw- ford. Macmillan, 1885). Again, the Proem does not carry any Egyptian marks. In the twenty-seven thousand lines of Homer, archaic as they are and ever turning to the jDast, there is, I think, only one (II. vii, 99) which belongs to physiology. The beautiftd sketch of a cosmogony by Ovid (Ovid, Metam. i, 1-38) seems in considerable degree to follow the Mo- saic outline ; but it was comj)osed at a time when the treasure of the Hebrew records had been for two centuries imparted, through the Septuagint, to the Aryan nations. Professor Huxley, if I understand him rightly, con- siders the Mosaic writer, not perhaps as having intended to embrace the whole truth of science in the province of geology, but at least as hable to be con- victed of scientific worthlessness if his language will not stand the test of this construction. Thus the " water -poj)ulation " is to include " the innumerable hosts of marine invertebrated animals." It seems to me that these discoveries, taken as a whole and also PROEM TO GENESIS. 81 taken in all their parts and particulars, do not afford a proper, I mean a rational, standard for the inter- pretation of the Mosaic writer ; that the recent dis- covery of the Silurian scorpion, a highly organized animal, is of little moment either way to the question now before us ;* that it is not an account of the ex- tinct species which we should consider the Mosaic writer as intending to convey; that while his words are capable of covering them, as the oikoumenh of the New Testament cover the red and yellow man, the rules of rational construction recommend and re- quire our assigning to them a more limited meaning, which I will presently describe. Another material point in Professor Huxley's inter- pretation appears to me to lie altogether beyond the natural foi'ce of the words, and to be of an arbitrai'y character. He includes in it the proposition that the production of the respective orders was affected dui-ing each of " three distinct and successive periods of time; and only during those periods of time;" or again, in one of these, " and not at any other of these;" as, in a series of games at chess, one is done before another begins; or as in a " march-past," one regiment goes before another comes. No doubt there may be a degree of literalism which will even suffice to show that, as " as every winged fowl" was produced on the fourth day of the Hexaemeron, therefore the bhth of new fowls continually is a contradiction to the text of Genesis. But does not the equity of common sense requu-e us to understand simply that the order ♦Because my argument in no way requires universal ac- cordance, what bearing the scorpion may have on any current scientific hypothesis, it is not for me to say. 82 PROEM TO GENESIS. of " winged fowl," whatever that may mean, took its place in creation at a certain time, and that from that time its various component classes were in covu'se of production? Is it not the fact that in synoptical statements of successive events, distributed in time, for the sake of producing easy and clear impressions, general truth is aimed at, and jDeriods are allowed to overlap *? If, with such a view, we arrange the schools of Greek philosophy in numerical order, according to the dates of their inception, we do not mean that one expu'ed before another was founded. If the archaeol- ogist describes to us as successive in time the ages of stone, bronze, and ii'on,* he certainly does not mean that no kinds of stone implement v/ere invented after bronze began, or no kinds of bronze after u'on began. When Thucydides said that the ancient limited mon- archies were succeeded by tyrannies, he did not mean that all the monarchs died at once, and a set of ty- rants, like Deucalion's men, rose up and took their places. Woe be, I should say, to anyone who tries summai'ily to present in series the phases of ancient facts, if they are to be judged under the rule of Pro- fessor Huxley. Proceeding, on what I hold to be open ground, to state my own idea of the true key to the meaning of the Mosaic record, I suggest that it was intended to give moral, and not scientific, instruction to those for *I use this euumcration to illustrate an argument, but I must, even in so using it, enter a caveat against its particu- lars. I do not conceive it to be either probable or historical that, as a general rule, mankind passed from the use of stone implements to the use of bronze, a composite metal, without passing through some intermediate (longer or shorter) period of copper. PKOEM TO GENESIS. 83 whom it was written. That for the Adamic race, re- cent on the earth, and young in faculties, the tradi- tions here incorporated, which were probably fai* older than the book, had a natural and a highly moral pui'posa in conveying to their minds a lively sense of the wise and loving care with which the almighty father, who demanded much at theii- hands, had be- forehand given them much, in the j)rovident adapta- tion of the world to be their dwelling-place, and of the created orders of theu' use and rule. It aj^pears to me that, given the very nature of the scriptures, this is clearly the rational point of view. If it is so, then it follows that just as the tradition described eai'th, ah', and heaven in the manner in which they superficially presented themselves to the daily expe- riences of man — not scientifically, but The common air, the sun, the skies — so he spoke of fishes, of birds, of beasts, of what man was most concerned with ; and, last in the series, of man himself, lai'gely and generally, as facts of his ex- perience ; from which great moral lessons of wonder, gratitude, and obedience were to be deduced, to aid him in the great work of his life training. If fiu'ther proof be wanting, that what the Mosaic writer had in his mind were the creatures with which Adamic man was conversant, we have it in the direct form of verse 28, which gives to man for meat the fruit of every seed-yielding tree, and every seed- yielding herb, and the dominion of every beast, fowl, and reptile living. There is here a mai'ked absence of reference to any but the then living species. This, then, is the key to the meaning of the book, and of the tradition, if, as I suppose, it was before 84 PEOEM TO GENESIS. the book, which seems to me to offer the most prob- able, and therefore the rational, guide to its interpre- tation. The qiiestion we shall have to face is whether this statement so understood, this majestic and touching lesson of the childhood of Adamic man, stands in such a relation to scientific truth, as far as it is now known, as to give warrant to the inference that the guidance under which it was composed was more than that of faculties merely human, at that stage of development, and likewise of information, which belonged to the childhood of humanity. We have, then, before us one term of the desired comparison. Let us now turn to the other. And here my first duty is to render my grateful thanks to Professor Huxley for having corrected my either erroneous or superannuated assumption as to the state of scientific oj:)inion on the second and third terms of the fourfold succession of life. As one probable doctor sufficed to make an opinion probable, so the dissent of this eminent man would of itself overthrow and pulverize my proposition that there was a scientific consensus as to a sequence like that of Genesis in the production of animal life, as between fishes, birds, mammals, and man. I shall compare the text of Genesis with geological state- ments ; but shall make no attempt, unless this be an attempt, to profit by a consensus of geologists. I suppose it to be admitted on all hands that no perfectly comprehensive and complete correspond- ence can be established between the terms of the Mosaic text and modern discovery. No one, for in- stance, could conclude from it that which appears to be generally recognized, that a great reptile-age would be revealed by the mesozoic rocks. PEOEM TO GENESIS. 85 Yet I think readers who have been swept away by the torrent of Mr. Huxley's denunciations will feel some surprise when on di'awing summarily into line the main allegations, and especially this ruling order of the Proem, they see how small a part of them is brought into question by Mr. Huxley, and to how lai'ge an extent they are favored by the tendencies, presumptions, and even conclusions of scientific in- quiry. Fii'st, as to the cosmogony, or the formation of the earth and the heavenly bodies — 1. The first operation recorded in Genesis appears to be the formation of light. It is detached, appar- ently, from the waste or formless elemental mass (verses 2-5), which is left relatively dark by its with- drawal. 2. Next we hear of the existence of vapor, and of its condensation into water on the siu-face of the earth (verses G-10). Vegetation subsequently begins : but this belongs rather to geology than to cosmogony (verses 11, 12). 3. In a new period, the heavenly bodies are de- clared to be fully formed and visible, dividing the day from night (verses 14-18). Under the guidance particulai'ly of Dr. Whewell, I have refeiTed to the nebular hyj^othesis as confirma- tory of this account. Mr. Huxley has not either denied the hypothesis, or argued agaiast it. But I turn to Phillips's " Man- ual of Geology," edited and adajjted by Mr. Seeley and Mr. Etheridge (1885). It has a section in vol. i (pp. 15-19) on " Modern Speculations Concerning the Origin of the Earth." The first agent here noticed as contributing to the 86 PROEM TO GENESIS. work of production is the " gas hydrogen in a burn- ing state," which now forms the enveloping portion of the sun's atmosphere ; whence we are told the in- ference arises that the eai-th also was once " incan- descent at its sm-face," and that its rocks may have been "products of combustion." Is not this repre- sentation of light with heat for its ally, as the first element in this speculation, remarkably accordant with the oj)ening of the Proem to Genesis "? Next it appears that " the product of this combus- tion is vapor," which with diminished heat condenses into water, and eventually accumulates " in de- pressions on the sun's surface so as to form oceans and seas." " It is at least probable that the earth has passed through a phase of this kind." " The other planets are apparently more or less like the earth in possessing atmospheres and seas." Is there not here a remarkable concurrence with the second great aKit of the cosmogony ? Plainly as I suppose it is agreeable to these sup- positions that, as vapor gradually passes into water, and the atmosphere is cleared, the full adaptation of sun and moon by visibility for their functions should come in due sequence, as it comes in Gen. i, 14-18. Pursuing its subject, the " Manual " proceeds (p. 17) : " This consideration leads up to what has been called the nebular hypothesis," which " supposes that, before the stars existed, the materials of which they consist were diffused in the heavens in a state of vapor." The text then proceeds to describe how local-centers of condensation might throw off rmgs, these rings break into planets, and the planets, under conditions of sufficient force, repeat the process, and PROEM TO GENESIS. 87 thus produce satellites like those of Satui'n, or like the moon. I therefore think that, so far as cosmogony is con- cerned, the effect of 'Mi: Huxley's j)aper is not by any means to leave it as it was, but to leave it materially fortified by the " Manual of Geology," which I understand to be a standard of authority at the present time. Tiu'ning now to the region of that science, I understand the main statements of Genesis, in suc- cessive order of time, but without any measurement of its divisions, to be as follows : 1. A period of land, anterior to all life (verses 9, 10). 2. A period of vegetable life, anterior to animal life (verses 11, 12.) 3. A period of animal life, in the order of fishes (verse 20). 4. Another stage of animal life, in the order of bii-ds. 5. Another, in the order of beasts (24, 25). 6. Last of all, man (verses 26, 27). Here is a chain of six links, attached to a previous chain of three. And I think it not a httle remai'kable that of this entire succession, the only step dii'ectly challenged is that of numbers fovu' and five, which Mr. Huxley is inclined rather to reverse. He admits distinctly the seniority of fishes. How came that seniority to be set down here ? He admits as prob- able upon present knowledge, in the person oilloino sapiejis, the juniority of man. How came this junior- ity to be set down here? He proceeds indeed to describe an opposite opinion concerning man as hold- ing exactly the same rank as the one to which he had 88 PROEM TO GENESIS. given an apparent sanction. As I do not precisely understand the beai'ing of the terms he uses, I pass them by, and I shall take the liberty of referring presently to the latest authorities, which he has him- self suggested that I should consult. But I add to the questions I have just j)ut this other inquiry: How came the Mosaic writer to place the fishes and the men in their true relative positions not only to one another, and not only to the rest of the animal succession, but in a definite and that a true relation of time to the origin of the first plant-life, and to the colossal ojjerations by which the earth was fitted for them all ? Mr. Huxley knows very well that it would be in the highest degree irrational to ascribe this correct distribution to the doctrine of chances ; nor will the stone of Sisyphus of itself constitute a suffi- cient answer to inquiiies which are founded, not upon a fanciful attempt to equate every word of the Proem with every dictum of science, but upon those princi- ples of probable reasoning by which all rational lives are and must be guided. I find the latest published authority on geology in the second or Mr. Etheridge's volume of the " Man- ual " of Professor Phillips, and by this I will now proceed to test the sixfold series which I have vent- ured upon presenting. First, however, looking back for a moment to a work, obviously of the highest authority (Paleontology, by Kichard Owen (now Sir Eichard Owen, K.C.B.) Second edition, p. 5, 1861), on the geology of its day, I find in it a table of the order of appeai'ance of animal hfe upon the earth, which, beginning with the oldest, gives us — PROEM TO GENESIS. 89 1. Invertebrates, 4. Birds, 2. Fishes, 5. Mammals, 3. Reptiles, 6. Man. I omit all reference to specifications, and speak only of the principal lines of division. In the Phillips-Etheridge " Manual," beginning as before vrith the oldest, I find the following arrange- ment, given partly by statement, and partly by diagram. 1. " The Azoic or Archsean time of Dana ; " called Pre-Cambrian by other physicists (pp. 3, 5). 2. A commencement of plant hfe indicated by Dana as anterior to invertebrate animal life ; long anterior to the vertebrate forms, which alone are mentioned in Genesis (pp. 4, 5). 3. Three periods of invertebrate life. 4. Age of fishes. 5. Age of reptiles. 6. Age of mammals, much less remote. 7. Age of man, rCiuch less remote than mammals. As to bu'ds, though they have not a distinct and separate age assigned them, the " Manual " (vol. i, ch. XXV, pp. 511-20) supplies us very cleai'ly with their place in " the succession of animal life." We ai'e here furnished with the following series, after the fishes. 1. Fossil reptiles (p. 512); 2. Ornithosauria (p. 517) ; they were " flying animals, which combined the characters of reptiles with those of bu'ds ; " 3. The first bu'ds of the secondary rocks with " feathers ia all I'espects similar to those of existing birds " (p. 518) ; 4. Mammals (p. 520). I have been permitted to see in proof another statement from an authority still more recent, Pro- fessor Prestwich, which is now passing through 90 PROEM TO GENESIS. the jDi-ess. In it (pp. 80, 81) I find the following seniority assigned to the orders which I here name : 1. Plants (cryptogamous), 4. Mammals, 2. Fishes, 5. Man. 3. Buds, It will now, I hope, be observed that, according to the probable intention of the Mosaic writer, these five orders enumerated by him correspond with the state of geological knowledge presented to us by the most recent authorities in this sense ; that the origins of these orders respectively have the same succession as is assigned in Genesis to those representatives of the orders, which alone were probably known to the ex- perience of Adamic man. My fourfold succession thus grows into a fivefold one. By placing before the first plant-life the azoic period, it becomes sixfold. And again, by placing before this the principal stages of the cosmogony, it becomes, according as they are stated, nine or ten fold ; every portion holding the place most agreeable to modern hypothesis and modern science respectively. I now notice the points in which, so far as I tmder- stand, the text of the Proem, as it stands, is either incomplete or at variance with the representations of science. 1. It does not notice the great periods of inver- tebrate life standing between (1) and (2) of my last enumeration. 2. It also passes by the great age of reptiles, with their antecessors, the Afnphibia, which come between (2) and (3). The secondary or Mesozoic j)eriod, says the "Manual" (i, 511), "has often been termed the age of reptiles." 3. It mentions plants in terms which, I understand PROEM TO GENESIS. 91 from Professor Huxley and otherwise, coiTespond with the later, not the eai'lier, forms of plant life. 4. It mentions reptUes in the same category with its mammals. Now, as regards the first two heads, these omis- sions, enormous with reference to the scientific record, are completely in hai'mony with the probable aim of the Mosaic writer, as embracing only the formation of the objects and creatures with which early man was conversant. The introduction of these orders, invisible and unknown, would have been not agreeable, but injurious, to his purpose. As respects the thu'd, it will strike the reader of the Proem that plant life (verses 11, 12) is mentioned with a particularity which is not found in the accounts of the hving orders ; nor in the second notice of the creation, which appears, indeed, pretty distinctly to refer to recent plant-life (Gen. ii, 5, 8, 9). Questions have been raised as to the translation of these pas- sages, which I am not able to solve. But I bear in mind the difficulties which attend both oral traditions and the conversation of ancient MS., and I am not in any way troubled by the discrepancy before us, if it be a discrepancy, as it is the general structui-e and effect of the Mosaic statement on which I take my stand. With regard to reptiles, while I should also hold by my last remark, the case is different. They ap- peal' to be mentioned as contemporary with mammals, whereas they are of prior origin. But the relative significance of the several orders evidently affected the method of the Mosaic writer. Agreeably to this idea, insects are not named at all. So reptiles ai'e a family fallen from greatness ; instead of stamping on 92 PROEM TO GENESIS. a great period of life its leading character, they merely skulked upon the earth. They are introduced, as will appear better from the LXX than from the A.y. or E.V., as a sort of appendage to mammals. Lying outside both the use and the dominion of man, and far less within his probable notice, they are not wholly omitted like insects, but treated appai'ently in a loose manner as not one of the main features of the pictures which the writer meant to di'aw. In the Song of the Three Childi'en, where the foui* princijial orders are recited after the series in Genesis, reptiles are dropped altogether, which suggests either that the present text is unsound, or, perhaps, more prob- ably, that they were deemed a secondary and insig- nificant part of it. But, however this case may be regarded, of course I cannot di'aw from it any sup- port to my general contention. I distinguish, then, in the broadest manner, be- tween Professor Huxley's exposition of certain facts of science, and his treatment of the book of Genesis. I accept the first, with the reference due to a great teacher from the meanest of his hearers, as a needed correction to myself, and a valuable instruction for the world. But, subject to that correction, I adhere to my proposition respecting the fovirfold succession in the Proem ; which f ui'ther I extend to a fivefold succession respecting life, and to the great stages of the cosmogony to boot. The five origins, or first appearances of plants, fishes, bii'ds, mammals, and man, are given to us in Genesis in the order of suc- cession in which they are also given by the latest geological authorities. It is, therefore, by attaching to words a sense they were never meant to bear, and by this only, that Mr. PKOEM TO GENESIS. 93 Huxley establishes the parallels (so to speak) from which he works his heavy artillery. Land-population is a phi'ase meant by me to describe the idea of the Mo- saic writer, which I conceive to be that of the animals familiarly known to early man. But, by treating this as a scientific phrase, it is made to include extinct reptiles, which I understand Mr. Huxley to treat as being land-animals ; as, by taking birds of a very high formation, it may be held that mammal forms existed before such birds were produced. These are artificial contradictions, set up by altering in its essence one of the two things which it is sought to compare. If I am asked whether I contend for the absolute accordance of the Mosaic writer, as interpreted by me, with the facts and presumptions of science, as I have endeavored to extract them from the best authorities, I answer that I have not endeavored to show either that any accordance has been demon- strated, or that more than a substantial accordance — an accordance in principal relevant particulars — is to be accepted as shown by probable evidence. In the cosmogony of the Proem, which stands on a distinct footing as lying wholly beyond the experi- ence of primitive man, I am not aware that any seri- ous flaw is alleged ; but the nebular hypothesis with which it is compared appears to be, perhaps from the necessity of the case, no more than a theory ; a the- ory, however, long discussed, much favored, and widely accepted in the scientific world. In the geological part, we are liable to those modi- fications or displacements of testimony which the future progress of the science may produce. In this view its testimony does not in strictness pass, I sup- 94 PROEM TO GENESIS. jjose, out of the category of jDrobable into that of de- monstrative evidence. Yet it can hardly be supposed that careful researches, and reasonings strictly ad- justed to method, both continued through some gen- erations, have not in a large measui'e produced what has the character of real knowledge. With that real knowledge the reader will now have seen how far I claim for the Proem of Genesis, fau'ly tried, to be in real and most striking accordanca And this brings me to the point at which I have to observe that 'Mr. Huxley, I think, has not mastered, and probably has not tried to master, the idea of his opponent as to what it is that is essentially embraced in the idea of a divine revelation to man. So far as I am aware, there is no definition, prop- erly so called, of revelation either contained in script- ure or established by the general and permanent consent of Christians. In a word polemically used, of indeterminate or variable sense, Professor Huxley has no title to impute to his opponent, without in- quu-y, anything more than it must of necessity convey. But he seems to assume that revelation is to be conceived of as if it were a lawyer's parch- ment, or a sum in arithmetic, wherein a flaw discov- ered at a particular point in ipso facto iatal to the whole. Very little refleccion would show Professor Huxley that there may be those who find evidences of the communication of divine knowledge in the Proem to Genesis as they read it in their Bibles, without approaching to any such conception. There is the uncertainty of translation ; translators are not inspked. There is the difficulty of transcription; transcribers are not inspired, and an element of error is inseparable from the work of a series of copyists. PROEM TO GENESIS. 95 How this works in the long courses of time we see in the varying texts of the Old Testament, with rival claims not easy to adjust. Thus the authors of the recent Revision (Preface to the Old Testament, p. vi) have had to choose in the Massoretic text itself be- tween different readings, and " in excej^tional cases " have given a preference to the ancient versions. Thus, upon practical grounds quite apai't from the higher questions concerning the original composition, we seem at once to find a human element in the sa- cred text. That there is a fui'ther and larger ques- tion, not shut out from the view even of the most convinced and sincere believers, Mr. Huxley may per- ceive by reading, for examjDle, Coleridge's " Confes- sions of an Inquiring Sphit." The question whether this Proem bears witness to a divine communication, to a working beyond that of merely human faculties in the composition of the scriptui'es, is essentially one for the disciples of Bishop Butler ; a question, not of demonstrative, but of j)robable, evidence. I am not prepared to abandon, but rather to defend, the fol- lowing projDosition : It is perfectly conceivable that a document penned by the human hand, and trans- mitted by human means, may contain matter ques- tionable, uncertain, or even mistaken, and yet may by its contents as a whole present such ttIotsi?, such moral proofs of truth divinely imparted, as ought u'refragably />ro tanto to command assent and govern practice. A man may possibly admit something not reconciled, and yet may be what Mr. Huxley de- nounces as a Reconciler. I do not suppose it would be feasible, even for Professor Huxley, taking the nebular hypothesis and geological discovery for his guides, to give, in the 96 PEOEM TO GENESIS. compass of the first twenty -seven verses of Genesis, an account of the cosmogony, and of the succession of Hfe in the stratification of the earth, which would combine scientific precision of statement with the majesty, the simpHcity, the inteUigibility, and the imiDressiveness of the record before us. Let us mod- estly call it, for argument's sake, an ajDproximation to the present presumj)tions and conclusions of science. Let me assume that the statement in the text as to plants, and the statement of vei'ses 24, 25 as to rep- tiles, cannot in all points be sustained ; and yet still there remain great unshaken facts to be weighed. First, the fact that such a record shordd have been made at all. Secondly, the fact that, instead of dwelling in generalities, it has placed itself under the severe conditions of a chronological order, reaching from the first j ids us of chaotic matter to the consum- mated production of a fau* and goodly, a furnished and a peopled, world. Thhdly, the fact that its cos- mogony seems, in the light of the nineteenth century, to draw more and more of countenance from the best natui'al philosoj)hy; and fourthly, that it has described the successive origins of the five great cate- gories of present life, with which human experience was and is conversant, in that order which geological authority confirms. How came these things to be ? How came they to be, not among Accadians, or As- syrians, or Egyptians, who monoiDolized the stores of human knowledge when this wonderful tradition was born; but among the obscui'e records of a people who, dwelling in Palestine for twelve hundred years from their sojoui'n in the valley of the Nile, hardly had force to stamp even so much as theu* name upon the history of the world at large, and only then began PKOEM TO GENESIS. 97 to be admitted to the general communion of mankind when theu' scriptui-es assumed the di-ess which a gentile tongue was needed to supply ? It is more rational, I contend, to say that these astonishing an- ticipations were a God-given supply, than to suppose that a race, who fell uniformly and entu-ely short of the great intellectual development* of antiquity, should here not only have equaled and outstripped it, but have entirely transcended, in land even more than in degree, all known exercise of human faculties. Whether this was knowledge conveyed to the mind of the Mosaic author, I do not j^resume to determine. There has been, in the belief of Christians, a profound providential purpose, little or variously visible to us, which presided from Genesis to the Apocalypse, over the formation of the marvelous compound w^hich we term the Holy Scrij^tui-es. This we wonderingly em- brace mthout being much perplexed by the questions which are raised on them ; for instance, by the ques- tion, in what exact relation the books of the Apoc- rypha, sometimes termed deutero-canonical, stand to the books of the Hebrew Canon. Difficulties of detail, such as may (or ultimately may not) be found to exist in the Proem to Genesis, have much the same relation to the evidence of revealed knowledge in this record as the spots in the sun to his all-unfolding and sufficing light. But as to the Mosaic writer him- self, all I presume to accept is the fact that he put *I write thus bearing fully in mind the unsurpassed sub- limity of much that is to be found in the Old Testament. The consideration of this subject would open a wholly new line of argument, which the present article does not allow me to attempt. 98 PROEM TO GENESIS. upon undying record, in this portion of liis work, a series of pai'ticulars which, interpreted in the gi'ow- ing Hght of modern knowledge, requii-e from us, on the whole, as reasonable men, the admission that we do not see how he could have written them, and that in all likelihood he did not write them, without aid from the guidance of a more than human power. It is in this guidance, and not necessarily or uniformly in the consciousness of the writer, that, according to my j)oor conception, the idea of revelation mainly lies. And now one word on the subject of evolution. I cannot follow Mr. Huxley in his minute acquaintance with Indian sages, and I am not aware that evolution has a place in the greater niunber of the schools of Greek philosophy. Nor can I comprehend the rapidity with which j^ersons of authority have come to treat the Darwinian hypothesis as having reached the final stage of demonstration. To the eye of a looker-on their pace and method seem rather too much like a steeplechase. But this may very well be due to their want of appropriate knowledge and habits of thought. For myself, in my loose and uninformed way of looking at evolution, I feel only too much biased in its favor by what I conceive to be its relation to the great argument of design.* Not that I share the horror with which some men of science appear to contemj)late a multitude of what they term " sudden " acts of creation. All things *" Views like these, when formulated by religious instead of scientific thought, make more of divine providence and fore-ordination than of divine intervention ; but perhaps they are not the less theistical on that account." From the very remarkable lectures of Professor Asa Gray on ' ' Natural Science and Religion," j). 77. Scribner, New York, 1880. PROEM TO GENESIS. 99 considei'ed, a singular expression : but one, I sup- pose, meaning the act which produces, in the region of nature, something not related by an unbroken suc- cession of measured and equable stages to what has gone before it. But what has equality or brevity of stage to do with the question how fai' the act is crea- tive ? I fail to see, or indeed am somewhat disposed to deny, that the short stage is less creative than the long, the single than the manifold, the equable than the jointed or graduated stage. Evolution is, to me, series with development. And like series in mathe- matics, whether arithmetical or geometrical, it estabhshes in things an unbroken jDrogression ; it places each thing (if only it stand the test of ability to live) in a distinct relation to every other thing, and makes each a witness to all that have preceded it, a prophecy of all that are to follow it. It gives to the argument of design, now called teleological argument, at once a wider expansion, and an aug- mented tenacity and solidity of tissue. But I must proceed. I find Mr. Huxley asserting that the things of science, with which he is so splendidly conversant, are " susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension." Is this rhetoric, or is it a formula of philosoj)hy ? If the latter, will it bear examination I He preeminently understands the I'elations between those things which Nature offers to his view; but does he understand each thing in itself, or hoio the last term but one in an evolution series passes into and becomes the last? The seed may produce the tree, the tree the branch, the branch the twig, the twig the leaf or flower ; but can we understand the slightest mutation or growth of Nature in itself "? Can we tell hoio the twig passes 100 PROEM TO GENESIS. into leaf or flower, one jot more tlian if the flower or leaf, instead of coming from tlie twig, came directly from the tree or from the seed ? I cannot but trace some signs of baste in Professor Huxley's assertion that, outside tbe province of science, we bave only imagination, bope, and igno- rance. Not, as we sball presently see, tbat be is one of tbose who rob mankind of tbe best and bigbest of tbeir inberitance, by denying tbe reality of all but material objects. But tbe statement is sui'ely open to objection, as omitting, or seeming to omit, from view tbe vast fields of knowledge only j)robable, wbicb are not of mere bope, nor of mere imagination, nor of mere ignorance ; wbicb include alike tbe inward and tbe outward life of man ; witbin wbicb lie tbe real instruments of bis training, and wbere be is to learn bow to tbink, to act, to be. I will now proceed to notice briefly tbe last page of Professor Huxley's paper, in wbicb be drops tbe scientist and becomes simply tbe man. I read it witb deej) interest, and witb no small sympatby. In toucbing upon it, I sball make no reference (let bim forgive me tbe expression) to bis " danonatory clauses," or to bis barmless menace, so deftly con- veyed tbrougb tbe propbet Micab, to tbe public peace. Tbe exaltation of Religion as against Tbeology is at tbe present day not only so f asbionable, but usu- ally so domineering and contemjDtuous, tbat I am grateful to Professor Huxley for bis frank statement tbat Tbeology is a brancb of science ; nor do I in tbe smallest degree quarrel witb bis contention tbat Re- ligion and Tbeology ougbt not to be confounded. We may bave a great deal of Religion witb very little Tbeology ; and a great deal of Tbeology witb very PROEM TO GENESIS. 101 little Religion. I feel sure that Professor Huxley must observe with pleasure how strongly practical, ethical, and social is the general tenor of the thi-ee synoptic gospels ; and how the appearance in the world of the great doctrinal gospel was reserved to a later stage, as if to meet a later need, when men had been toned "anew by the morality and, above all, by the life, of our Lord. I am not, therefore, writing against him, when I remark upon the habit of treating Theology with an affectation of contempt. It is nothing better, I be- lieve, than a mere fashion ; having no more reference to permanent principle than the mass of ephemeral fashions that come from Paris have with the immov- able types of beauty. Those who take for the bm'den of their song, " Respect Religion, but despise Theol- ogy," seem to me just as rational as if a person were to say, " Admire the trees, the plants, the flowers, the sun, moon, or stars, but despise botany, and de- spise astronomy." Theology is ordered knowledge; representing in the region of the intellect what relig- ion represents in the heart and life of man. And this religion, Mr. Huxley says a little further on, is summed up in the terms of the prophet Micah (vi, 8): " Do justly, and love mercy, and walk hum- bly with thy God." I forbear to inquire whether every addition to this — such, for instance, as the Beatitudes — is to be proscribed. But I will not dis- pute that in these words is conveyed the true ideal of religious discipline and attainment. They really import that identification of the will which is set out with such wonderful force in the very simple words of the "Paradiso:" In la sua volontade 6 nostra pace, 102 PROEM TO GENESIS. and whicli no one lias more beautifully described than (I think) Charles Lamb: " He gave his heai't to the Purifier, his will to the Will that governs the uni- uerse." It may be we shall find that Christianity itself is in some sort a seafiblding, and that the final building is a pure and perfect theism : when (1 Cor. XV, 21, 28) "the kingdom shall be dehvered ui? to God," " that God may be all in all." Still, I cannot help being struck with an impression that Mr. Huxley api^ears to cite these terms of Micah, as if they re- duced the work of religion from a difficult to a very easy performance. But look at them again. Examine them well. They ai'e, in truth, in CowjDer's words. Higher than the hights above, Deeper than the depths beneath. Do justly, that is to say, extinguish self ; love mercy, cut utterly away all the pride and wrath, and all the cujiidity, that make this fair world a wilderness; walk humbly with thy God, take his will and set it in the place where thine own was used to nile. " Ring out the old, ring in the new." Pluck down the ty- rant from his place ; set up the true Master on his lawful throne. There are certainly human beings, of happy com- position, who mount these airy hights with elastic step and with unabated breath. Sponta sua, sine lege, fidem rectumque colebat. — Ovid, Metam. i, 90. This comparative refinement of nature in some may even lead them to undervalue the stores of that rich armory which Christianity has provided to equip us for om- great life-battle. The text of the j^rophet Micah, developed into all the breadth of St. Paul and PROEM TO GENESIS. 103 St. Augustine, is not too much — is it not often all too little? — for the needs of ordinary men. I must now turn, by way of epilogue, to Professor Max MuUer j and I hope to show him that on the questions which he raises we are not very far apart. One grievous wrong, indeed, he does me in (appar- ently) ascribing to me the execrable word " theanthi'o- morphic," of which I wholly disclaim the paternity, and deny the use. Then he says, I warn him not to trust too much to etymology. Not so. But only not to trust to it for the wrong purpose, in the wrong place ; just as I should not preach on the virtue and value of liberty to a man requii'ing handcuffs. I hap- pen to bear a name known, in its genuine form, to mean stones or rocks frequented by the gled; and probably taken from the habitat of its first bearer. Now, if any human being should'ever hereafter make any inquiry about me, trace my name to its origin, and therefore describe the situation of my dwelling, he would not use etymology too much but would use it ill. What I protest against is a practice, not with- out example, of taking the etymology of mythologic names in Homer, and thereupon supposing that in all cases we have thus obtained a guide to their Homeric sense. The place of Nereus in the mind of the poet is indisputable ; and here etymology helps us. But when a light-etymology is found for Hera, and it is therefore asserted that in Homer she is a light-god- dess, or when, because no" one denies that Phoihos is a hght-name, therefore the Apollo of Homer was the Sun, then indeed, not etymology, but the misuse of etymology, hinders and misleads us. In a ques- tion of etymology, however, I shall no more meas- 104 PKOEM TO GENESIS. ■ ure swords with Mi-. Max Miiller than with Mi-. Huxley in a matter of natural science, and this for the simple reason that my sword is but a lath. I there- fore surrender to the mercy of this great philologist the derivation of dine and diner from dejeuner; which may have been suggested by the use of the word dine in our Bible (as John xxi, 12) for breakfasting; a sense expressed by La Bruyere (xi) in the words, " Cliton '}C a jamais eu. toute sa vie, que deux affaires, qui sont de diner le matin, et de souper le soir." But, Mr. Max Miiller says, I have offended against the fundamental principles of comparative mythology. How, where, and why have I thus tumbled into mortal sin ? By attacking solarism. But what have I attacked, and what has he defended ? I have attacked nothing but the exclusive use of the solar theory to solve all the problems of the Aryan relig- ions ; and it is to th'is monopolizing pretension that I seek to ajiply the name of solarism, while admitting that " the solar theory has a most important place" in solving such problems. But my vis-a-vis, whom I really cannot call my opj)onent, declares that the solarism I denounce is not his solarism at all ; and he only seeks to prove that " certain portions of ancient mythology have a directly solar origin." So it proves that I attack only what he rejDudiates, and I defend what he defends. That is, I humbly sub- scribe to a doctrine which he has made famous throughout the civilized world. It is only when a yoke is put upon Homer's neck that I presume to cry " hands off! " The Olympian system, of which Homer is the great architect, is a marvelous and splendid structure. Following the guidance of ethnological affinities and memories, it in- PROEM TO GENESIS. 105 corporates in itself tlie most diversified traditions, and binds them into a unity by the plastic power of an unsiu-passed creative imagination. Its dominating spirit is intensely human.' It is therefore of necessity thoroughly anti-elemental. Yet, when the stones of this magnificent fabric are singly eyed by the ob- server, they bear* obvious marks of having been appropriated from elsewhere by the sovereign pre- rogative of genius ; of having had an anterior place in other systems ; of having belonged to nature- woi'- ship, and in some cases to sun-worship ; of having been drawn from many quarters, and among them from those which ]\Ii\ Max Miiller excludes : from Egypt, and either from Palestine, or from the same tradi- tional source to which Palestine itself was indebted. But this is not the joresent question. As to the solar theory, I hope I have shown either that our positions are now identical, or that, if th-ere be a rift between them, it is so narrow that we may conveniently shake hands across it. W. E. Gladstone. PosTSCEiPT. — I learn with satisfaction that in America, where the stores of geological knowledge have been so greatly enlarged, the business of the Keconciler has been taken into the hands of scient- ists : Dr. Dana, Professor of Geology in Yale Col- lege, and Dr. Ai-nold Guyot, Professor of Geology and Physical Geography in New Jersey College. Both of these authorities, it appeal's, have adhered through a long career, and now adhere with increased confidence, to the idea of a substantial harmony be- tween science and the Mosaic text. Professor Dana's latest tract has recently appeared in the Bibliotheca 106 PROEM to 6EKES1S. Sacra for April, 1885. He thinks the evidence doubt- ful as to the priority of birds over the low or marsu- pian mammals (p. 214); but strong for an abundant early plant-life in the Azoic period (p. 213); and he holds with Professor Guyot, that the first, or cos- mogonical, portion of the Proem not only accords with, but teaches, the nebulai' hypothesis (p. 220). It is a relief to find that the bui'den of this argu- ment is shared with witnesses who are competent and unsuspected on the scientific side ; and who will not be liable to a repetition mutatis mutandis of an old objection: " This people, which kno?vethnot the law, is accursed" (St. John vii, 49). Mr. Marsh, Professor of Paleontology in Yale Col- lege, holds (Ornithodontes, 1880, p. 137), on the grounds of the wide differences between the archceop- teryx and the other types of early birds, that the common ancestor was remote, and probably Paleo- zoic. He also adheres to the order, 1. Reptiles; 2. Birds ; 3. Mammals. (It may be well to refer to Sir C Lyell, " Principles of Geology," vol. iii, p. 175, on the reasons why bird-remains are sometimes rare. ) In my passages referring to geological results, I would ask the reader to substitute ^:)riorz7y for suc- cession. The latter implies a continuity of series, which is not found in the scientific record, since it is broken by the absence of reference to the inverte- brates of the paleozoic, and the reptiles of the mesozoic I'ocks. W. E. G. ''DAWJSr OF CREATION''— AN ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. BY ALBEKT REVILLE, D.D. I had been already a month in Italy, and expected to remain at least another there, and I was so absorbed in my journey, which was partly for pleasure, partly for instruction, through that beautiful country, that I gave absolutely no thought to politics or theology, except to the very special subject which had drawn me to Ravenna and Rome. Had there been elections in France which might have thrown my country into Parliamentary confusion % Were other elections im- pending in England menacing a people to whom I am much attached, with a similar fate ? Did the Bul- garian question threaten Europe with a terrible storm ? I confess, to my shame, that all these ques- tions had become as foreign to my thoughts as the conflicts of Peru and Chili, or the question of the prolongation of the mandates of the Hungai'ian dep- uties. I lived wholly in jDagan and Chi-istian antiq- uity. My time also was limited and barely sufficient for the task I had undertaken. I only remember that one day at table d'hote I took somewhat warmly the side of Mr. Gladstone — as far as it was proper for a stranger discussing the affairs of a country not his own to do so — against an oldEnghsh lady who was vehemently denouncmg the patriarch of English Lib- eralism. For with all due reserve on the points on which the English alone are comj)etent to speak, Mr. 108 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. Gladstone is, to us who hold oiu'selves Continental Liberals, one of the glories, one of the great moral forces, of Eui'opean Liberalism. I am bound, how- ever, to add that my defense of him was entii*ely restricted to the field of politics. There seemed, therefore, a certain irony of fate to the writer of these lines when, a few days after this episode, at the same table (Thote, an Italian count, who, unlike myself, was hving wholly in the contem- porary world, suddenly said to me, "You are M. Re- ville, are you not — Professor of the College de France ? " " Yes." " Well, it seems that Mr. Glad- stone has been attacking you sharply in an English review." " Impossible ! " I exclaimed. " Yes, the Italie (an Itahan newspaper published in French) says so, and I bring you the number." This incident brought me a great increase of atten- tion and coui-tesy in my hotel, where I had hitherto only been No. 17 or 19. I heai'd, or I thought I heard, that they were saying behind me, " That is the gentleman whom Mr. Gladstone has attacked in an English review." I had become a personage. The hotel-keeper and the waiters became more defer- ential, and I soon saw that it was beyond all doubt an honor and an advantage to be attacked by Mr. Gladstone. Honors, however, have their drawbacks, and I think I perceived it when I paid my bill. The newspaper which had been shown me gave an account, after its fashion, of the attack of which I had been the object, but it threw very little hght on the points of contro- versy, and I was not able to procure the number of the Nineteenth Genturij. It was no matter of indif- ference to me to know that I had been censured by ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 109 the ex-premier of the United Kingdom, for whose chai'acter and superior talents I had long felt a sin- cere admu'ation. But age quad agis. I had come to Italy for a special object. I could not deviate from it even for an empire, and when the first mo- ment of sui-prise and emotion was over I said to my- self, like a merchant on his holiday, " Business to-morrow! We will see to this in Paris." At last, thanks to the obhging intervention of some friends in England, and especially to the kind editor of the Nineteenth Century, I am in a j)osition not only to make myself acquainted with the article about myself, but also to submit to the Enghsh pubhc, and, with every respect, to Mr. Gladstone himself, some reflections on the jDoints on which, in language at once indulgent and severe, he has done me the honor of attacking me. These remarks will serve to explain why I am so late in replying to the objections of my illustrious assailant. The delay, however, has had this advan- tage, that I have found my -^ork half done, and by abler hands than mine. M. Max Miiller, in an ai'ticle entitled, " Solar Myths," has defended with his usual talent the theory which gives a naturalistic interpre- tation to the greater part of the myths that have come down to us from antiquity, or that can be even now collected in uncivilized nations. Mr. Huxley has demonstrated, with his accustomed vigor and with his indisputable competence, that IVIi-. Gladstone labors under illusions about the harmony which he supposes himself to have established between the Bib- lical account of the creation and the conclusions of modern science. I can only express to these two em- inent men my gratitude for then: good opinion of my 110 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. humble person, and assure Mr. Huxley in particular that, so far from resenting it, I am hapj^y and proud that a man of his caliber should have so warmly taken my part, or, to speak more acciu'ately, should have taken my writings as an occasion for defending what for him as for me is the cause of scientific truth. I now come to the jjoints of dispute. Mr. Glad- stone, with a coui'tesy for which I must thank him, accuses my " Prolegomena " of being rather Epile- gomena, because, as he says, I have in the first place, without any preliminary demonstration, eliminated from the field of the scientific history of religions all theories which stai't from the supposition of a super- natural revelation granted to primitive humanity. I have put, he maintains, in the "j^reface " of the "His- tory of Religions " what ought logically only to come at the end, if it comes at all. I will venture respectfully to observe that prefaces are usually composed by authors when their books are completed, and that they contain directly or indi- rectly their conclusions ; at all events they fore- shadow them. I did not begin a history of religions without having studied the subject as a whole. More- over, the natural end of Prolegomena is to expound, and if necessary to demonstrate, the method which it is proposed to follow in the works to which they are prefixed. Mr. Gladstone is too clear-sighted not to landerstand at once that it makes an essential differ- ence in the manner in which the history of religions must be treated whether the writer starts from the idea of a primitive revelation made to the human race, or whether he rejects this hypothesis as unproved or anti-scientific. In the first case, this history is the history of a prolonged decadence. In the second, it ANSWER TO Jm. GLADSTONE. Ill is the history of a progi'essive evolution. I was there- fore forced, by the very natui-e of things, to state which side I took on this grave question, since all that followed depended upon it. If IVIr. Gladstone himself undertook a general history of rehgion, I would defy him to escajDe from this necessity. My honored critic in the next place complains that I have chosen him, rather than many others, as the representative of the poiat of view favorable to the idea of a primitive revelation founded on the testi- mony of the Bible, whereas I ought rather to have referred to specialists, such as Dr. Reusch, who have developed this theory ex professo. IVIi-. Gladstone acknowledges that he would not now formulate his views as " crudely " as formerly on this question, which seemed then more simple than in these later times; that to presuppose the supernatural in such matters is to deviate from the law of scientific method ; that he was esj)ecially absorbed with the luxui-iant beauties of the Homeric poetry, and that he only entered indirectly into the theological bear- ings of his researches. He maintains only that there are evident traces in the poems of Homer of a histor- ical connection with the traditions of the Hebrews, and especially with the book of Genesis. As for the precise form in which he expressed his views on this question, he insists on it so little that he has not wished to republish the book which contains them, and it has now become very rare. In fine, he refuses to admit the too dogmatic form given by me to that primitive orthodoxy which was revealed to the first man. It consisted at most " of rudimentary indica- tions of what are now developed and established truths." 112 ANSWEK TO MR. GLADSTONE. 1 can only bow before these attenuations, intro- duced by the author himself into a theory which had ai^peared to me, and to others also, to have assumed a much more definite and angular form. If I se- lected Ml'. Gladstone rather than others as the repre- sentative of a pomt of view which is not mine, I did so on account of his eminence. His name has often been put forward in support of the theory which I considered myself obliged to attack. Being called upon by the position I hold to endeavor to make the educated public of my country familiar with an order of studies and controversies as yet very httle culti- vated in France, it was my duty to consider carefully the antagonists who might be oj^posed to me. The name of Dr. Reusch would have conveyed nothing to my audience or to my readers. The name of Mr. Gladstone shone with a very different splendor. I did not know, and was not bound to know — especially when I saw so eminent an Englishman as Sir G. Cox forming the same estimate as myself of Mr. Glad- stone's views — that Mr. Gladstone had somewhat re- ceded from the " crudity " of his early affirmations. I note with great satisfaction his corrections. I see in them a sign that his views are not as far as they were from mine, and I shall certainly mention in a new edition the limitations which Mr. Gladstone has himself thought fit to place upon his earlier ideas about the religious origins of humanity. My illustrious adversary next j)asses from the de- fensive to the offensive, and reproaches me fii'st of all for my manner of looking on the book of Genesis, and in the second j)lace for my errors about the mythology of Homer. On the second point I must decline at present to ANSWER TO ME. GLADSTONE. 113 enter into a prolonged controversy. Time, and, to a certain jDoint, courage, fails me. In Homeric litera- ture Mr. Gladstone is a specialist who might well intimidate greater scholars than myself. This does not, however, prevent me from thinking that when he sees a historical relation between the accoiints in Genesis and the traditions embalmed in the Homeric poems he is looking through deceptive glasses which unconsciously impaii" the clearness of his sight. In oui' age he is about the only'eminent scholar who has perceived this family resemblance. This is not a reason for asserting that it does not exist, but it is a reason for distrusting it, and I own that, for my part, I find it impossible to establish it. Piu'ely external coincidences, analogies of detail, prove nothing in such a matter. The general history of religious be- liefs and practices shows that very curious ideas and customs, entirely unconnected with those that now occupy us, have existed among very different and very distant nations, although it is not possible reasonably to suppose that they were communicated. In such cases it is necessary simj)ly to investigate the psycho- logical jjoint of departiu'e of these ideas and customs, and if this can be discovered, the conclusion must be di'awn that the essential unity of the human mind causes it often, when stp,rting from the same institu- tion or principle, to arrive in many different regions at consequences, applications, and analogies of behef which are truly astonishing both from their strange- ness and from theii- resemblances. The Incas who ruled over ancient Peru had certainly never read Machiavel, but those who study their history must admh'e the consummate art with which they knew how to govern theii' vast empii'e, regulating then" conduct 114 ANSWER TO MK. GLADSTONE. by maxims which might seem borrowed from the great Florentine theorist. I must suspect that what Mr. Gladstone has taken for signs of a "historical relationshij) " between the Homeric poems and Gen- esis are merely superficial analogies, explained by the very nature of the human mind when brought face to face with the same problems, and implying none of those consequences which the eminent statesman wishes to draw from them. I shall push my boldn'ess one step further. Mr. Gladstone acknowledges himself, with the most engaging modesty, that " of any other system than the Olympian it would be presumption in him to speak, as he has, beyond this limit, none but the most vague and superficial knowledge." Let me regret deeply this gap in the learning of so distinguished a Hellenist. If there be any department of knowledge in which a comparison of analogies and coiTespond- ences is especially instructive, it is undoubtedly the history of religions. Each part of it throws light upon the others, and all who have devoted themselves to it will, I am sure, agree with me, that at every step some problem arises which appears inexplicable as long as we look at it only in one local religion, but finds an easy and immediate solution by reference to some other religion. M. Max Mtiller and the " In- dianists " of his school have supplied us by this com- parative method with very plausible explanations of many exceedingly obscure points in Greek mythology which could never have been elucidated if we had confined ourselves to Greece alone. Who could have otherwise amved at the explanation of the love of Apollo for Daphne, and of the transformation of the young nymph into a laurel? By what other way ANSWEK TO MK. GLADSTONE. 115 could we have traced to its origin the story of Pro- metheus ? And to what error, to what impotence, are not those now condemned who attemj^t to explain the Olympian mythology by itself alone, without ever comparing it with the mythologies that are its sisters ? Let me add, however, that, while speaking in this way, I am one of those who are inclined to think that in these later years some injustice has been done to the Greek mythology and to its originality by resolv- ing it, so to speak, into a multitude of extraneous elements coming from al] quarters. I may perhaps give some small pleasure to Mi*. Gladstone by in- forming him that I on the whole share his view about Heracles, whom I do not at all identify with the Phoe- nician Melkart. Both, I am persuaded, are solar divinities. The myths concerning Melkart, or forged in honor of that itinerant divinity, have largely entered into the developed legend of Heracles. Nevertheless, I think with Buttman, Otfried Mtiller, and Schmidt, that Heracles is primitively a concep- tion purely and authentically Greek. Not only are the characters of the two divinities very different, it is also inadmissible that an exotic god should have held so considerable a place in the history of primi- tive Greece. I acknowledge moreover that the place and the part assigned to Heracles in the Homeric poems have something in them difficult to explain. He is far from being represented there as a hero without reproach. He appears to be rather imposed on the poet by a commanding tradition than hked by him. I will add— what perhaps Mr. Gladstone will think very rash— that being but little convinced of the 116 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. unity of the Homeric poems, I regard as a not very- skilful interpolation of a harmonist the passage of the Odyssey, xi, 601-604, where the received text dis- tinguishes the Heracles admitted into the divine abode from the Heracles whom Ulysses perceives among the mournful shades that inhabit the kingdom of Hades. I have myself a little explanation of this apparent anomaly, but I hai'dly ventui'e to propose it to the learned commentator of Homer. I think that Heracles was long a popular divinity in the lower ranks of the Greek, population, still more legendary and especially less refined than his rival, the beautiful Phoebus Apollo, even though both may have sprung from the same root. But Phoebus Apollo was the sun-god preferred by the upper classes, by the nobles, the princes, and the kings. He was the aristocratic sun, and the poetry of the aedes, a poetry in some sort feudal, was from the beginning more in sym- pathy with the poet-and-musician-god, the sun-god of the upper classes, than with the Gargantua of the populace. Hence the depreciation of the latter and the kind of satisfaction with which his brutality, his arrogance, even his impiety and his crimes, are recounted. At a later period the joopular legend obliged every one to respect its favorite hero, and, without effacing all his faults, impressed upon him definitively in the mythology the characters of the pacificator, the liberator, and the " Good Giant," which Mr. Gladstone, imprisoned in his " Homer," accuses me with some ii'ony of having Hghtly attributed to a god who by no means deserved them. I do not know whether this explanation, which I could develoj) and support with some proofs, will find ANSWER TO ME. GLADSTONE. 117 any favor with my censor, and I merely submit it to him with deference. Another indication of the limitation which the too exclusive study of a single author may impose on the most clear-sighted mind may be found in a little attack which Mr. Gladstone makes on me about Ixion and his burning wheel. It is true that a pas- sage of Homer which speaks of Zeus as having loved the wife of Ixion does not agree with the myth ordi- narily received and related at length by Pindar (Pyth. ii), according to w^hich it was Ixion who pur- sued with his criminal addresses the spouse of Zeus. According to Pindar, Ixion's wheel was not "burning," but " winged." This contradiction between Homer and Pindar, and the difference between Pindar and the later mythology, only prove that originally many diverging mythical nations connected themselves with the name of Ixion, " the man on the wheel," the "re- volving one," but the narrative of Pindar, an excellent witness to the myths which were then sung before assembled Greece, proves that this was the conse- crated form which at that time dominated over all others. Whether the wheel was "biu'ning" or simply " winged " is of no consequence. This does not deprive the student of myths of the right of bringing together all the mythic wheels, which, from India to the Poitevins of France, have in so many countries been employed to represent the sun. The sun was not only or always conceived as a hajDpy and benevolent being. Phoebus Apollo himself is dis- tinguished by something else than goodness and constant happiness, and the notion of the sun as an enslaved being, condemned to a weary task, forced to roll on forever, and therefore wretched, guilty and 118 ANSWEE TO MR. GLADSTONE. punished, may be easily found elsewhere as well as in the myth of Ixion. May I now be allowed to express the surprise which I felt in reading in Mr. Gladstone's article that the Poseidon of Homer, the god in whom the Latins thought they recognized their Neptune, "is not the god of the liquid element at all ? " This statement ajDj^eared to me so contrary to evidence that I read it twice to assru'e myself that I was not mistaken. I willingly admit that the gods of Homer, at least the Olympian or superior gods, must no longer be con- founded materially with the physical elements, of which they were originally the simjDle personifications. They are distingviished — not absolutely separated — from them. They are above all humanized. As the savage believes that the soul of a man may quit his body and walk abroad according to its caprices, so the Greek of the Homeric times distinguished the divine person from the physical elements that imder- lay it. He made of it a being superior .to, but at the same time resembling, man; and he attributed to this being all the liberty of will, of movement, and of action that could be supposed to exist in a man of gigantic size, force, and intelHgence. Side by side with these gods now emanci^Dated from their material prison, the Greek mythology, with the easy syncretism which belongs to polytheistic systems, kept up the memory of other gods which were not in reahty older, but which corresponded to older notions: Hehos by the side of Apollo, Selene by the side of Artemis, Okeanos and Nereus by the side of Posei- don, etc. But to pretend that this latter is not essentially a sea-god, in Homer as everywhere else — an ancient personification of the liquid element — ^he ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 119 and his spouse Amphitrite, who surrounds the earth and beats it with her incessant waves — is to take up a position in du'ect contradiction to the beautiful de- scription of the "Iliad" (lib. xiii, 10 sq.), while through the " Odyssey " the hero is compelled con- tinually to suffer upon the sea the effects of the anger of the god of the seas. Does not Poseidon himself declare in the '" Iliad " that in the division of the world between himself and his two brothers he received for his lot " the foaming sea " (xv, 190)? What does it signify that he has been in some places adored as the supreme God 1 — this is tx'ue of almost all the gods of polytheism ; or that his wor- ship may be found in the midst of a continent '? — the fountains of water, the soui-ces of the rivers, were there attributed to him ; or that he loved to visit the Ethiopians? — this was a very usual taste among the Greek gods; Mr. Gladstone knows the reason as well as I do. I shall not dilate upon the objections he advances on the subject of Hera, the august spouse of Zeus, who seems to me to have personified the sky in its inconstant aspect, mobile, easily disturbed, as if she represented the variable and lower element, while Zeus, her husband, is rather the unchanging sky, in the majestic serenity of its unalterable blue. When they are united and agreed, nothing can equal the smiling beauty of Nature. When they are divided and disputing, all goes wrong. Moreover, in the " lUad," Hera shares, though in a lower measure, the powers of Zeus. She also scolds from the celestial heights, and can, in concert with Boreas, let loose the storms (II. xi, 42; xv, 26). I know that the question of her physical origin is less simple than that of most 120 ANSWEB TO MR. GLADSTONE. of the Olympians. I myself hesitated long about whether she ought to be placed in the category of the earth goddesses like Gaia, Rhea, Cybele, Themis, Danae, Leto, Semele, and probably Dione of Dodona. Analogy appeared to lead to this conclusion. Never- theless, on the whole, Hera seems to me to want the characteristics which usually distinguish the earth goddesses. She has neither their fixity — for la donna ^ mobile — nor theu' attributes of divination. Her typical bird, the peacock, with its expanding tail, seems rather to suggest the starry sky than the earth. Her position as the recognized spouse of the god of the heavens, distinct from the earth goddesses, who originally held the first rank in the great number of local mythologies (which, it may be said in passing, contributed greatly to tarnish the conjugal reputation of Zeus), seems to me to be traceable to a time, already past in the Homeric age, when the division of the world into three distinct kingdoms, each with its supreme god, was generally recognized in the Greek world. From that period it must have appeared nat- ural that the titular spouse of the supreme celestial god should have been herself celestial, and not a per- sonification of the marine element or of the earth, which had in Hades its supreme god in Pluto, and its goddess in Demeter or Persephone, jus't as the sea- god Poseidon had as his " parhedra" Amphitrite, the Nereid. But I repeat it, this question of Hera is one of the most obscui'e ia Greek mythology ; I do not pretend to discuss or to resolve it ia my " Prolegom- ena,'' where I only alluded to it in passing, nor can I attempt to treat it fully in a mere controversial article. I only wish to show my eminent critic that it has not been with a superficial presumption that I ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 121 allotted to Hera the mythological title of "Queen of the Shining Heaven " — I am persuaded that she has a right to it. In the next place, I must protest against the term " solar theory," which Mi*. Gladstone applies to my general views about mythology. It is the " natm-al- istic theory" that I have suj^ported — that is, the theory which explains the genesis of mythologies by the personification and dramatization of natui'al phenom- ena. Undoubtedly that theory when well understood supposes the action of the religious sentiment inherent in human natui'e. There is nothing in it materiahstic or irreligious. Undoubtedly, also, the sim and the phenomena connected with it, hold so prominent a place that it is natural to expect that social myths will be the most conspicuous by their number, theu- attraction, and their variety. But the sun is still only a part of a whole which our languages and our modern minds designate by the word nature. Side by side with the solar myths, there are myths which are purely celestial, marine, and tellurian. It is neither accurate nor just, systematically to describe the whole by one of its parts. I am astonished that the sagacity of Mr. Gladstone has not long since led him to favor an explanation which has found a brill- iant confii'mation in the relations discovered between the Greek mythology and the mythologies of India and the other Ai'yan regions, and which Egypt, America, Oceanica, Africa, even China, not to speak of the Semitic races, have, I will venture to say, raised to the position of demonstrated truth. But, to judge the force of this demonstration, a scholar must not confine himself to the Homeric poetry. I shall now pass to the other pai't of Mr. Glad- 122 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. stone's attack, which relates to the eiTors I am sup- posed to have committed in denying that the Bibhcal account of the creation agrees with the results of modern natural science. This, if I mistake not, is the part which will have most interested the majority of his readers. I have said in my " Prolegomena," while rendering full homage to the beauty and religious pui'ity of the Bibhcal account of the creation, that it contains assertions contradicted by modern science. Thus the firmament destined to separate the waters below from those above is represented as a solid vault ; the stars have been created after the earth, the periods of creation or formation are single days. I have also, it appears, not recognized the wonderfully scientific order of the successive appearance of the creatures that inhabit the water, the au", and the eai'th, until at last man appears to crown and complete the work of creation. These are my principal heresies, in addi- tion to which I am accused of having put forward some bad-sounding projDOsitions about the moral state of the first couple, as it appears in the account of the fall in Eden, and about the meaning of the plui-al which the creator emjDloys in speaking of him- self. I must allow myself to remind my readers that my object in treating these questions was neither to at- tack nor to defend the sacred writings. It was solely to show, by a succinct analysis of then." chief contents, that the partisans of a primitive doctrinal revelation are mistaken in supposing that the Bible itself sup- ports then- view. For the rest, even after the ingenious pleadings of jVIr. Gladstone, I maintain my assertions. ANSWER TO ME. GLADSTONE. 123 Mr. Huxley has made it unnecessary for me to dwell upon the j)retended conformity of the success- ive appearances of organized beings in Genesis with the results that have been established by comtem- porary geology. It is not true that the vegetable, aquatic, flying, quadruped, and reptile species suc- ceeded each other in their totality in the order specified by the canonic 'writer. Mr. Gladstone seems to have lost sight of the fact that at verses 11 and 12 the whole vegetable world in all its depart- ments, as the author of the narrative knew it, had made its complete appearance at the command of God. Consequently, the objection drawn from the absence of the solar light remains in all its force. For it is not a diffused light, concentrating itself gradually round the sun, that could have simul- taneously permitted all the vegetable species to develop over the surface of the earth. I know well that a lax interpretation has transformed the days of Genesis into periods of immense length, in spite of the mention of " evening " and " morning " which closes each of the creative acts. Unfortunately, it is impossible to adopt this interj)retation. For it is on the supposition that the days of the creation were similar to our own that the famous commandment of the Sabbath is based, and this is the motive assigned for it by the Hebrew legislator : " Thou shalt work six days and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt do no work on that day . . . For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, and the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.'" Now, if the days of the creation should be under- stood as periods of thousands or millions of years, I 124 ANSWER TO ME. GLADSTONE. beg Mr. Gladstone to explain liow they can serve as an argument in support of the command to work for six days of our week and to rest on the seventh. I also regret to tell him that the Hebrew word ordinarily translated in our versions by the word firmament, while it expresses the idea of an expan- sion, of something that is stretched out, expresses also that of something solid. This is why the firma- ment supj)orts the waters that are above it, and separates them according to the divine will from those which are below it (v. 6, 7). Otherwise the j)assage would be incomprehensible. This idea of a solid sky is general throughout antiquity, and the sacred text, when it jDroceeds to the account of the deluge, does not fail to tell us that the sluices or closing parts of the heavens were opened, which brought about the junction of the waters above the heavens with the waters below the earth, which rose from the springs of the great abyss, so that the earth was entu'ely covered from the second divine work of the creation was for the time annulled (comp. Gen. vii, 10-12 ; i, 6-8, and also in the same order of ideas Ps. cxlvhi, 4 ; Ajdoc. iv, 6). All these ways of repre- senting things suppose the solidity of the firmament, and the LXX in translating the Hebrew word by ffrepeoof-ia have perfectly given its sense. 2Tepo