Darwin and Modern ScienceSeward, A. C. (Albert Charles)
Philosophy
Darwin and Modern Science
Seward, A. C. (Albert Charles)
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Evolution (Biology); Science -- History
treeless expanse shut in by desolate slopes, wore an aspect of chilly
sadness befitting the battlefield where a nation's freedom was lost.
But crowded as the prospect from Panopeus is with memories of the past,
the place itself, now so still and deserted, was once the scene of an
event even more ancient and memorable, if Greek story-tellers can be
trusted. For here, they say, the sage Prometheus created our first
parents by fashioning them, like a potter, out of clay. (Pausanias X.
4.4. Compare Apollodorus, "Bibliotheca", I. 7. 1; Ovid, "Metamorph."
I. 82 sq.; Juvenal, "Sat". XIV. 35. According to another version of
the tale, this creation of mankind took place not at Panopeus, but
at Iconium in Lycaonia. After the original race of mankind had been
destroyed in the great flood of Deucalion, the Greek Noah, Zeus
commanded Prometheus and Athena to create men afresh by moulding images
out of clay, breathing the winds into them, and making them live. See
"Etymologicum Magnum", s.v. "'Ikonion", pages 470 sq. It is said that
Prometheus fashioned the animals as well as men, giving to each kind of
beast its proper nature. See Philemon, quoted by Stobaeus, "Florilegium"
II. 27. The creation of man by Prometheus is figured on ancient works of
art. See J. Toutain, "Etudes de Mythologie et d'Histoire des Religions
Antiques" (Paris, 1909), page 190. According to Hesiod ("Works and
Days", 60 sqq.) it was Hephaestus who at the bidding of Zeus moulded the
first woman out of moist earth.) The very spot where he did so can still
be seen. It is a forlorn little glen or rather hollow behind the hill
of Panopeus, below the ruined but still stately walls and towers which
crown the grey rocks of the summit. The glen, when I visited it that hot
day after the long drought of summer, was quite dry; no water trickled
down its bushy sides, but in the bottom I found a reddish crumbling
earth, a relic perhaps of the clay out of which the potter Prometheus
moulded the Greek Adam and Eve. In a volume dedicated to the honour of
one who has done more than any other in modern times to shape the ideas
of mankind as to their origin it may not be out of place to recall this
crude Greek notion of the creation of the human race, and to compare or
contrast it with other rudimentary speculations of primitive peoples
on the same subject, if only for the sake of marking the interval which
divides the childhood from the maturity of science.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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