soul; and we read in the Scriptures that herbs could not grow until the Eternal caused it to _rain_ upon earth. In the Mexican _Popol-Vuh_ man is created out of _mud_ or clay (_terre glaise_), taken from under the water. Brahma creates Lomus, the great Muni (or first man), seated on his lotus, only after having called into being, _spirits_, who thus enjoyed among mortals a priority of existence, and he creates him out of water, air, and earth. Alchemists claim that primordial or pre-Adamic earth when reduced to its first substance is in its _second_ stage of transformation like clear-water, the first being the _alkahest_[249] proper. This primordial substance is said to contain within itself the essence of all that goes to make up man; it has not only all the elements of his physical being, but even the “breath of life” itself in a latent state, ready to be awakened. This it derives from the “incubation” of the Spirit of God upon the face of the waters—chaos; in fact, this substance is chaos itself. From this it was that Paracelsus claimed to be able to make his “homunculi;” and this {134} is why Thales, the great natural philosopher, maintained that _water_ was the principle of all things in nature. What is the primordial Chaos but Æther? The _modern_ Ether; not such as is recognized by our scientists, but such as it _was_ known to the ancient philosophers, long before the time of Moses; Ether, with all its mysterious and occult properties, containing in itself the germs of universal creation; Ether, the celestial virgin, the spiritual mother of every existing form and being, from whose bosom as soon as “incubated” by the Divine Spirit, are called into existence Matter and Life, Force and Action. Electricity, magnetism, heat, light, and chemical action are so little understood even now that fresh facts are constantly widening the range of our knowledge. Who knows where ends the power of this protean giant—Ether; or whence its mysterious origin?—Who, we mean, that denies the spirit that works in it and evolves out of it all visible forms? It is an easy task to show that the cosmogonical legends all over the world are based on a knowledge by the ancients of those sciences which have allied themselves in our days to support the doctrine of evolution; and that further research may demonstrate that they were far better acquainted with the fact of evolution itself, embracing both its physical and spiritual aspects, than we are now. With the old philosophers, evolution was a universal theorem, a doctrine embracing the _whole_, and an established principle; while our modern evolutionists are enabled to present us merely with speculative theoretics; with _particular_, if not wholly _negative_ theorems. It is idle for the representatives of our modern wisdom to close the debate and pretend that the question is settled, merely because the obscure phraseology of the Mosaic account clashes with the definite exegesis of “exact science.”