“It is the germ (which the kabalists also maintain the Divine Spirit produced from indestructibility of matter, its own substance) which albeit their doctrine is never perishes in the being, shrouded still more for it becomes the soul of carefully than that of the Being, and at the period of Hindus. The creation is _pralaya_ (dissolution) it eternal, and the universe is returns to absorb itself the “garment,” or “the veil again _into the Divine_ of God”--Shekinah; and the Spirit, _which itself_ rests latter is immortal and from all eternity within eternal as Him within whom Swayambhuva, the it has ever existed. Every ‘Self-Existent’” world is made after the (_Institutes of Manu_, pattern of its predecessor, book i.). and each more gross and material than the preceding As we have shown, neither one. In the _Kabala_ all the Svâbhâvikas, Buddhist were called sparks. Finally, philosophers--nor the our present grossly Brahmans believe in a materialistic world was creation of the universe _ex formed. nihilo_, but both believe in the _Prakriti_, the In the Chaldean account of indestructibility of matter. the period which preceded the Genesis of our world, The evolution of species, Berosus speaks of a time and the successive when there existed nothing appearance of various new but darkness, and an abyss types is very distinctly of waters, filled with shown in _Manu_. hideous monsters, “produced of a two-fold principle .... “From earth, heat, and These were creatures in water, are born all which were combined the creatures, whether animate limbs of every species of or inanimate, produced by animals. In addition to the germ which the Divine these fishes, reptiles, Spirit drew from its own serpents, with other substance. Thus has Brahma monstrous animals, which established the series of assumed each other’s shape transformations from the and countenance.”[571] plant up to man, and from man up to the primordial essence.... Among them each succeeding being (or element) acquires the quality of the preceding; and in as many degrees as each of them is advanced, with so many properties is it said to be endowed” (_Manu_, book i., sloka 20).[570] This, we believe, is the veritable theory of the modern evolutionists.