Many are the origins attributed to man in the various creeds of ancient and modern heathendom. Sometimes he is spoken of as having been made out of water, but more generally it is of earth that he has been made, or from which he has been spontaneously born. The Peruvians believed that the world was peopled by four men and four women, brothers and sisters, who emerged from the caves near Cuzco. Among the North American Indians the earth is regarded as the universal mother. Men came into existence in her womb, and crept out of it by climbing up the roots of the trees which hung from the vault in which they were conceived and matured; or, mounting a deer, the animal brought them into daylight; or, groping in darkness, they tore their way out with their nails.[32] The Egyptian philosophers pretended that man was made of the mud of the Nile.[33] In Aristophanes,[34] man is spoken of as πλάσματα πηλοῦ. Among some of the Chinese it is believed that man was thus formed:--“The book Fong-zen-tong says: When the earth and heaven were made, there was not as yet man or peoples. Then Niu-hoa moulded yellow earth, and of that made man. That is the true origin of men.”[35] And the ancient Chaldeans supposed man was made by the mixing of the blood of Belus with the soil.[36] 2. THE PRE-ADAMITES. In 1655, Isaac de la Peyreira, a converted Jew, published a curious treatise on the Pre-Adamites. Arguing upon Romans v. 12-14, he contended that there were two creations of man; that recorded in the first chapter of Genesis and that described in the second chapter being distinct. The first race he supposed to have peopled the whole world, but that it was bad, and therefore Adam had been created with a spiritual soul, and that from Adam the Jewish race was descended, whereas the Gentile nations issued from the loins of the Pre-Adamites. Consequently the original sin of Adam weighed only on his descendants, and Peyreira supposed that it was his race alone which perished, with the exception of Noah and his family, in the Deluge, which Peyreira contends was partial. This book was condemned and burnt in Paris by the hands of the executioner, and the author, who had taken refuge in Brussels, was there condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities. He appealed to Rome, whither he journeyed, and he was received with favor by Alexander VII., before whom he abjured Calvinism, which he had professed. He died at the age of 82, at Aubervilliers, near Paris, and Moreri wrote the following epigrammatic epitaph for him:-- “La Peyrère ici gît, ce bon Israélite, Huguenot, catholique, enfin pré-Adamite. Quatre religions lui plurent à la fois; Et son indifférence était si peu commune, Qu’après quatre-vingts ans qu’il eut à faire un choix, Le bon homme partit et n’en choisit aucune.”