In all this narrative I can discover nothing which differentiates it, in principle, from other ancient cosmogonies, except the rejection of all gods, save the vague, yet anthropomorphic, Elohim, and the assigning to them anteriority and superiority to the world. It is as utterly irreconcilable with the assured truths of modern science, as it is with the account of the origin of man, plants, and animals given by the writer of the second chief constituent of the Hexateuch in the second chapter of Genesis. This extraordinary story starts with the assumption of the existence of a rainless earth, devoid of plants and herbs of the field. The creation of living beings begins with that of a solitary man; the next thing that happens is the laying out of the Garden of Eden, and the causing the growth from its soil of every tree "that is pleasant to the sight and good for food"; the third act is the formation out of the ground of "every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air"; the fourth and last, the manufacture of the first woman from a rib, extracted from Adam, while in a state of anaesthesia. Yet there are people who not only profess to take this monstrous legend seriously, but who declare it to be reconcilable with the Elohistic account of the creation! FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: _The Nineteenth Century,_ 1886.] [Footnote 2: Both dolphins and dugongs occur in the Red Sea, porpoises and dolphins in the Mediterranean; so that the "Mosaic writer" may have been acquainted with them.] [Footnote 3: I said nothing about "the greater number of schools of Greek philosophy," as Mr. Gladstone implies that I did, but expressly spoke of the "founders of Greek philosophy."] [Footnote 4: See Heinze, _Die Lehre vom Logos,_ p. 9 _et seq._] [Footnote 5: Reprinted in _Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews,_ 1870.] [Footnote 6: "Ancient," doubtless, but his antiquity must not be exaggerated. For example, there is no proof that the "Mosaic" cosmogony was known to the Israelites of Solomon's time.] [Footnote 7: When Jeremiah (iv. 23) says, "I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was waste and void," he certainly does not mean to imply that the form of the earth was less definite, or its substance less solid, than before.] [Footnote 8: In looking through the delightful volume recently published by the Astronomer-Royal for Ireland, a day or two ago, I find the following remarks on the nebular hypothesis, which I should have been glad to quote in my text if I had known them sooner:--