As to the creation of the living things on the globe, including man, the Oriental idea, which amounted to no explanation at all, but was rather the hiding of utter ignorance behind a screen of positive assertion, has been supplanted in the latter part of the nineteenth century by the scientific explanations of the evolutionists. The theory of evolution, as first formulated in anything like scientific terms, about the close of the eighteenth century, by the elder Darwin, the poet Goethe, and the French philosophical zoölogist Lamarck, and as given such amazing fertility by Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection in 1859, has taken full possession of the field as an explanation of the development of man through a series of lower organisms. But it must not be forgotten that this theory, with all of its revolutionary implications, does not as yet explain in clear scientific terms the origin of that lowliest organism which is the first in its series of living beings. It is for the science of the future to take this remaining step. Meantime, the developmental theory of to-day suffices to substitute in precise terms a scientific explanation of the origin of man for the vagaries of the old-time dreamers; and the more daring thinkers feel that the gap between the inorganic world and the lowest of man’s ancestors is not an impassable barrier to the application of a theory of universal evolution. CHAPTER III COSMOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY--ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS The vague notions of the ancients as to the origin of the world were inseparably linked with their restricted notions as to the present status of the world itself. It is curious to reflect how small a portion of the habitable globe was the theatre of all those human activities, the record of which constitutes ancient history. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Greece, and Italy taken as a whole constitute but a small patch of territory encircling the Mediterranean Sea. Persia and India, stretching away to the East, lay vaguely at the confines of the world as conceived even in relatively late classical times. From a very early day, doubtless, there had been intercommunication between India and the West. Nevertheless, the conquest of Alexander was regarded as extending into regions hitherto utterly unknown, and as opening up a new world to Greek thought. Similarly two centuries later, Cæsar’s invasion of Britain brought regions to the attention of the geographer concerning which only the vaguest notions had been current.