th to reproduce the same sort of
creatures. So living things came up and flourished. The poem expresses
many beautiful ideas, but the underlying conceptions lack the unity
and grandeur that marked Aristotle's work, which later was the potent
influence in shaping men's minds. It died out after a while, only to
awake in the Renaissance with marvelous vitality, starting the world
to think afresh great thoughts that would not die, but would grow from
that time on with ever-widening scope.

Among the Jews and early Christians the stately and beautiful account
in Genesis sufficed for all the needs of minds fully occupied with
other questions. With the growth of philosophy among Christian minds
again came the need of a satisfactory solution. St. Augustine was
probably the greatest of the so-called "Fathers" of the church. His
mind was eminently philosophical, and he was learned in the writings
of the older Greeks. He believed the language of Genesis to mean that
in the beginning God planted in chaos the seed that afterward sprang
up into the heavens and the earth. He further says that the six days
of creation were not days of time, but a series of causes, and that,
in the order described as these six days, God planted in chaos the
various beginnings of things. These in the fullness of time sprang up
into the world as we know it now. The problem was not a question about
which the church cared to trouble itself, and with the oncoming of the
Dark Ages the whole matter dropped nearly out of the thoughts of men.

When the times began to lighten we find the schoolmen, among the
greatest of whom was Thomas Aquinas. Referring especially to the
authority of his master, St. Augustine, he says that it would be easy
mistakenly to believe that the author of Genesis meant to convey the
idea that on each of the six days certain acts of creation were
performed. It is quite evident, thinks Aquinas, that in those early
times God only created the germs of things and put into the earth
powers which should later become active. After the Creator had thus
endowed the earth he rested from the work, which proceeded to develop
under the influence of these first germs.

Nearly four hundred years later, when Europe had finally awakened out
of the deep and refreshing sleep in which it had fortunately forgotten
much of the past, a new era dawned and modern thought began.
Immediately men commenced to busy their minds with broader problems
than they had b