immense and nebulous orb
took on hourly more shape and more certainty of outline. The waters
which fed the seaweed, the madrepores and shellfish and bore the light
flotilla of the nautilus upon their bosom, no longer covered it in its
entirety; they began to sink into beds, and already continents appeared,
where, on the warm slime, amphibious monsters crawled. Then the
mountains were overspread with forests, and divers races of animals
commenced to feed on the grass, the moss, the berries on the trees, and
on the acorns. Then there took possession of cavernous shelters under
the rocks, a being who was cunning to wound with a sharpened stone the
savage beasts, and by his ruses to overcome the ancient denizens of
forest, plain, and mountain.

"Man entered painfully on his kingdom. He was defenceless and naked. His
scanty hair afforded him but little protection from the cold. His hands
ended in nails too frail to do battle with the claws of wild beasts, but
the position of his thumb, in opposition to the rest of his fingers,
allowed him easily to grasp the most diverse objects and endowed him
with skill in default of strength. Without differing essentially from
the rest of the animals, he was more capable than any others of
observing and comparing. As he drew from his throat various sounds, it
occurred to him to designate by a particular inflexion of the voice
whatever impinged upon his mind, and by this sequence of different
sounds he was enabled to fix and communicate his ideas. His miserable
lot and his painstaking spirit aroused the sympathy of the vanquished
angels, who discerned in him an audacity equalling their own, and the
germ of the pride that was at once their glory and their bane. They came
in large numbers to be near him, to dwell on this young earth whither
their wings wafted them in effortless flight. And they took pleasure in
sharpening his talents and fostering his genius. They taught him to
clothe himself in the skins of wild beasts, to roll stones before the
mouths of caves to keep out the tigers and bears. They taught him how to
make the flame burst forth by twirling a stick among the dried leaves
and to foster the sacred fire upon the hearth. Inspired by the ingenious
spirits he dared to cross the rivers in the hollowed trunks of cleft
trees, he invented the wheel, the grinding-mill, and the plough; the
share tore up the earth and the wound brought forth fruit, and the grain
offered to him who ground