rs. The heavens and the
earth were separated. Light appeared long before the sun and moon were
visible, and the day and night were clearly defined. Creation proceeded
in a certain order from vegetable to animal life, and from lower animals
to higher, and last of all man appeared. In heathen systems we find
fragments of this traditional account, and, as a rule, they are more or
less clear in proportion to their nearness to, or departure from, the
great cradle of the human race.[167] Thus Professor Rawlinson quotes
from an Assyrian account of the creation, as found upon the clay tablets
discovered in the palace of Assur-bani-pal, a description of
formlessness, emptiness, and darkness on the deep--of a separation
between the earth and sky--and of the light as preceding the appearance
of the sun. That account also places the creation of animals before that
of man, whom it represents as being formed of the dust of the earth, and
as receiving a divine effluence from the Creator.[168] According to an
Etruscan saga quoted by Suidas, God created the world in six periods of
1,000 years each. In the first, the heavens and the earth; in the
second, the firmament; in the third, the seas; in the fourth, the sun,
moon, and stars; in the fifth, the beasts of the land, the air, and the
sea; in the sixth, man. According to a passage in the Persian Avesta,
the supreme Ormazd created the visible world by his word in six periods
or thousands of years: in the first, the heavens with the stars; in the
second, the water and the clouds; in the third, the earth and the
mountains; in the fourth, the trees and the plants; in the fifth, the
beasts which sprang from the primeval beast; in the sixth, man.[169]

As we get farther away from the supposed early home of the race, the
traditions become more fragmentary and indistinct. The Rig Veda,
Mandala, x., 129, tells us that:

"In the beginning there was neither naught nor aught; There was
neither day nor night nor light nor darkness; Only the EXISTENT ONE
breathed calmly. Next came darkness, gloom on gloom. Next all was
water--chaos indiscrete."[170]

Strikingly similar is the language quoted in a former lecture from the
prayer of a Chinese emperor of the Ming Dynasty. It runs thus: "Of old,
in the beginning, there was the great chaos without form and dark. The
five elements had not begun to revolve, nor the sun and moon to shine.
In the midst thereof there presented itself neit