e regions
were subject; and the inhabitants of the shores and islands of the
Aegean Sea, and of the Italian peninsula, were equally conversant with
the devastations wrought by volcanic outbursts and earthquake shocks. As
great districts were seen to be depopulated by these catastrophies,
might not some even more violent cataclysm of the same kind actually
destroy all mankind, with the animals and plants, in the comparatively
small area then known as 'the world'? The great flood, of which all
these nations appear to have retained traditions, was regarded as only
the last of such destructive cataclysms; and, in this way, there
originated the myth of successive destructions of the face of the earth,
each followed by the creation of new stocks of plants and animals. This
is the doctrine now known as 'Catastrophism,' which we find prevalent in
the earliest traditions and writings of India, Babylonia, Syria and
Greece.

But in ancient Egypt quite another class of phenomena was conspicuously
presented to the early philosophers of the country. Instead of sudden
floods and terrible displays of volcanic and earthquake violence, they
witnessed the annual gentle rise and overflowings of their grand river,
with its beneficent heritage of new soil; and they soon learned to
recognise that Egypt itself--so far as the delta was concerned--was 'the
gift of the Nile.'

From the contemplation of these phenomena, the Egyptian sages were
gradually led to entertain the idea that all the features of the
earth--as they knew it--might have been similarly produced through the
slow and constant action of the causes now seen in operation around
them. This idea was incorporated in a myth, which was suggested by the
slow and gradual transformation of an egg into a perfect, growing
organism. The birth of the world was pictured as an act of incubation,
and male and female deities were invented to play the part of parents to
the infant world. By Pythagoras, who resided for more than twenty years
in Egypt, these ideas were introduced to the Greek philosophers, and
from that time 'Catastrophism' found a rival in the new doctrine which
we shall see has been designated under the names of 'Continuity,'
'Uniformitarianism' or 'Evolution.' How, from the first crude notions of
evolution, successive thinkers developed more just and noble conceptions
on the subject, has been admirably shown by Professor Osborn in his
_From the Greeks to Darwin_ and by Mr Clodd