Could the reason rest content with the belief that the universe always
was as it now is, it would save much beating of brains. Such is the
comfortable condition of the Eskimos, the Rootdiggers of California, the
most brutish specimens of humanity everywhere. Vain to inquire their
story of creation, for, like the knife-grinder of anti-Jacobin renown,
they have no story to tell. It never occurred to them that the earth had
a beginning, or underwent any greater changes than those of the
seasons.[193-1] But no sooner does the mind begin to reflect, the
intellect to employ itself on higher themes than the needs of the body,
than the law of causality exerts its power, and the man, out of such
materials as he has at hand, manufactures for himself a Theory of
Things.

What these materials were has been shown in the last few chapters. A
simple primitive substance, a divinity to mould it--these are the
requirements of every cosmogony. Concerning the first no nation ever
hesitated. All agree that before time began _water_ held all else in
solution, covered and concealed everything. The reasons for this assumed
priority of water have been already touched upon. Did a tribe dwell near
some great sea others can be imagined. The land is limited, peopled,
stable; the ocean fluctuating, waste, boundless. It insatiably swallows
all rains and rivers, quenches sun and moon in its dark chambers, and
raves against its bounds as a beast of prey. Awe and fear are the
sentiments it inspires; in Aryan tongues its synonyms are the _desert_
and the _night_.[194-1] It produces an impression of immensity,
infinity, formlessness, and barren changeableness, well suited to a
notion of chaos. It is sterile, receiving all things, producing nothing.
Hence the necessity of a creative power to act upon it, as it were to
impregnate its barren germs. Some cosmogonies find this in one, some in
another personification of divinity. Commonest of all is that of the
wind, or its emblem the bird, types of the breath of life.

Thus the venerable record in Genesis, translated in the authorized
version "and the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters," may
with equal correctness be rendered "and a mighty wind brooded on the
surface of the waters," presenting the picture of a primeval ocean
fecundated by the wind as a bird.[195-1] The eagle that in the Finnish
epic of Kalewala floated over the waves and hatched the land, the egg
that in Chinese legend swam hi