and form from one another; it was and is still an unpsychological violence
to suppose in the human author of the narrative all possible knowledge of
psychical and scientific secrets, and to lift him above the child-like
views of his time concerning the things of this world. But it was by far
the most fruitless undertaking to construct in detail from his words a
picture of the real {308} circumstances of the creation and development of
the world. Attempts of this kind have been often made; but they have
produced nothing but dreams. And certainly the attempt to control and
correct natural investigation by means of such dreams would be like trying
to correct well-established facts of history by the prophecies of a still
earlier period, or even to prove them false. But from the time when natural
science, as it is at present, began to pay attention to the prehistoric
history of the earth and even of the universe, such a comparison has been
possible.

It tells us, it is true, that the Biblical days' works did not follow each
other in the course of earthly and cosmic developments in such a way, that
the one began where the other ceased, but that they passed on in the long
lines of their course, beside one another, and above one another. But
looking upon their _meridian altitudes_, they nevertheless, where we are
able to undertake certain geological comparisons, follow one another
exactly in the same order in which the days follow one another in that
Biblical record. The meridian altitude of the _third day_ (for here the
certainty of geological knowledge first begins for us) has to be looked for
where the continents are formed and the vegetable life preponderates on
earth: and that is the _carboniferous period_. The meridian altitude of the
_fourth day_ must have been reached where for the first time the covering
of vapor and clouds of the earthly atmosphere permanently parted, and sun,
moon, and stars became visible: and geology finds this time in the period
which lies between the carboniferous period and the trias--in the _Permian
period_, as it is called in England, in the _dyas_ of the {309}
fossiliferous and of cupriferous slate and _Zechstein_, as we call it in
Germany. The meridian altitude of the _fifth day_ has to be looked for
where ocean-life, with its sauria and innumerable animals, gave its impress
to organic life on earth, and the air was filled with inhabitants: geology
calls such a time the _secondary period_ of