duration, and the urgency
of escaping from the weariness of thinking it, led to the construction
of the myth of the Creation. Man devised it so that he might be able to
say, "in the beginning." But a new difficulty met him at the
threshold--as change must be in existence, "we cannot think of a change
from non-existence to existence." His only refuge was to select some
apparently primordial, simple, homogeneous substance from which, by the
exertion of volition, things came into being. The one which most
naturally suggested itself was _water_.[167-1] This does in fact cover
and hide the land, and the act of creation was often described as the
emerging of the dry land from the water; it dissolves and wears away the
hard rock; and, diminishing all things, itself neither diminishes nor
increases. Therefore nearly all cosmogonical myths are but variations of
that one familiar to us all: "And God said, Let the waters under the
heaven be gathered together in one place, and let the dry land appear;
and it was so." The manifestation of the primordial energy was supposed
to have been akin to that which is shown in organic reproduction. The
myths of the primeval egg from which life proceeded, of the mighty bird
typical of the Holy Spirit which "brooded" upon the waters, of Love
developing the Kosmos from the Chaos, of the bull bringing the world
from the waters, of Protogonus, the "egg-born," the "multispermed," and
countless others, point to the application of one or the other, or of
both these explanations.[167-2]

In them the early thinkers found some rest: but not for long. The
perplexity of the presence of this immediate order of things seemed
solved; but another kept obtruding itself: what was going on before that
"beginning?" Vain to stifle the inquiry by replying, "nothing."[168-1]
For time, which knows no beginning, was there, still building, still
destroying; nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it. What
then is left but the conclusion of the Preacher: "That which hath been,
is now; and that which is to be, hath already been?" Regarding time as a
form of force, the only possible history of the material universe is
that it is a series of destructions and restorations, force latent
evolving into force active or energy, and this dissipated and absorbed
again into latency.

Expressed in myths, these destructions and restorations are the Epochs
of Nature. They are an essential part of the religious traditions of