Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/540

 A later narrative ascribes creation to the god Prajâpati, who, it is said, having the desire to multiply himself, underwent the requisite austerities, and then produced earth, air, and heaven (A. B., vol. ii. p. 372).

We now return to Genesis, which proceeds to its second problem: the creation of living creatures and of man. This is solved in two distinct fashions by two different writers. The first relates that on the fifth day God said, "Let the waters swarm with the swarming of animals having life, and let birds fly to and fro on the earth, on the face of the vault of the heavens." Having thus produced the inhabitants of the ocean and air on the fifth day, he produced those of earth on the sixth. On this day too he made man in his own image, and created them male and female. The whole of his work was now finished, and on the seventh day he enjoyed repose from his creative exertions, for which reason he blessed the seventh day (Gen. 1-ii. 3).

Here the first account of creation ends; the second begins with a descriptive title at the fourth verse of the second chapter. The writer of this version, unlike his predecessor, instead of ascribing the creation of man to the immediate fiat of Elohim, describes the process as resembling one of manufacture. God formed the human figure out of the dust of the earth, and then blew life into it, a conception drawn from the widespread notion of the identity of breath with life. Again the narrator of the second story varies from the narrator of the first about the creation of the sexes. In the first, the male and female are made together. In the second, a deep sleep falls upon the man, during which God takes out a rib from his side and makes the woman out of it. Generally speaking, it may be remarked that the former writer moves in a more transcendental sphere than the latter. He likes to conceive the origin of the world, with all its flora and all its fauna, as arising from the simple power of the word of God. How they arise he never troubles himself to say. The latter is more terrestrial. God with him is like a powerful artist; extremely skilled indeed in dealing with his materials, but nevertheless obliged to adapt his proceedings to their nature and capabilities. This author delights in the con