Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/639

Rh now before us; that it is not an account of the extinct species which we should consider the Mosaic writer as intending to convey; that while his words are capable of covering them, as the oikoumenè of the New Testament covers the red and yellow man, the rules of rational construction recommend and require our assigning to them a more limited meaning, which I will presently describe.

Another material point in Professor Huxley's interpretation appears to me to lie altogether beyond the natural force of the words, and to be of an arbitrary character. He includes in it the proposition that the production of the respective orders was effected (p. 457) during each of "three distinct and successive periods of time; and only during those periods of time;" or again, in one of these, "and not at any other of these;" as, in a series of games at chess, one is done before another begins; or as in a "march-past," one regiment goes before another comes. No doubt there may be a degree of literalism which will even suffice to show that, as "every winged fowl" was produced on the fourth day of the Hexaemeron, therefore the birth of new fowls continually is a contradiction to the text of Genesis. But does not the equity of common sense require us to understand simply that the order of "winged fowl," whatever that may mean, took its place in creation at a certain time, and that from that time its various component classes were in course of production? Is it not the fact that in synoptical statements of successive events, distributed in time for the sake of producing easy and clear impressions, general truth is aimed at, and periods are allowed to overlap? If, with such a view, we arrange the schools of Greek philosophy in numerical order, according to the dates of their inception, we do not mean that one expired before another was founded. If the archæologist describes to us as successive in time the ages of stone, bronze, and iron, he certainly does not mean that no kinds of stone implement were invented after bronze began, or no kinds of bronze after iron began. When Thucydides said that the ancient limited monarchies were succeeded by tyrannies, he did not mean that all the monarchs died at once, and a set of tyrants, like Deucalion's men, rose up and took their places. Woe be, I should say, to any one who tries summarily to present in series the phases of ancient facts, if they are to be judged under the rule of Professor Huxley.

Proceeding, on what I hold to be open ground, to state my own idea of the true key to the meaning of the Mosaic record, I suggest that