Page:Some Mistakes of Moses.djvu/55

Rh chaos; second, that a god moulded it into form; third, that the breath of a god moved upon the face of the deep; fourth, that a god created simply by saying "Let it be;" fifth, that a god created light before the sun existed.

Nothing can be clearer than that Moses received from the Egyptians the principal parts of his narrative, making such changes and additions as were necessary to satisfy the peculiar superstitions of his own people.

If some man at the present day should assert that he had received from God the theories of evolution, the survival of the fittest, and the law of heredity, and we should afterwards find that he was not only an Englishman, but had lived in the family of Charles Darwin, we certainly would account for his having these theories in a natural way. So, if Darwin himself should pretend that he was inspired, and had obtained his peculiar theories from God, we should probably reply that his grandfather suggested the same ideas, and that Lamarck published substantially the same theories the same year that Mr. Darwin was born.

Now, if we have sufficient courage, we will, by the same course of reasoning, account for the story