Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/558

 478 pose of explaining the names of the gods by an etymological play, but that this play upon words was introduced at a later period into the myth, the fundamental thought of which was much older than this embellishment.

The conception, which appears strange to people who have grown up under the influence of modern thought, viz., that the male semen alone is sufficient for the creation of the gods, loses every remarkable feature in the light of the ancient and mediæval ideas concerning the physiological processes of propagation. As late as 1677, after Ludwig von Ham discovered the spermatozoa in the male semen, the basis of generation and development was sought in them alone, the female organs being looked upon as breeding-places only. That such opinions were held at that time was partly due to the influence of a semi-religious conception upon the explanation of a purely physiological process. According to the theory of evolution or preformation which prevailed in the 17th century, there occurred no new formation in the development of an organism, but only a growth or unfolding of parts which had been preformed and were complete from eternity but of minute size. To the adherents of this theory the only question could be whether these preformed beings were present in the egg and received the impulse for development by impregnation, as was asserted by the ovulists, or if, according to the animalculists, they were contained in the semen and found suitable soil for development in the female body. Such mystical thoughts were remote from the ideas of antiquity, but on the basis of the then prevailing knowledge, or rather ignorance, of nature, the notion was readily reached that the male semen could develop not only in the female, but also on some other nutritive soil, which conception is presumed in our myth.

In its fundamental features, our creation myth has all the marks of a very ancient origin. It appears much older than those Egyptian legends on the same sabject which have been hitherto known. This appears mainly from the simple narrative form, which is free from the syncretism which the other creation myths usually contain when, starting from pantheistic conceptions, they make all the gods equal to the Creator, and make them emanations of him, instead of