The "fire-mist" and the mephitic vapors were finally swept away;
another era was preparing. Incorporate in the world substance of which
the planet was made were the seeds and germs of all life. Its crude
material was made manifest in the prodigious vegetable growths, and the
awful corresponding animal life. Birds and beasts and reptiles, each
one more hideously terrible than the others, filled the air, the earth
and the waters of the earth with the abounding life of these horrible
creatures. Into this unaccountable menagerie came also the
foreshadowing of man--a huge hairy creature possessing size and power
to do battle with his animal compeers for supremacy in the seething,
upgrowing land.
This was only the differentiation of the animal-man from the animal per
se--the beginning of the form which stood upon its hind legs. From
such rudimentary forms was evolved intelligence which finally begot the
human soul. This, after vast ages, grew into a state and condition
through which spirit could manifest, and the human race was finally
started on its endless earthly career.
With the birth of the soul came what we call the religious instinct,
and man began to worship natural objects; animals and reptiles, the sun
and finally, superior personalities were thought to be gods. The
"phallic worship," worship of the human organs of creative power, gave
the males great prominence. The female, woman, the mere matrix was
considered, from the first, of far less importance. No one stopped to
think, what is one without the other in the great world processes.
Nature, ever on the alert so as not to lose any and every possible
representation of her power, buried here and there specimens of her
handiwork, and the exhumed remains of prehistoric monsters are even now
being restored and labelled with such titles as our modern scientists
have been able to invent to somewhat describe the size, the form, and
the habits of these long extinct manifestations of the beginnings of
life on this earth.
Among these, too, have also been found the bones of huge human-like
beings whose decadent progeny are still alive in limited number.
The gorilla is still the terror of some of the wild places of the
earth; as he booms his way through the impenetrable forests, he sends
forth his note of warning, beating his great hairy breast, and all
living things flee before him. Fancy what the awful first man--his
progenitor--must have been! Science has never yet been able to
discover the probable length of time it required for this crude age to
endure in order to lay the foundation of the world; for time was not,
and existence was recorded only by ages and aeons. But seven times
their infernal progeny were nearly all swept off the planet by awful
cataclysms and the whole affair had to be begun over again.