the origin of human beings out of non-human creatures who were of
various forms; some of them were representatives of animals, others of
plants, but in all cases they are to be regarded as intermediate stages
in the transition of an animal or plant ancestor into a human individual
who bore its name as that of his or her totem." (Baldwin Spencer and
F.J. Gillen, "Native Tribes of Central Australia", pages 391 sq.) In a
sense these speculations of the Arunta on their own origin may be said
to combine the theory of creation with the theory of evolution; for
while they represent men as developed out of much simpler forms of life,
they at the same time assume that this development was effected by the
agency of two powerful beings, whom so far we may call creators. It is
well known that at a far higher stage of culture a crude form of
the evolutionary hypothesis was propounded by the Greek philosopher
Empedocles. He imagined that shapeless lumps of earth and water, thrown
up by the subterranean fires, developed into monstrous animals, bulls
with the heads of men, men with the heads of bulls, and so forth; till
at last, these hybrid forms being gradually eliminated, the various
existing species of animals and men were evolved. (E. Zeller, "Die
Philosophie der Griechen", I.4 (Leipsic, 1876), pages 718 sq.; H. Ritter
et L. Preller, "Historia Philosophiae Graecae et Romanae ex fontium
locis contexta" 5, pages 102 sq. H. Diels, "Die Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker" 2, I. (Berlin, 1906), pages 190 sqq. Compare Lucretius "De
rerum natura", V. 837 sqq.) The theory of the civilised Greek of Sicily
may be set beside the similar theory of the savage Arunta of Central
Australia. Both represent gropings of the human mind in the dark abyss
of the past; both were in a measure grotesque anticipations of the
modern theory of evolution.

In this essay I have made no attempt to illustrate all the many various
and divergent views which primitive man has taken of his own origin. I
have confined myself to collecting examples of two radically different
views, which may be distinguished as the theory of creation and the
theory of evolution. According to the one, man was fashioned in his
existing shape by a god or other powerful being; according to the other
he was evolved by a natural process out of lower forms of animal life.
Roughly speaking, these two theories still divide the civilised world
between them. The partisans of each can appeal in support o