hen a woman, who personates the creative
spirit or principle, was split into two parts, and the heaven and the
earth produced by the division. Next Belus, the supreme divinity, cut off
his own head, and his blood, trickling down and mingling with the dust of
the earth, produced human creatures having intelligence and spiritual
life. The Phoenician cosmogony presents, first, an ether or a mist diffused
in space. Next, a wind arose, and from this motion proceeded a Spiritual
God, from whom proceeded an egg, which, being divided, produced the
heavens and the earth. Next, the noise of thunder awakened beings into
spiritual life. The Egyptian cosmogony presents a principal divinity,
whose name was Ptah, the world-creating power, who shaped the cosmic egg,
which again appears here, as in the Phoenician. Next, there followed from
Ptah a long succession of gods, with many offices and powers--solar,
telluric and spiritual--from whom, after a time, proceeded _demigods_, and
then from these proceeded heroes, until the link of our humanity was
reached. According to Grote, Grecian mythology opens with the gods prior,
as well as superior, to man; it then descends gradually to heroes and then
to the human race. Along with their gods are presented many monsters,
ultra-human and extra-human, who can't consistently be styled gods, but
who partake with gods and man in the attributes of free-will, conscious
agency and susceptibility of pleasure and pain--such as the Harpies, the
Gorgons, the Sirens, the Sphinx, the Cyclops, the Centaurs, etc. After a
great struggle, or contest, among these wonderful creatures, there arises
a stable government of Zeus, the chief among the gods. Then appears chaos,
then the broad, firm, flat earth, with deep and dark tartarus below, and
from these proceed different divinities and creatures, some grand and
terrible, some simply monsters; their relations to each other violate all
notions of decency and morality; their wars and slaughters, their gross
and abominable crimes issue in successive creative products upon earth,
which terminate at last in the appearance of man.

Next we will give you the cosmogony of the Vedas, as it is presented in
what is known as the mystic hymn of the Vedas. It is _Pantheistic to the
core_. "It is one of the earliest relics of Hindu thought and devotion:"

"Nor Aught nor Naught existed; yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.
What covered