outburst of vegetable life as spring returns,
naturally adopted one of these lines of speculation. From the dead,
bare ground they witnessed the upspringing of all the wondrous beauty of
the plant-world, and, in their ignorance of the chemistry of vegetable
life, they imagined that the herbs, shrubs and trees are all alike built
up out of the materials contained in the soil from which they grow. The
recognition of the fact that animals feed on plants, or on one another,
led to the obvious conclusion that the _ultimate_ materials of animal,
as well as of vegetable, structures were to be sought for in the soil.
And this view was confirmed by the fact that, when life ceases in plants
or animals, all alike are reduced to 'dust' and again become a part of
the soil--returning 'earth to earth.' In groping therefore for an
explanation of the origin of living things, what could be more natural
than the supposition that the first plants and animals--like those now
surrounding us--were made and fashioned from the soil, dust or
earth--all had been 'clay in the hands of a potter.' The widely diffused
notion that man himself must have been moulded out of _red_ clay is
probably accounted for by the colour of our internal organs.

Thus originated a large class of legendary stories, many of them of a
very grotesque character. Even in many mediaeval sculptures, in this
country and on the continent, the Deity is represented as moulding with
his hands the semblance of a human figure out of a shapeless lump of
clay.

But among the primitive hunters and herdsmen a very different line of
speculation appears to have originated, for by their occupations they
were continually brought into contact with an entirely different class
of phenomena. They could not but notice that the creatures which they
hunted or tended, and slew, presented marked resemblances to
themselves--in their structures, their functions, their diseases, their
dispositions, and their habits. When dogs and horses became the servants
and companions of men, and when various beasts and birds came to be kept
as pets, the mental and even the moral processes characterising the
intelligence of these animals must have been seen by their masters to be
identical in kind with those of their own minds. Do we not even at the
present day compare human characteristics with those of animals, the
courage of the lion, the cunning of the fox, the fidelity of the dog,
and the parental affection of