to man as means of communication, but were conceived, more
realistically and naively, as essential parts of things, bound up with
their existence. {34} This same fact will explain much of the ritual
of magic. When God says, "Let there be light," light is selected and,
as it were, coerced into existence by the name. As time passed man
became reflective and critical. He had nothing essentially new to
offer, yet he felt dissatisfied with the crude imagery of tradition.
Step by step with the growth of society, we always find the passage
from creation myths built around the idea of spontaneous generation to
the idea of a god who molds men as a potter does his clay, and thence
to a _fiat_ in which the creative will of a supernatural and
transcendent deity finds expression. There is a remarkable similarity
in creation stories, just as we would expect. The same few motives
repeat themselves with local variations.

The oldest of the Greek myths of creation are to be found in Homer and
Hesiod. For Homer, Oceanus is the father of the gods, while Tethys,
called the suckling or nursing one, is the mother. Back of these
august, generative powers, however, lies Night whom even Zeus is afraid
to offend. We must remember that darkness is a presence for early man,
as real as water or air, and that man feared it as mysterious and
threatening. Always we must put aside the knowledge which science has
given us and sink down into this vague world of the past, filled with
tremendous shapes and forces. Hesiod's view is best given in his own
words:

"From chaos were generated Erebos and black Night,
And from Night again were generated Ether and Day,
Whom she brought forth, having conceived from the
embrace of Erebos."

Here we have the same sexual motive at work as among the Egyptians; a
motive which, as we should expect, {35} is well-nigh universal. During
the sixth century there was an efflorescence of creation myths among
the Greeks. These are associated with the name of Orpheus, and are
commonly classed together as Orphic cosmogonies. Soon after,
philosophic speculation began to come into its own and the Greeks "left
off telling tales." Burnet, a famous student of Greek culture, asserts
that "history teaches that science has never existed except among those
peoples which the Greeks have influenced." But we shall leave the
Greeks for the present; it may be that we shall meet them, and their
influence again.