trias, Iura, and chalk. That
ocean-life preponderated in this period, is beyond any doubt; while in
general geology gives us more meagre information about the inhabitants of
the air than of the animals of the ocean and land. The flying sauria of
Iura are still characteristic enough to leave at least the possibility that
the winged world, which in value still stands below the mammalia, assisted
in giving to that secondary period its proper type. Finally, the meridian
altitude of the _sixth day_ cannot be anywhere else than where the animals
of the land became the most characteristic inhabitants of the globe, and
where man appeared: and that is the tertiary period of geology, in which
mammalia appeared in great numbers and variety, and at the end of which we
find the first traces of the appearance of man.

We nevertheless do not assign special weight to the establishment of such a
correspondence. The religious value of the idea of a divine week of
creation is rendered perfectly certain to us, if we only find that it is
reconcilable with a pure idea of God. That would not be the case, if we had
to look upon the week of creation as an earthly week; but it is perfectly
so, if the divine week stretches over the whole temporality of the course
of the world. Therewith we can be satisfied. For we have neither
theological nor philosophical nor {310} scientific evidences enough to draw
from these Biblical utterances any _metaphysical conclusions_ in reference
to the relations of God to the temporal development of the world. We should
not dare to contest directly such metaphysical relations: for the human
week, with its day of rest, is such an eminently fortunate and blissful
invitation, the observance of this command is accompanied by such a
striking prosperity in all life-relations of a people, its non-observance
by such an evident curse, and, moreover, the idea of man bearing the image
of God is such a fruitful idea, satisfying equally spirit and mind, that we
have to remember the possibility that the institution of the human week,
with its day of rest, is certainly founded on the real relations of the
life-process of that creature which bears the image of God to the activity
of its divine prototype upon the earth. But nevertheless, we just as little
dare to attempt or to challenge the establishment of such metaphysical
relations: for a theosophistic treatment of numbers seems to us no fruitful
field for the promotion of religion