gin of the world and of man is naturally a problem which has
excited the curiosity of the least developed minds. Every savage race
has its own myths on this subject, most of them bearing the marks of the
childish and crude imagination, whose character we have investigated,
and all varying in amount of what may be called philosophical thought.

All the cosmogonic myths, as distinct from religious belief in a
Creator, waver between the theory of construction, or rather of
reconstruction, and the theory of evolution, very rudely conceived.
The earth, as a rule, is mythically averred to have grown out of some
original matter, perhaps an animal, perhaps an egg which floated on
the waters, perhaps a handful of mud from below the waters. But this
conception does not exclude the idea that many of the things in the
world, minerals, plants and what not, are fragments of the frame of a
semi-supernatural and gigantic being, human or bestial, belonging to
a race which preceded the advent of man.(1) Such were the Titans,
demi-gods, Nurrumbunguttias in Australia. Various members of this race
are found active in myths of the creation, or rather the construction,
of man and of the world. Among the lowest races it is to be noted that
mythical animals of supernatural power often take the place of
beings like the Finnish Wainamoinen, the Greek Prometheus, the Zulu
Unkulunkulu, the Red Indian Manabozho, himself usually a great hare.

(1) Macrobius, Saturnal., i. xx.

The ages before the development or creation of man are filled up, in the
myths, with the loves and wars of supernatural people. The appearance of
man is explained in three or four contradictory ways, each of which
is represented in the various myths of most mythologies. Often man is
fashioned out of clay, or stone, or other materials, by a Maker of all
things, sometimes half-human or bestial, but also half-divine. Sometimes
the first man rises out of the earth, and is himself confused with the
Creator, a theory perhaps illustrated by the Zulu myth of Unkulunkulu,
"The Old, Old One". Sometimes man arrives ready made, with most of the
animals, from his former home in a hole in the ground, and he furnishes
the world for himself with stars, sun, moon and everything else he
needs. Again, there are many myths which declare that man was evolved
out of one or other of the lower animals. This myth is usually employed
by tribesmen to explain the origin of their own peculiar stock of