the evolutionary processes of Nature may not be doubted. The
myths still extant, and even the oldest Assyrian inscriptions
which have been deciphered, reveal the fact that the seeds of the
visible universe were hidden in the "great deep"--that animal
creation sprang from the earth and the sea through the influence
of the sun's rays.

It is now known that the philosophy of an older race involved a
belief in the Eternity of Matter. The abstruse doctrine of
Reincarnation and the Renewal of Worlds seems to have formed the
basis of their philosophy. According to these speculations, a
portion of the earth was destroyed or resolved into its primary
elements every six hundred years, while at the end of each
Kalpia, or great Cycle of several thousand years, the entire
earth was renovated or absorbed into the two fecundating
principles of the universe. These two indivisible forces
represented by Vishnu rested in the water, or brooded on the face
of the deep. When stirred by love for each other they again
became active, and from the germs of a former world, which had
been absorbed by themselves, created again the earth and
everything upon it. In other words, "the earth sprang from the
navel of Vishnu or Brahme." According to the Buddhists of
Ceylon, the universe has perished ten different times, and each
time has been renewed by the operations of Nature, or by the
preservation of germs from a former world. In their mythology
these germs are represented by a parent and a triplicated
offspring. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that this monad
trinity is the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer with their great
parent, the Mother of the Gods, which in process of time came to
be regarded as male. According to Wilford, Hindoo chronology