According to this creationist theory, then, God has “made the world out of nothing.” It is supposed that God (a rational, but immaterial, being) existed by himself for an eternity before he resolved to create the world. Some supporters of the theory restrict God’s creative function to one single act; they believe that this extramundane God (the rest of whose life is shrouded in mystery) created the substance of the world in a single moment, endowed it with the faculty of the most extensive evolution, and troubled no further about it. This view may be found, for instance, in the English Deists in many forms. It approaches very close to our monistic theory of evolution, only abandoning it in the one instant in which God accomplished the creation. Other creationists contend that God did not confine himself to the mere creation of matter, but that he continues to be operative as the “sustainer and ruler of the world.” Different modifications of this belief are found, some approaching very close to pantheism and others to complete theism. All these and similar forms of belief in creation are incompatible with the law of the persistence of matter and force; that law knows nothing of a beginning.
It is interesting to note that E. du Bois-Reymond has identified himself with this cosmological creationism in his latest speech (on “Neovitalism,” 1894). “It is more consonant with the divine omnipotence,” he says, “to assume that it created the whole material of the world in one creative act unthinkable ages ago in such wise that it should be endowed with inviolable laws to control the origin and the progress of living things—that, for instance, here on earth rudimentary organisms should arise from which, without further assistance, the whole of living nature could be evolved, from a primitive bacillus to the graceful palm-wood, from a primitive micrococcus to Solomon’s lovely wives or to the brain of Newton. Thus we are content with one creative day, and we derive organic nature mechanically, without the aid of either old or new vitalism.” Du Bois-Reymond here shows, as in the question of consciousness, the shallow and illogical character of his monistic thought.
According to another still prevalent theory, which may be called “ontological creationism,” God not only created the world at large, but also its separate contents. In the Christian world the old Semitic legend of creation, taken from Genesis, is still very widely accepted; even among modern scientists it finds an adherent here and there. I have fully entered into the criticism of it in the first chapter of my Natural History of Creation. The following theories may be enumerated as the most interesting modifications of this ontological creationism:
I. Dualistic creation.—God restricted his interference to two creative acts. First he created the inorganic world, mere dead substance, to which alone the law of energy applies, working blindly and aimlessly in the mechanism of material things and the building of the mountains; then God attained intelligence and communicated it to the purposive intelligent forces which initiate and control organic evolution.[26]
II. Trialistic creation.—God made the world in three creative acts: (a) the creation of the heavens—the extra-terrestrial world, (b) the creation of the earth (as the centre of the world) and of its living inhabitants, and (c) the creation of man (in the image and likeness of God). This dogma is still widely prevalent among theologians and other “educated” people; it is taught as the truth in many of our schools.
III. Heptameral creation; a creation in seven days (teste Moses).—Although few educated people really believe in this Mosaic myth now, it is still firmly impressed on our children in the biblical lessons of their earliest years. The numerous attempts that have been made, especially in England, to harmonize it with the modern theory of evolution have entirely failed. It obtained some importance in science when Linné adopted it in the establishment of his system, and based his definition of organic species (which he considered to be unchangeable) on it: “There are as many different species of animals and plants as there were different forms created in the beginning by the Infinite.” This dogma was pretty generally held until the time of Darwin (1859), although Lamarck had already proved its untenability in 1809.
IV. Periodic creation.—At the beginning of each period of the earth’s history the whole population of animals and plants was created anew, and destroyed by a general catastrophe at its close; there were as many general creative acts as there are distinct geological periods (the catastrophic theory of Cuvier [1818] and Louis Agassiz [1858]). Palæontology, which seemed to support this theory in its more imperfect stage, has since completely refuted it.
V. Individual creation.—Every single man—and every individual animal and plant—does not arise by a natural process of growth, but is created by the favor of God. This view of creation is still often met with in journals, especially in the “births” column. The special talents and features of our children are often gratefully acknowledged to be “gifts of God”; their hereditary defects fit into another theory.
The error of these creation-legends and the cognate belief in miracles must have been apparent to thoughtful minds at an early period; more than two thousand years ago we find that many attempts were made to replace them by a rational theory, and to explain the origin of the world by natural causes. In the front rank, once more, we must place the leaders of the Ionic school, with Democritus, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Aristotle, Lucretius, and other ancient philosophers. The first imperfect attempts which they made astonish us, in a measure, by the flashes of mental light in which they anticipate modern ideas. It must be remembered that classical antiquity had not that solid groundwork for scientific speculation which has been provided by the countless observations and experiments of modern scientists. During the Middle Ages—especially during the domination of the papacy—scientific work in this direction entirely ceased. The torture and the stake of the Inquisition insured that an unconditional belief in the Hebrew mythology should be the final answer to all the questions of creation. Even the phenomena which led directly to the observation of the facts of evolution—the embryology of the plant and the animal, and of man—remained unnoticed, or only excited the interest of an occasional keen observer; but their discoveries were ignored or forgotten. Moreover, the path to a correct knowledge of natural development was barred by the dominant theory of preformation, the dogma which held that the characteristic form and structure of each animal and plant were already sketched in miniature in the germ (cf. [p. 54]).