The "fire-mist" and the mephitic vapors were finally swept away; another era was preparing. Incorporate in the world substance of which the planet was made were the seeds and germs of all life. Its crude material was made manifest in the prodigious vegetable growths, and the awful corresponding animal life. Birds and beasts and reptiles, each one more hideously terrible than the others, filled the air, the earth and the waters of the earth with the abounding life of these horrible creatures. Into this unaccountable menagerie came also the foreshadowing of man—a huge hairy creature possessing size and power to do battle with his animal compeers for supremacy in the seething, upgrowing land.

This was only the differentiation of the animal-man from the animal per se—the beginning of the form which stood upon its hind legs. From such rudimentary forms was evolved intelligence which finally begot the human soul. This, after vast ages, grew into a state and condition through which spirit could manifest, and the human race was finally started on its endless earthly career.

With the birth of the soul came what we call the religious instinct, and man began to worship natural objects; animals and reptiles, the sun and finally, superior personalities were thought to be gods. The "phallic worship," worship of the human organs of creative power, gave the males great prominence. The female, woman, the mere matrix was considered, from the first, of far less importance. No one stopped to think, what is one without the other in the great world processes.

Nature, ever on the alert so as not to lose any and every possible representation of her power, buried here and there specimens of her handiwork, and the exhumed remains of prehistoric monsters are even now being restored and labelled with such titles as our modern scientists have been able to invent to somewhat describe the size, the form, and the habits of these long extinct manifestations of the beginnings of life on this earth.

Among these, too, have also been found the bones of huge human-like beings whose decadent progeny are still alive in limited number.

The gorilla is still the terror of some of the wild places of the earth; as he booms his way through the impenetrable forests, he sends forth his note of warning, beating his great hairy breast, and all living things flee before him. Fancy what the awful first man—his progenitor—must have been! Science has never yet been able to discover the probable length of time it required for this crude age to endure in order to lay the foundation of the world; for time was not, and existence was recorded only by ages and aeons. But seven times their infernal progeny were nearly all swept off the planet by awful cataclysms and the whole affair had to be begun over again.