3.  Cory’s “Fragments,” p. 298.]

{p. 209}

He tells us that—­

“The beginning of all things was a condensed, windy air, or a breeze of thick air, and a chaos turbid and black as Erebus.

“Out of this chaos was generated Môt, which some call Ilus,” (mud,) “but others the putrefaction of a watery mixture.  And from this sprang all the seed of the creation, and the generation of the universe. . . .  And, when the air began to send forth light, winds were produced and clouds, and very great defluxions and torrents of the heavenly waters.”

Was this “thick air” the air thick with comet-dust, which afterward became the mud?  Is this the meaning of the “turbid chaos”?

We turn to the Babylonian legends.  Berosus wrote from records preserved in the temple of Belus at Babylon.  He says: 

“There was a time in which there existed nothing but darkness and an abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous beings, which were produced of a twofold principle.”

Were these “hideous beings” the comets?

From the “Laws of Menu,” of the Hindoos, we learn that the universe existed at first in darkness.

We copy the following text from the Vedas: 

“The Supreme Being alone existed; afterward there was universal darkness; next the watery ocean was produced by the diffusion of virtue.”

We turn to the legends of the Chinese, and we find the same story: 

Their annals begin with “Pwan-ku, or the Reign of Chaos."[1]

[1.  “The Ancient Dynasties of Berosus and China,” Rev. T. P. Crawford, D. D., p. 4.]

{p. 210}

And we are told by the Chinese historians that—­

“P’an-ku came forth in the midst of the great chaotic void, and we know not his origin; that he knew the rationale of heaven and earth, and comprehended the changes of the Darkness and the Light."[1]

He “existed before the shining of the Light."[2] He was “the Prince of Chaos.”

“After the chaos cleared away, heaven appeared first in order, then earth, then after they existed, and the atmosphere had changed its character, man came forth."[3]

That is to say, P’an-ku lived through the Age of Darkness, during a chaotic period, and while the atmosphere was pestilential with the gases of the comet.  Where did he live?  The Chinese annals tell us: 

“In the age after the chaos, when heaven and earth had just separated.”

That is, when the great mass of cloud had just lifted from the earth: 

“Records had not yet been established or inscriptions invented.  At first even the rulers dwelt in caves and desert places, eating raw flesh and drinking blood.  At this fortunate juncture Pan-ku-sze came forth, and from that time heaven and earth began to be heaven and earth, men and things to be men and things, and so the chaotic state passed away."[1]