University of Virginia Library

COSMOGONY,
Or Creation of the World; with a multitude of excellent
Theories, by which the Creation of a World is shown
to be no such difficult Matter as common Folks would
imagine.

Having thus briefly introduced my reader into the world,
and given him some idea of its form and situation, he will
naturally be curious to know from whence it came, and
how it was created. And indeed the clearing up of these
points is absolutely essential to my history, masmuch as
if this world had not been formed, it is more than probable,
that this renowned island, on which is situated the
city of New-York, would never have had an existence.
The regular course of my history, therefore, requires that
I should proceed to notice the cosmogony or formation of
this our globe.

And now I give my readers fair warning, that I am
about to plunge for a chapter or two, into as complete a
labyrinth as ever historian was perplexed withal; therefore,
I advise them to take fast hold of my skirts, and keep
close at my heels, venturing neither to the right hand nor
to the left, lest they get bemired in a slough of unintelligible
learning, or have their brains knocked out by some of
those hard Greek names which will be flying about in all
directions. But should any of them be too indolent or

chicken-hearted to accompany me in this perilous undertaking,
they had better take a short cut round, and wait for
me at the beginning of some smoother chapter.

Of the creation of the world we have a thousand contradictory
accounts; and though a very satisfactory one
is furnished by divine revelation, yet every philosopher
feels himself in honour bound to furnish us with a better.
As an impartial historian, I consider it my duty to notice
their several theories by which mankind have been so
exceedingly edified and instructed.

Thus it was the opinion of certain ancient sages, that
the earth and the whole system of the universe was the
deity himself;[1] a doctrine most strenuously maintained
by Zenophanes and the whole tribe of Eleatics, as also by
Strato and the sect of peripatetic philosophers. Pythagoras
likewise inculcated the famous numerical system of
the monad, dyad, and tryad; and by means of his sacred
quaternary elucidated the formation of the world, the
arcana of nature, and the principles both of music and
morals.[2] Other sages adhered to the mathematical system
of squares and triangles; the cube, the pyramid, and
the sphere; the tetrahedron, the octahedron, the icosahedron,
and the dodecahedron.[3] While others advocated
the great elementary theory, which refers the construction
of our globe and all that it contains to the combinations
of four material elements, air, earth, fire, and water;
with the assistance of a fifth, an immaterial and vivifying
principle.

Nor must I omit to mention the great atomic system
taught by old Moschus before the siege of Troy; revived
by Democritus of laughing memory; improved by Epicurus,
that king of good fellows; and modernized by the
fanciful Descartes. But I decline inquiring whether the
atoms, of which the earth is said to be composed, are
eternal or recent; whether they are animate or inanimate;
whether, agreeably to the opinions of Atheists, they were
fortuitously aggregated; or, as the Theists maintain,
were arranged by a supreme intelligence.[4] Whether, in

fact, the earth be an insensate clod, or whether it be animated
by a soul;[5] which opinion was strenuously maintained
by a host of philosophers, at the head of whom
stands the great Plato, that temperate sage, who threw
the cold water of philosophy on the form of sexual intercourse,
and inculcated the doctrine of Platonic love—an
exquisitely refined intercourse, but much better adapted
to the ideal inhabitants of his imaginary island of Atlantis
than to the sturdy race, composed of rebellious flesh
and blood, which populates the little matter of fact island
we inhabit.

Besides these systems, we have, moreover, the poetical
theogony of old Hesiod, who generated the whole universe
in the regular mode of procreation, and the plausible
opinion of others, that the earth was hatched from the
great egg of night, which floated in chaos, and was cracked
by the horns of the celestial bull. To illustrate this last
doctrine, Burnet, in his theory of the earth,[6] has favoured
us with an accurate drawing and description both of the
form and texture of this mundane egg; which is found
to bear a near resemblance to that of a goose. Such of
my readers as take a proper interest in the origin of this
our planet will be pleased to learn, that the most profound
sages of antiquity, among the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians,
Greeks, and Latins, have alternately assisted at the
hatching of this strange bird; and that their cacklings
have been caught and continued, in different tones and
inflections, from philosopher to philosopher, unto the present
day.

But while briefly noticing long celebrated systems of
ancient sages, let me not pass over, with neglect, those of
other philosophers; which, though less universal than renowned,
have equal claims to attention, and equal chance
for correctness. Thus it is recorded by the Brahmins, in
the pages of their inspired Shastah, that the angel Bistnoo
transformed himself into a great boar, plunged into
the watery abyss, and brought up the earth on his tusks.
Then issued from him a mighty tortoise, and a mighty
snake; and Bistnoo placed the snake erect upon the back

of the tortoise, and he placed the earth upon the head of
the snake.[7]

The negro philosophers of Congo affirm, that the world
was made by the hands of angels, excepting their own
country, which the supreme being constructed himself,
that it might be supremely excellent. And he took great
pains with the inhabitants, and made them very black and
beautiful; and when he had finished the first man, he was
well pleased with him, and smoothed him over the face,
and hence his nose, and the nose of all his descendants,
became flat.

The Mohawk philosophers tell us, that a pregnant woman
fell down from heaven, and that a tortoise took her
upon its back, because every place was covered with
water; and, that the woman, sitting upon the tortoise,
paddled with her hands in the water, and raked up the
earth, whence it finally happened that the earth became
higher than the water.[8]

But I forbear to quote a number more of these ancient
and outlandish philosophers, whose deplorable ignorance,
in despite of all their erudition, compelled them to write
in languages, which but few of my readers can understand;
and I shall proceed briefly to notice a few more intelligible
and fashionable theories of their modern successors.

And first I shall mention the great Buffon, who conjectures
that this globe was originally a globe of liquid
fire, scintillated from the body of the sun, by the percussion
of a comet, as a spark of generated by the collision of
flint and steel. That at first it was surrounded by gross
vapours, which cooling and condensing in process of time,
constituted, according to their densities, earth, water, and
air; which gradually arranged themselves, according to
their respective gravities, round the burning or vitrified
mass that formed their centre.

Hutton, on the contrary, supposes that the waters at
first were universally paramount; and he terrifies himself
with the idea that the earth must be eventually washed
away by the force of rains, rivers, and mountain torrents,
until it is confounded with the ocean, or, in other words,
absolutely dissolves into itself.—Sublime idea! far sur

passing that of the tender hearted damsel of antiquity,
who wept herself into a fountain; or the good dame of
Narbonne in France, who, for a volubility of tongue unusual
in her sex, was doomed to peel five hundred thousand
and thirty-nine ropes of onions, and actually ran out
at her eyes before half the hideous task was accomplished.

Whiston, the same ingenious philosopher who rivalled
Ditton in his researches after the longitude, (for which the
mischief-loving Swift discharged on their heads, a most
savoury stanza,) has distinguished himself by a very admirable
theory respecting the earth. He conjectures that
it was originally a chaotic comet, which, being selected for
the abode of man, was removed from its eccentric orbit,
and whirled round the sun in its present regular motion;
by which change of direction, order succeeded to confusion
in the arrangement of its component parts. The
philosopher adds, that the deluge was produced by an uncourteous
salute from the watery tail of another comet;
doubtless through sheer envy of its improved condition;
thus furnishing a melancholy proof that jealousy may
prevail, even among the heavenly bodies, and discord interrupt
that celestial harmony of the spheres, so melodiously
sung by the poets.

But I pass over a variety of excellent theories, among
which are those of Burnet, and Woodward, and White-hurst;
regretting extremely that my time will not suffer
me to give them the notice they deserve—And shall conclude
with that of the renowned Dr. Darwin. This
learned Theban, who is as much distinguished for rhyme
as reason, and for good natured credulity as serious research;
and who has recommended himself wonderfully
to the good graces of the ladies, by letting them into all
the gallantries, amours, debaucheries, and other topics of
scandal of the court of Flora, has fallen upon a theory
worthy of his combustible imagination. According to his
opinion, the huge mass of choas took a sudden occasion
to explode, like a barrel of gunpowder, and, in that act,
exploded the sun—which, in its flight, by a similar convulsion
exploded the earth—which in like guise exploded
the moon—and thus, by a concatenation of explosions, the
whole solar system was produced, and set most systematically
in motion.[9]

By the great variety of theories here alluded to, every
one of which, if thoroughly examined, will be found surprisingly
consistent in all its parts, my unlearned readers
will perhaps be led to conclude, that the creation of a
world is not so difficult a task as they at first imagined.
I have shown at least a score of ingenious methods in
which a world could be constructed; and, I have no
doubt, that had any of the philosophers above quoted the
use of a good manageable comet, and the philosophical
warehouse, chaos, at his command, he would engage to
manufacture a planet, as good, or, if you would take his
word for it, better than this we inhabit.

And here I cannot help noticing the kindness of providence,
in creating comets for the great relief of bewildered
philosophers. By their assistance more sudden evolutions
and transitions are effected in the system of nature, than
are wrought in a pantomimic exhibition, by the wonder-working
sword of harlequin. Should one of our modern
sages, in his theoretical flights among the stars, ever find
himself lost in the clouds, and in danger of tumbling into
the abyss of nonsense and absurdity, he has but to seize a
comet by the beard, mount astride of its tail, and away
he gallops in triumph, like an enchanter on his hippogriff,
or a Connecticut witch on her broomstick, “to sweep the
cobwebs out of the sky.”

It is an old and vulgar saying, about a “beggar on
horseback,” which I would not for the world have applied
to these reverend philosophers: but I must confess, that
some of them, when they are mounted on one of those
fiery steeds, are as wild in their curvettings as was Phæ
ton, of yore, when he aspired to manage the chariot of
Phœbus. One drives his comet at full speed against the
sun, and knocks the world out of him with mighty
concussion; another, more moderate, makes his comet a
kind of beast of burden, carrying the sun a regular supply
of food and faggots; a third of more combustible disposition,
threatens to throw his comet, like a bombshell, into
the world, and blow it up like a powder magazine; while
a fourth, with no great delicacy to this planet and its inhabitants,
insinuates that some day or other his comet—
my modest pen blushes while I write it—shall absolutely
turn tail upon the world and deluge it with water!—
Surely, as I have already observed, comets were bountifully
provided by providence for the benefit of philosophers
to assist them in manufacturing theories.

And now, having adduced several of the most prominent
theories that occur to my recollection, I leave my judicious
readers at full liberty to choose among them. They
are all serious speculations of learned men—all differ essentially
from each other—and all have the same title to
belief. It has ever been the task of one race of philosophers
to demolish the works of their predecessors, and
elevate more splendid fantasies in their stead, which, in
their turn, are demolished and replaced by the air-castles
of a succeeding generation. Thus it would seem that
knowledge and genius, of which we make such great parade,
consist but in detecting the errors and absurdities of
those who have gone before, and devising new errors and
absurdities, to be detected by those who are to come after
us. Theories are the mighty soap-bubbles with which
the grown-up children of science amuse themselves; while
the honest vulgar stand gazing in stupid admiration, and
dignify these learned vagaries with the name of wisdom!
—Surely Socrates was right in his opinion, that philosophers
are but a soberer sort of madmen, busying themselves
in things totally incomprehensible, or which, if
they could be comprehended, would be found not worthy
the trouble of discovery.

For my own part, until the learned have come to an
agreement among themselves, I shall content myself with
the account handed down to us by Moses; in which I do
but follow the example of our ingenious neighbours of
Connecticut; who at their first settlement proclaimed,
that the colony should be governed by the laws of God—
until they had time to make better.

One thing however appears certain—from the unanimous
authority of the before quoted philosophers, supported
by the evidence of our own senses, (which, though
very apt to deceive us, may be cautiously admitted as additional
testimony,) it appears, I say, and I make the assertion
deliberately, without fear of contradiction, that
this globe really was created, and that it is composed of
land and water. It further appears that it is curiously
divided and parcelled out into continents and islands,
among which I boldly declare the renowned ISLAND OF
NEW-YORK will be found by any one who seeks for it in
its proper place.