short duration of tradition—no recollection of stone age—celts taken for thunderbolts—stone age in egypt—pal?olithic implements—earliest egyptian traditions—extinct animals forgotten—their bones attributed to giants—chinese and american traditions—traditions of origin of man—philosophical myths—cruder myths from stones, trees, and animals—totems—recent events soon forgotten—autochthonous nations—wide diffusion of prehistoric myths—the deluge—importance of, as test of inspiration—more definite than legend of creation—what the account of the deluge in genesis really says—date—extent—duration—all life destroyed except pairs preserved in the ark—such a deluge impossible—contradicted by physical science—by geology—by zoology—by ethnology—by history—how deluge myths arise—local floods—sea shells on mountains—solar myths—deluge of hasisadra—noah's deluge copied from it—revised in a monotheistic sense at a comparatively late period—conclusion—national view of inspiration.

in passing from the historical period, in which we can appeal to written records and monuments, into that of pal?ontology and geology, where we have to rely on scientific facts and reasons, we have to traverse an intermediate stage in which legends and traditions still cast a dim and glimmering twilight. the first point to notice is that this, like the twilight of tropical evenings, is extremely brief, and fades almost at once into the darkness of night.

it is singular in how short a time all memory is lost of events which are not recorded in some form of writing 179 or inscription, and depend solely on oral tradition. thus it may be safely affirmed that no nation which has passed into the metal age retains any distinct recollection of that of polished stone, and à fortiori none of the pal?olithic period, or of the origins of their own race or of mankind. the proof of this is found in the fact that the stone axes and arrow-heads which are found so abundantly in many countries are everywhere taken for thunderbolts or fairy arrows shot down from the skies. this belief was well-nigh universal throughout the world; we find it in all the classical nations, in modern europe, in china, japan, and india. its antiquity is attested by the fact that neolithic arrow-heads have been found attached as amulets in necklaces from egyptian and etruscan tombs, and pal?olithic celts in the foundations of chald?an temples. in india many of the best specimens of pal?olithic implements were obtained from the gardens of ryots, where they had been placed on posts, and offerings of ghee duly made to them. like so many old superstitions, this still lingers in popular belief, and the common name for the finely-chipped arrow-heads which are so plentifully scattered over the soil from scotland to japan, is that of elf-bolts, supposed to have been shot down from the skies by fairies or spirits.

until the discoveries of boucher-de-perthes were confirmed only half a century ago, this belief was not only that of simple peasants, but of the learned men of all countries, and the volumes are innumerable that have been written to explain how the "cerauni," or stone-celts, taken to be thunderbolts, were formed in the air during storms. they are already described by pliny, and a chinese encyclop?dia says that "some of these lightning stones have the shape of a hatchet, others of a 180 knife, some are made like mallets. they are metals, stones, and pebbles, which the fire of the thunder has metamorphosed by splitting them suddenly and uniting inseparably different substances. on some of them a kind of vitrification is distinctly to be observed."

the chinese philosopher was evidently acquainted with real meteorites and with the stone implements which were mistaken for them, and his account is comparatively sober and rational. but the explanations of the christian fathers and medi?val philosophers, and even of scientific writers down to a very recent period, are vastly more mystical. a single specimen may suffice which is quoted by tylor in his early history of mankind. tollius in 1649 figures some ordinary pal?olithic stone axes and hammers, and tells us that "the naturalists say they are generated in the sky by a fulgurous exhalation conglobed in a cloud by the circumfused humour, and are as it were baked hard by intense heat, and the weapon becomes pointed by the damp mixed with it flying from the dry part, and leaving the other end denser, but the exhalations press it so hard that it breaks out through the cloud and makes thunder and lightning."

but these attempts at scientific explanations were looked upon with disfavour by theologians, the orthodox belief being that the "cerauni" were the bolts by which satan and his angels had been driven from heaven into the fiery abyss. these speculations, however, of later ages are of less importance for our present purpose than the fact that in no single instance can anything like a real historical tradition be found connecting the stone age with that of metals, and giving a true account of even the latest forms of neolithic implements.

181 this is the more remarkable in the case of egypt, where historical records go back so very far, for here, as we have seen in a previous chapter, the relics of a stone age exist in considerable numbers. there is every probability, therefore, that egyptian civilization had been developed, mainly on the spot, from the rude beginnings of a pal?olithic age, through the incipient civilization of the neolithic, into the age of metals, and the advanced civilization which preceded the consolidation of the empire under menes and the commencement of history.[6] and yet no tradition, with a pretence to be historical, goes back farther than with a very dim and nickering light for a few centuries before menes, when the horsheshu, or priests of horus, ruled independent cities, and small districts attached to the temples. there are accounts of some passages of the todtenbuch being taken from old hymns written on goatskin in the time of these horsheshu, and of historical temples built on plans taken from older temples and attributed to thoth; and it seems probable also that the sphynx and its temple may date from the same period. but beyond these few and vague instances, there is nothing to confirm the statement attributed to manetho, that, prior to menes, historical kings had reigned in thebes for 1817 years, in memphis for 1790 years, and in 182 this for 350 years; before whom came heroes and kings for 5813 years, heroes for 1255 years, and gods for 13,900 years.

the disappearance of all historical recollections of a stone age is paralleled by the oblivion of the origin of the remains of the great extinct quaternary animals which were contemporary with man. everywhere we find the fossil bones of the elephant and rhinoceros attributed to monsters and giants, both in the ancient and modern worlds. st. augustine denounces infidels who do not believe that "men's bodies were formerly much greater than now," and quotes, in proof of the assertion, that he had seen himself "so huge a molar tooth of a man, that it would cut up into a hundred teeth of ordinary men,"—doubtless the molar of a fossil elephant. marcus scaurus brought to rome from joppa the bones of the monster who was to have devoured andromeda. the chinese encyclop?dia, already referred to, describes the "fon-shu, an animal which dwells in the extreme cold on the coast of the northern sea, which resembles a rat in shape, but is as big as an elephant, and lives in dark caverns, ever shunning the light. there is got from it an ivory as white as that of an elephant;" evidently referring to the frozen mammoths found in siberia. similar circumstances gave rise to the same myth in south america, and the natives told darwin that the skeletons of the mastodon on the banks of the parana were those of a huge burrowing animal, like the bizchaca or prairie-rat.

numerous similar instances are given by tyler in his early history of mankind, and among the whole multitude of this class of myths, there is only one which has the least semblance of being derived from 183 actual tradition, viz. the bas-relief of the sacrifice of a human victim by a mexican priest, who wears a mask of an animal with a trunk resembling an elephant or mastodon; and certain vague traditions among some of the red indian tribes speak of an animal with an arm protruding from its shoulder. it is more probable, however, that these may have been derived from traditions brought over from asia like the mexican calendar, or be creations of the fancy, like dragons and griffins, inspired by some idea of an exaggerated tapir, than that, in this solitary instance, a mexican priest should have been actually a contemporary of the mammoth or mastodon.

if fossil animals have thus given rise everywhere to legends of giants, fossil shells have played the same part as regards legends of a deluge. these are in many cases so abundant at high levels that they could not fail to be observed, and, if observed, to be attributed to the sea having once covered these levels, and inundated all the earth except the highest peaks. the tradition of an universal deluge is however so important that i reserve it for separate consideration at the end of the present chapter.

if then all memory of a period so comparatively recent as that of the neolithic stone age and of the latest extinct animals was completely lost when the first dawn of history commences, it follows as a matter of course that nothing like an historical tradition survives anywhere of the immensely longer pal?olithic period and of the origin of man. man in all ages has asked himself how he came here, and has indulged in speculations as to his origin. these speculations have taken a form corresponding very much to the stage of culture 184 and civilization to which he had attained. they are of almost infinite variety, but may be classed generally under three heads. those nations which had attained a sufficient degree of culture to personify first causes and the phenomena of nature as gods, attribute the creation of the world and of man to some one or more of these gods; and as they advance further in philosophical reasonings, embellish the myth with allegories embodying the problems of human existence. thus if bel makes man out of clay, and moulds him with his own blood; or jehovah fashions him from dust, and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life; in each case it is an obvious allegory to explain the fact that man has a dual nature, animal and spiritual.

so the myth of the garden of eden, the temptation by the serpent, the trees of knowledge and of life, and the fall of adam, which we see represented on a babylonian cylinder as well as in the second chapter of genesis, is obviously an allegorical attempt to explain what remains to this day the perplexing problem of the origin of evil. these philosophical myths are, however, very various among different nations. thus the orthodox belief of 200,000,000 of hindoos is that mankind were created in castes, the brahmins by an emanation from brahma's head, the warriors from his chest, the traders and artisans from his legs, and the sudras or lowest caste from his feet; obviously an ex post facto myth to account for the institution of castes, and to stamp it with divine authority.

but before reflection had risen to this level, and among the savage and semi-barbarous people of the present day, we find much more crude speculations, which, in the main, correspond with the kindred creeds 185 of animism and totemism. when life and magical powers were attributed to inanimate objects, nothing was more natural than to suppose that stones and trees might be converted into men and women, and conversely men and women into trees and stones. thus we find the stone theory very widely diffused. even with a people so far advanced as the early greeks, it meets us in the celebrated fable of deucalion and pyrrha peopling the earth by throwing stones behind them, which turned into men and women; and the same myth, of stones turning into the first men, meets us at the present day in almost every reliable myth of creation, brought home by missionaries and anthropologists from africa, america, and polynesia. in some cases trees take the place of stones, and transformations of men into both are among the commonest occurrences. from daphne into a laurel, and lot's wife into a pillar of salt, down to the cornish maidens transformed into a circle of stones for dancing on sunday, we find everywhere that wherever natural objects present any resemblance to the human figure, such myths sprung up spontaneously in all ages and countries.

another great school of creation-myths originates in the widespread institution of the totem. it is a step in advance of the pure fetich-worship of stocks and stones, to conceive of animals as having thought and language, and being in fact men under a different form. from this it is a short step to endowing them with magical attributes and supernatural powers, adopting them as patrons of tribes and families, and finally considering them as ancestors. myths of this kind are common among the lower races, especially in america, where many of the tribes considered themselves as 186 descendants of some great bear or elk, or of some extremely wise fox or beaver, and held this belief so firmly, that intermarriage among members of the same totem was considered to be incestuous. the same system prevails among most races at an equally low or lower stage of civilization, as in australia; and there are traces of its having existed among old civilized nations at remote periods. thus the animal-worship of egypt was probably a survival of the old faith in totems, differing among different clans, which was so firmly rooted in the popular traditions, that the priests had to accommodate their religious conceptions to it, as the christian fathers did with so many pagan superstitions. the division of the twelve tribes of israel seems also to have been originally totemic, judging from the old saga in which jacob gives them his blessing, identifying judah with a lion, dan with an adder, and so on. and even at the present day, the crest of the duke of sutherland carries us back to the time when the wild-cat was the badge, and very probably some great and fierce wild-cat the ancestor, in popular belief, of the fighting clan chattan.

but in all these various and discordant myths of the creation of man, it is evident there is nothing which comes within a hundred miles of being a possible historical reminiscence of anything that actually occurred; and they must be relegated to the same place as the corresponding myths of the creation of the animal world and of the universe. they are neither more or less credible than the theories that the earth is a great tortoise floating on the water, or the sky a crystal dome with windows in it to let down the rain, and stars hung from it like lamps to illuminate a tea-garden.

187 even when we come to comparatively recent periods, and have to deal with traditions, not of how races originated, but how they came into the abodes where we find them, it is astonishing how little we can depend on anything prior to written records. most ancient nations fancied themselves autochthonous, and took a pride in believing that they sprang from the soil on which they lived. and this is also the case with ruder races, unless where the migrations and conquests recorded are of very recent date. thus ancient egypt believed itself to be autochthonous, and traced the origin of arts and sciences to native gods. chald?a, according to berosus, was inhabited from time immemorial by a mixed multitude, and though oannes brought letters and arts from the shores of the persian gulf, he taught them to a previously existing population. this is the more remarkable as the name of accad and the form of the oldest accadian hieroglyphics make it almost certain that they had migrated into mesopotamia from the highlands of kurdistan or of central asia. the athenians also and other greek tribes all claimed to be autochthonous, and their legends of men springing from the stones of deucalion, and from the dragon's teeth of cadmus, all point in the same direction. the great aryan races also have no trustworthy traditions of any ancient migrations from asia into europe, or vice versa, and their languages seem to denote a common residence during the formation of the different dialects in those regions of northern europe and southern russia in which we find them living when we first catch sight of them. the only exception to this is in the record in the zendavesta of successive migrations from the pamer or altai, down the oxus and jaxartes into 188 bactria, and from thence into persia. but this is not found in the original portion of the zendavesta, and only in later commentaries on it, and is very probably a legend introduced to exemplify the constant warfare between ormuzd and ahriman. the hindoo vedas contain no history, and the inference that the aryans lived in the punjaub when the rig-veda was composed, and conquered hindostan later, is derived from the references contained in the oldest hymns which point to that conclusion, rather than from any definite historical record. rome again had no tradition of umbrian pile-dwellers descending from neolithic switzerland, expelling iberians, and being themselves expelled by etruscans.

it is singular, considering the almost total absence of genuine historical traditions, how certain myths and usages have been universally diffused, and come down to the present day from a very remote antiquity. the identity of the days of the week, based on a highly artificial and complicated calculation of chald?an astrology, has been already referred to as a striking instance of the wide diffusion of astronomical myths in very early times. many of the most popular nursery tales also, such as jack the giant-killer, jack and the beanstalk, and cinderella, are found almost in the same form in the most remote regions and among the most various races, both civilized and uncivilized, and many of them are obviously derived from the oldest and simplest forms of solar myths.

i come now to the tradition of a deluge, which is most important both on account of its prevalence among a number of different races and nations, often remote from one another, and because it affords the most immediate 189 and crucial test of the claim of the bible to be taken as a literally true and inspired account, not only of matters of moral and religious import, but of all the historical and scientific facts recorded in its pages. the confession of faith of an able and excellent man, the late mr. spurgeon, and adopted by fifteen or twenty other nonconformist ministers, says—

"we avow our firmest belief in the verbal inspiration of all holy scripture as originally given. to us the bible does not merely contain the word of god, but is the word of god."

following this example, thirty-eight clergymen of the church of england have put forward a similar declaration. they say—

"we solemnly profess and declare our unfeigned belief in all the canonical scriptures of the old and new testaments, as handed down to us by the undivided church in the original languages. we believe that they are inspired by the holy ghost; that they are what they profess to be; that they mean what they say; and that they declare incontrovertibly the actual historical truth in all records, both of past events, and of the delivery of predictions to be thereafter fulfilled."

it is perfectly obvious that for those who accept these confessions of faith, not only the so-called "higher biblical criticism," but all the discoveries of modern science, from galileo and newton down to lyall and darwin, are simple delusions. there can be no question that if the words of the old testament are "literally inspired," and "mean what they say," they oppose an inflexible non possumus to all the most certain discoveries of astronomy, geology, zoology, biology, egyptology, assyriology, and other modern sciences. 190 now the account of the deluge in genesis affords the readiest means of bringing this theory to the test, and proving or disproving it, by the process which euclid calls the reductio ad absurdum.

not that other narratives, such as those of the creation in genesis, do not contain as startling contradictions, if we keep in mind the assertion of the orthodox thirty-eight, that the inspired words of the old testament "mean what they say," i.e. that they mean what they were necessarily taken to mean by contemporaries and long subsequent generations; for instance, that if the inspired writer says days defined by a morning and an evening, he means natural days, and not indefinitely long periods. but this is just what the defenders of orthodoxy always ignore, and all the attempts at reconciling the accounts of creation in genesis with the conclusions of science turn on the assumption that the inspired writers do not "mean what they say," but something entirely different. if they say "days," they mean geological periods of which no reader had the remotest conception until the present century. if they say that light was made before the sun, and the earth before the sun, moon, and stars, they really mean, in some unexplained way, to indicate newton's law of gravity, laplace's nebular theory, and the discoveries of the spectroscope. by using words therefore in a non-natural sense, and surrounding them with a halo of mystical and misty eloquence, they evade bringing the pleadings to a distinct and definite issue such as the popular mind can at once understand. but in the case of the deluge no such evasion is possible. the narrative is a specific statement of facts alleged to have occurred at a comparatively 191 recent date, not nearly so remote as the historical records of egypt and chald?a, and which beyond all question must be either true or false. but if false, there is an end of any attempt to consider the whole scientific and historical portions of the bible as written by divine inspiration; for the narrative is not one of trivial importance, but of what is really a second creation of all life, including man, from a single or very few pairs miraculously preserved and radiating from a single centre.[7]

consider then what the narrative of the deluge really tells us. first, as to date. the hebrew bible, from which our own is translated, gives the names of the ten generations from noah to abraham, with the precise dates of each birth and death, making the total number of years 297 from the flood to abraham. for abraham, assuming him to be historical, we have a synchronism which fixes the date within narrow limits. he was a contemporary of chedorlaomer, or khuder-lagomar, known to us from chald?an inscriptions as one of the last of the elamite dynasty, who subverted the old dynasty in the year 2280 b.c., and who reigned for 160 years. abraham's date is, therefore, approximately about 2200 b.c., and that of the deluge about 2500 b.c. the septuagint version assigns 700 years more than that of the hebrew bible for the interval between abraham and noah; but this is only done by increasing 192 the already fabulous age of the patriarchs. accepting, however, this septuagint version, though it has been constantly repudiated by the jews themselves, and by nearly all christian authorities from st. jerome down to archbishop usher, the date of the deluge cannot be carried further back than to about 3000 b.c., a date at least 1000, and more probably 2000, years later than that shown by the records and monuments of egypt and chald?a, when great empires, populous cities, and a high degree of civilization already existed in those countries. the statement of the bible, therefore, is that, at a date not earlier than 2200 b.c., or at the very earliest 3000 b.c., a deluge occurred which "covered all the high hills that were under the whole heaven," and prevailed upon the earth for 150 days before it began to subside; that seven months and sixteen days elapsed before the tops of the mountains were first seen; and that only after twelve months and ten days from the commencement of the flood was the earth sufficiently dried to allow noah and the inmates of the ark to leave it.

naturally all life was destroyed, with the exception of noah and those who were with him in the ark, consisting of his wife, his three sons and their wives, and pairs, male and female, of all beasts, fowls, and creeping things; or, as another account has it, seven pairs of clean beasts and of birds, and single pairs of unclean beasts and creeping things. the statement is absolutely specific: "all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon earth, and every man." and again: "every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both 193 men and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven, and they were destroyed from the earth; and noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark." and finally, when the ark was opened, "god spake unto noah and said, go forth of the ark, thou and thy wife, and thy sons and sons' wives with thee. bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth."

it is evident that such a narrative cannot be tortured into any reminiscence of a partial and local inundation. it might possibly be taken for a poetical exaggeration of some vague myth or tradition of a local flood, if it were found in the legends of some early races, or semi-civilized tribes. but such an interpretation is impossible when the narrative is taken, as orthodox believers take it, as a divinely-inspired and literally true account contained in one of the most important chapters in the history of the relations of man to god. in this view it is a still more signal instance than the fall of adam, of god's displeasure with sin and its disastrous consequences, of his justice and mercy in sparing the innocent and rewarding righteousness; it establishes a new departure for the human race, a new distinction between the chosen people of israel and the accursed canaanites, based not on cain's murder of abel, but on ham's irreverence towards his father; and it introduces a covenant between god and noah, which continued through abraham and david, and became the basis of jewish nationality and of the christian dispensation. if in such a narrative there are manifest errors, the 194 theory of divine inspiration obviously breaks down, and the book which contains it must be amenable to the ordinary rules of historical criticism.

now, that no such deluge as that described in genesis ever took place is as certain as that the earth moves about the sun. physical science tells us that it never could have occurred; geology, zoology, ethnology, and history all tell us alike that it never did occur. physical science tells us two things about water: that it cannot be made out of nothing, and that it always finds its level. in order to cover the highest mountains on the earth and remain stationary at that level for months, we must suppose an uniform shell of water of six miles in depth to be added to the existing water of the earth. even if we take ararat as the highest mountain covered, the shell must have been three miles in thickness over the whole globe. where did this water come from, and where did it go to? rain is simply water raised from the seas by evaporation, and is returned to them by rivers. it does not add a single drop of water to that already existing on the earth and in its atmosphere. the heaviest rains do nothing but swell rivers and inundate the adjacent flat lands to a depth of a few feet, which rapidly subsides. the only escape from this law of nature is to suppose some sudden convulsion, such as a change in the position of the earth's axis of rotation, by which the existing waters of the earth were drained in some latitudes and heaped up in others. but any such local accumulation of water implies a sudden and violent rush to heap it up in forty days, and an equally violent rush to run it down to its old level when the disturbing cause ceased, as it must have done in 150 days. such a disturbance in recent times is not only 195 inconsistent with all known facts, but with the positive statement of the narrative that the whole earth was covered, and that the ark floated quietly on the waters, drifting slowly northwards, until it grounded on ararat. the only other alternative is to suppose a subsidence of the land below the level of the sea. but a subsidence which carried a whole continent 15,000, or even 1500 feet down, followed by an elevation which brought it back to the old level, both accomplished within the space of twelve months, is even more impossible than a cataclysmal deluge of water. such movements are now, and have been throughout all the geological periods, excessively slow, and certainly not exceeding, at the very outside, a few feet in a century.

and, if physical science shows that no such deluge as that described in genesis could have occurred, geology is equally positive that it never did occur. the drift and boulders which cover a great part of europe and north america are beyond all doubt glacial, and not diluvial. they are strictly limited by the extension of glaciers and ice-sheets, and of the streams flowing from them. the high-level gravels in which human remains are found in conjunction with those of extinct animals, are the result of the erosion of valleys by rivers. they are not marine, they are interstratified with beds of sand and silt, containing often delicate fluviatile shells, which were deposited when the stream ran tranquilly, as the coarser gravels were when it ran with a stronger torrent. and the gravels of adjacent valleys, even when separated by a low water-shed, are not intermixed, but each composed of the débris of its own system of drainage, by which small rivers like the 196 somme and the avon have, in the course of ages, scooped out their present valleys to an extent of more than 100 feet in depth and two miles in width. masses of loose sand, volcanic ashes, and other incoherent materials of tertiary formation remain on the surface, which must have been swept away by anything resembling a diluvial wave. and, above all, egypt and other flat countries adjoining the sea, such as the deltas of the euphrates, the ganges, and the mississippi, which must have been submerged by a slight elevation of the sea or subsidence of the land, show by borings, carried in some cases to the depth of 100 feet and upwards, nothing but an accumulation of such tranquil deposits as are now going on, continued for hundreds of centuries, and uninterrupted by anything like a marine or diluvial deposit.

zoology is even more emphatic than geology in showing the impossibility of accepting the narrative of the deluge as a true representation of actual events. whoever wrote it must have had ideas of science as infantile as those of the children who are amused by a toy ark in the nursery. his range of vision could hardly have extended beyond the confines of his own country. and, if a reductio ad absurdum were needed of the fallacies to which reconcilers are driven, it would be afforded by sir j. dawson's comparison of the ark to an american cattle-steamer. recollect that the date assigned to the deluge affords no time for the development of new species and races, since every "living substance was destroyed that was upon the face of the ground," except the pairs preserved in the ark. it is a question, therefore, not of one pair of bears, but of many—polar, grizzly, brown, and 197 all the varieties, down to the pigmy bear of sumatra. so of cattle: there must have been not only pairs of the wild and domestic species of europe, but of the gaur of india, the brahmin bull, the yak, the musk-ox, and of all the many species of buffaloes and bisons. if we take the larger animals only, there must have been several pairs of elephants, rhinoceroses, camels, horses, oxen, buffaloes, elk, deer and antelopes, apes, zebras, and innumerable others of the herbivora, to say nothing of lions, tigers, and other carnivora. let any one calculate the cubic space which such a collection would require for a year's voyage under hatches, and he will see at once the absurdity of supposing that they could have been stowed away in the ark. and this is only the beginning of the difficulty, for all the smaller animals, all birds, and all creeping things have also to be accommodated, and to live together for a year under conditions of temperature and otherwise which, if suited for some, must inevitably have been fatal for others. how did polar bears, lemmings, and snowy owls live in a temperature suited for monkeys and humming-birds?

then there is the crowning difficulty of the food. go to the zoological gardens, and inquire as to the quantity and bulk of a year's rations for elephants, giraffes, and lions, or multiply by 365 the daily allowance of hay and oats for horses, and of grass of green food for bullocks, and he will soon find that the bulk required for food is far greater than that of the animals. and what did the birds and creeping things feed upon? were there rats and mice for the owls, gnats for the swallows, worms and butterflies for the thrushes, and generally a supply of insects for the lizards, toads, and 198 other insectivora, whether birds, reptiles, or mammals? and of the humbler forms which live on microscopic animals and on each other, were they also included in the destruction of "every living substance," and was the earth repeopled with them from the single centre of ararat?

here also zoology has a decisive word to say. the earth could not have been repeopled, within any recent geological time, from any single centre, for in point of fact it is divided into distinct zoological provinces. the fauna of australia, for instance, is totally different from that of europe, asia, and america. how did the kangaroo get there, if he is descended from a pair preserved in the ark? did he perchance jump at one bound from ararat to the antipodes?

ethnology again takes up a limited branch of the same subject, but one which is more immediately interesting to us—that of the variety of human races. the narrative of genesis states positively that "every man in whose nostrils was the breath of life" was destroyed by the flood, except those who were saved in the ark, and that "the whole earth was overspread" of the three sons of noah—shem, ham, and japheth. that is, it asserts distinctly that all the varieties of the human race have descended from one common ancestor, noah, who lived not more than 5000 years ago. consider the vast variety and diversity of human races existing now, and in some of the most typical instances shown by egyptian and chald?an monuments to have existed before noah was born—the black and woolly-haired negroes, the yellow mongolians, the australians, the negritos, the hottentots, the pygmies of stanley's african forest, the esquimaux, the american 199 red indians, and an immense number of others, differing fundamentally from one another in colour, stature, language, and almost every trait, physical and moral. to suppose these to have all descended from a single pair, noah and his wife, and to have "spread over the whole earth" from ararat, since 3000 years b.c., is simply absurd. no man of good faith can honestly say that he believes it to be true; and, if not true, what becomes of inspiration?

if anything were wanting to complete the demonstration, it would be furnished by history. we have perfectly authentic historical records, confirmed by monuments, extending in egypt to a date certainly 2000 years older than that assigned for noah's deluge; and similar records in chald?a probably going back as far.

in none of these is there any mention of an universal deluge as an historical event actually occurring within the period of time embraced by those records. the only reference to such a deluge is contained in one chapter of a chald?an epic poem based on a solar myth, and placed in an immense and fabulous antiquity. in egypt the case is, if possible, even stronger, for here the configuration of the nile valley is such that anything approaching an universal deluge must have destroyed all traces of civilization, and buried the country thousands of feet under a deep ocean. even a very great local inundation must have spread devastation far and wide and been a memorable event in all subsequent annals. when remarkable natural events, such as earthquakes, did occur, they are mentioned in the annals of the reigning king, but no mention is made of any deluge. on the contrary, all the records and monuments confirm the statement made by the priests of heliopolis 200 to herodotus when they showed him the statues of the 360 successive high priests who had all been "mortal men, sons of mortal men," that during this long period there had been no change in the average duration of human life, and no departure from the ordinary course of nature.

when this historical evidence is added to that of geology, which shows that nothing resembling a deluge could have occurred in the valleys of the nile or euphrates without leaving unmistakable traces of its passage which are totally absent, the demonstration seems as conclusive as that of any of the propositions of euclid.

it remains to consider how so many traditions of a deluge should be found among so many different races often so widely separated. there are three ways in which deluge-myths must have been inevitably originated.

1. from tradition of destructive local floods.

2. from the presence of marine shells on what is now dry land.

3. from the diffusion of solar myths like that of izdubar.

there can be no doubt that destructive local floods must have frequently occurred in ancient and prehistoric times as they do at the present day. such an inundation as that of the yang-tse-kiang, which only the other year was said to have destroyed half a million of people, or the hurricane wave which swept over the sunderbunds, must have left an impression which, among isolated and illiterate people, might readily take the form of an universal deluge. and such catastrophes must have been specially frequent in the early post-glacial period, when the ice-dams, which converted many valleys into lakes, were melting.

201 but i am inclined to doubt whether the tradition of such local floods was ever preserved long enough to account for deluge-myths. all experience shows that the memory of historical events fades away with surprising rapidity when it is not preserved by written records. if, as xenophon records, all memory of the great city of nineveh had disappeared in 200 years after its destruction, how can it be expected that oral tradition shall preserve a recollection of prehistoric local floods magnified into universal deluges?

and when the deluge-myths of different nations are examined closely, it generally appears that they have had an origin rather in solar myths or cosmogonical speculations, than in actual facts. for instance, the tradition of a deluge in mexico has often been referred to as a confirmation of the noachian flood. but when looked into, it appears that this mexican deluge was only a part of their mythical cosmogony which told of four successive destructions and renovations of the world by the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. the first period being closed by earthquakes, the second by hurricanes, the third by volcanoes, it did not require any local tradition to ensure the fourth being closed by a flood.

again, deluge-myths must have inevitably arisen from the presence of marine shells, fossil and recent, in many localities where they were too numerous to escape notice. if pal?olithic stone implements and bones of fossil elephants gave rise to myths of thunderbolts and giants, sea-shells on mountain-tops must have given rise to speculations as to deluges. at the very beginning of history, egyptian and chald?an astronomers were sufficiently advanced in science to wish to account for 202 such phenomena, and to argue that where sea-shells were found the sea must once have been. many of the deluge-myths of antiquity, such as that of deucalion and pyrrha, look very much as if this had been their origin. they are too different from the chald?an and biblical deluge, as for instance in repeopling the world by stones, to have been copied from the same original, and they fit in with the very general belief of ancient nations that they were autochthonous.

in a majority of cases, however, i believe it will be found that deluge-myths have originated from some transmission, more or less distorted, of the very ancient chald?an astronomical myths of the passage of the sun through the signs of the zodiac. this is clearly the case in the hindoo mythology, where the fish-god ea-han, or oannes, is introduced as a divine fish who swims up to the ark and guides it to a place of refuge.

the legend in genesis is much closer to the original myth, and in fact almost identical with that of the deluge of hasisadra in the chald?an epic, discovered by mr. george smith among the clay tablets in the british museum. this poem was obviously based on an astronomical myth. it was in twelve chapters, dedicated to the sun's passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac. the adventures of izdubar, like those of heracles, have obvious reference to these signs, and to the sun's birth, growth, summer splendour, decline to the tomb when smitten with the sickness of approaching winter by the incensed nature-goddess, and final new birth and resurrection from the nether world.

the deluge is introduced as an episode told to izdubar during his descent to the lower regions by his ancestor hasisadra, one of the god-kings, who are said 203 to have reigned for periods of tens of thousands of years in a fabulous antiquity. it has every appearance of being a myth to commemorate the sun's passage through the rainy sign of aquarius, just as the contests of izdubar and heracles with leo, taurus, draco, sagittarius, etc., symbolize his passage through other zodiacal constellations. it forms the eleventh chapter of the epic of izdubar, corresponding to the eleventh month of the chald?an year, which was the time of heavy rains and floods.

now, this deluge of hasisadra, as related by berosus, and still more distinctly by smith's izdubar tablets, corresponds so closely with that of noah that no doubt can remain that one is taken from the other. all the principal incidents and the order of events are the same, and even particular expressions, such as the dove finding no rest for the sole of her foot, are so identical as to show that they must have been taken from the same written record. even the name noah is that of nouah, the semitic translation of the accadian god who presided over the realm of water, and navigated the bark or ark of the sun across it, when returning from its setting in the west to its rising in the east. the chief difference is the same as in the chald?an and biblical cosmogonies of the creation of the universe—viz. that the former is polytheistic, and the latter monotheistic. where the former talks of bel, ea, and istar, the latter attributes everything to jehovah or elohim. thus the warning to hasisadra is given in a dream sent by ea, who is a sort of chald?an prometheus, or kindly god, who wishes to save mankind from the total destruction contemplated by the wrathful superior god, bel; while in genesis it is "elohim said unto noah." in genesis 204 the altar is built to the lord, who smells the sweet savour of the sacrifice, while in the chald?an legend the altar is built to the seven gods, who "smelt the sweet savour of sacrifice, and swarmed like bees about it."

the chald?an narrative is more prolix, more realistic, and, on the whole, more scientific. that is, it mitigates some of the more obvious impossibilities of the noachian narrative. instead of an ark, there is a ship with a steersman, which was certainly more likely to survive the perils of a long voyage on the stormy waters of an universal ocean. the duration of the deluge and of the voyage is shortened from a year to a little more than a month; more human beings are saved, as hasisadra takes on board not his own family only, but several of his friends and relations; and the difficulty of repeopling the earth from a single centre is diminished by throwing the date of the deluge back to an immense and mythical antiquity. on the other hand, the moral and religious significance of the legend is accentuated in the hebrew narrative. it is no longer the capricious anger of an offended bel which decrees the destruction of mankind, but the righteous indignation of the one supreme god against sin, tempered by justice and mercy towards the upright man who was "perfect in his generations."

if we had to decide on internal evidence only, there could be little doubt that the hebrew narrative is of much later date than the chald?an. it is, in fact, very much what might be expected from a revised edition of it, made at the date which is assigned by all competent critics for the first collection of the legends and traditions of the hebrew people into a sacred book—viz. at or about the date when the first mention is made of 205 such a book as being discovered in the temple in the reign of josiah. kuenen, wellhausen, and other leading authorities place the date of the elohistic and jehovistic narratives, which include the creation and deluge, even later; and, if not compiled during or after the babylonian captivity, they were certainly revised, and have come down to us in their present form after that event. even the most orthodox critics, such as dillman and canon driver, admit that they were written in the golden age of hebrew literature, and in the spirit of the later prophets, such as isaiah and jeremiah, and do not think it possible to assign to them an earlier date than 800 or 900 b.c., while many parts may be much later.

but the question is not one of internal evidence only, but of the positive fact that, even if these chapters of genesis were written by moses, or about 1350 b.c., and even accepting the septuagint addition of 700 years to the already mythical duration of the lives of the patriarchs, the date of the biblical deluge cannot be carried back beyond 3100 or 3200 b.c., while a practically identical account of the same event is given, as a legendary episode of fabulous antiquity, in an epic poem, based on a solar myth, which was certainly reduced to writing many centuries before the earliest possible date of the scriptural deluge. it is absolutely certain also that the egyptian records and traditions, which extend in an uninterrupted succession of dynasties and kings for at least 2000 years before this alleged universal deluge, know nothing whatever of such an event; and, on the contrary, assume an unvarying continuance of the ordinary laws of nature.

i have dwelt at such length on the deluge because 206 it affords a crucial test of the dogma of divine inspiration for the whole of the bible. the account of the creation may be obscured by forced interpretations and misty eloquence; but there can be no mistake as to the specific and precise statements respecting the second creation of man and of animal life. either they are true or untrue; and the issue is one upon which any unprejudiced mind of ordinary intelligence and information can arrive at a conclusive verdict. if there never was an universal deluge within historical times; if the highest mountains were never covered; if all life was never destroyed, except the contents of the ark; if the whole animal creation, including beasts, birds, and creeping things, never lived together for twelve months cooped up in it; and if the earth was not repeopled with all the varieties of the human race, and all the orders, genera, and species of animal life, from a single centre at ararat, then the bible is not inspired as regards its scientific and historical statements. this, however, in no way affects the question of the inspiration of the religious and moral portions of the bible.

i have sometimes thought how, if i were an advocate stating the case for the inspiration of the bible, i should be inclined to put it. i should start with bishop temple's definition of the first cause, a personal god, with faculties like ours, but so transcendentally greater that he had no occasion to be perpetually patching and mending his work, but did everything by an original impress, which included all subsequent evolution, as the nucleolus in the primitive ovum includes the whole evolution and subsequent life of the chicken, mammal, or man. i should go on to say that the bible has clearly been an important factor in this evolution of 207 the human race; that it consists of two portions—one of moral and religious import, the other of scientific statements and theories, relating to such matters of purely human reason as astronomy, geology, literary criticism, and ancient history; and that these two parts are essentially different. it is quite conceivable that, on the hypothesis of a divine creator, one step in the majestic evolution from the original impress should have been that men of genius and devout nature should write books containing juster notions of man's relations to his maker than prevailed in the polytheisms of early civilizations, and thus gradually educating a peculiar people who accepted these writings as sacred, and preparing the ground for a still higher and purer religion. but it is not conceivable that this, which may be called inspiration, of the religious and moral teaching, should have been extended to closing the record of all human discovery and progress, by teaching, as it were by rote, all that subsequent generations have, after long and painful effort, found out for themselves.

in point of fact, the bible does not teach such truths, for in the domain of science it is full of the most obvious errors, and teaches nothing but what were the primitive myths, legends, and traditions of the early races. it is to be observed also that, on the theory of "original impress," those errors are just as much a part of the evolution of the divine idea as the moral and religious truths. those who insist that all of the bible must be inspired or none, remind me of the king who said that, if god had only consulted him in his scheme of creation, he could have saved him from a good many mistakes. it is not difficult to 208 understand how, even if we assume the theory of inspiration, or of original impress, for the religious portion of the bible, the other or scientific portion should have been purposely left open to all the errors and contradictions of the human intellect in its early strivings to arrive at some sort of conception of the origin of things, and of the laws of the universe. and also that a collection of narratives of different dates and doubtful authorship should bear on the face of them evidence of the writers sharing in the errors and prejudices, and generally adopting points of view of successive generations of contemporaries.

assuming this theory, i can only say for myself that the removal of the wet blanket of literal inspiration makes me turn to the bible with increased interest. it is a most valuable record of the ways of thinking, and of the early conceptions of religion and science in the ancient world, and a most instructive chapter in the history of the evolution of the human mind from lower to higher things. above all, it is a record of the preparation of the soil, in a peculiar race, for christianity, which has been and is such an important factor in the history of the foremost races and highest civilizations. with all the errors and absurdities, all the crimes and cruelties which have attached themselves to it, but which in the light of science and free thought are rapidly being sloughed off, it cannot be denied that the european, and especially our english-speaking races, stand on a higher platform than if gibbon's suggestion had been realized, the arabs had been victorious at tours, and moslem ulemas had been expounding the koran at the university of oxford.