PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH. 781 



explanation of the universality or nearly so of the tradition of 

 a great flood among all branches of the human race. The late 

 eminent French scholar Lenormant marshaled and collated the 

 evidence on this subject not long ago, and came to the conclusion 

 that a tradition so wide-spread, if not actually universal, must 

 have arisen from the memory of some great catastrophe which 

 did actually take place, and had left an indelible impression on 

 the progenitors of every race. Prof. Huxley takes no notice 

 whatever of this argument, although the fact on which it rests is 

 fairly stated in a careful and temperate article by Dr. A. Geikie, 

 upon the Deluge, to which the professor himself refers.* No hy- 

 pothesis which does not take notice of this fact can rest on ade- 

 quate scientific reasoning. 



The question then naturally arises whether it is or is not pos- 

 sible that there may have been, since the birth of man, some great 

 catastrophe far more wide-spread than the inundations of any 

 river; and whether the narrative in Genesis of the Flood may 

 not be the account of this catastrophe told in its religious aspect, 

 just as the previous narrative of Creation is an account of that 

 (to us) inconceivable operation told in the same connection that 

 is to say, in its connection with the final causes of the Divine gov- 

 ernment and action. 



Now, in dealing with this question scientifically there are three 

 things which must be done : first, there must be a careful view 

 given of the purely physical phenomena which are really of neces- 

 sity involved in the form of the narrative in Genesis as it has 

 come down to us ; secondly, there must be another view given, as 

 careful and complete, of any conclusions relative to the subject 

 which have been really established by geology or by any other 

 branch of the physical sciences; and, thirdly, there must be a 

 frank and free confession of the ignorances of science of the 

 problems which it sees but which hitherto it has failed to solve, 

 and of the unexhausted possibilities of physical causation which 

 lie wholly unknown behind them. Prof. Huxley's article does not 

 comply with any one of these conditions. He does not state fairly, 

 but on the contrary most unfairly, what the narrative in Genesis 

 does of necessity involve. He does not set forth fairly what are 

 the related facts which geology may claim to have established ; 

 while above all with regard to the ignorances of science, he 

 seems wholly unconscious even of that sober estimate of his fa- 

 vorite agnosticism which true science impresses on us all. 



He starts with songs of triumph over the very general aban- 

 donment of the idea that the Deluge could have been universal, 

 complete, and simultaneous over the whole globe. Pie might as 



* Kitto's Encycl. of Bibl. Lit. Deluge. 



