786 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



looked by ordinary people on the shore."* I say he stumbles 

 upon it, because he mentions it only in so far as it comes handy 

 for the purpose of showing the inconsistencies of the popular no- 

 tions of heaped-up waters upon a steady land. But he does not 

 deal with it or consider it in its true connection namely, as show- 

 ing that this popular notion finds no support in the Hebrew nar- 

 rative. Dr. Geikie's early paper on the Deluge, written not lately 

 but some thirty years ago, stands, as regards this, in creditable 

 contrast with the heedless representations of Prof. Huxley. Dr. 

 Geikie did, indeed, fall apparently into the same strange error of 

 holding that every partial deluge must of necessity have involved 

 a universal one, an argument which rests wholly on the notion 

 that any such deluge must have been caused by a heaping up of 

 water over a stationary land. But Dr. Geikie, with characteristic 

 sagacity, emphasizes and dwells upon the fact that the Hebrew 

 narrative does not suppose any violent or convulsive action, and 

 that in this respect the popular imagination of it has been quite 

 unjustified.f But even Dr. Geikie's paper, fair and candid as it 

 intended to be, does not point out the unquestionable conclusions, 

 that the whole idea of the narrative in Genesis assumes a deluge 

 caused by a slow and gradual subsidence of the land, and not 

 caused by any capture of it by some sudden assault and battery 

 of the sea. This conclusion does not depend on the true meaning 

 of archaic and obscure expression, such as the " breaking up of 

 the fountains of the great deep," which are almost incapable of 

 an exact physical interpretation. It depends on the structure 

 of the whole narrative, and on the incidents which it includes. 

 Its importance does not lie in any question touching the sources 

 of that narrative, or the conceptions entertained by those who 

 have handed it down. Its importance depends on the sugges- 

 tion which arises out of it, whether intended or not, that the physi- 

 cal impossibility of a partial deluge is an argument founded on 

 the most ignorant of all preconceptions, and is demonstrably the 

 grossest of all delusions. That there can not have been partial 

 subsidences of the crust of the earth even on an enormous scale 

 would indeed be an ignorant proposition, contradicted alike by 

 theory and observation. 



But here we come to another branch of the subject, on which, 

 if anywhere, we had a right to expect from Prof. Huxley some- 

 thing better than the most loose and yet the most dogmatic decla- 

 mation. This branch is that which deals with the actual discov- 

 eries of modern science, so far as they bear upon the question. 

 Geology is a science which has made such rapid and enormous 

 progress during a period spanned by the extreme measure of a 



* Page 15. f Kitto's Encylopaedia of Biblical Literature, Deluge, p. 243. 



