Tregear. — Myths of Observation. 587 



hoods with identical incidents would have sprung up in a 

 hundred different places, and continue to agree with each 

 other in their repetitions over vast spaces of time. The next 

 hypothesis is that they are religious parables. It will be 

 found that in almost all tales of the great ancient catastrophe, 

 whether of fire or water, the notion of its having been a 

 punishment for human sin is very prominent. Not only in 

 the Biblical account, but in heathen traditions, it is said 

 that men grew evil. Thus, in the Teutonic legend, that 

 of the Scandinavian Voluspa which I before quoted, we find 

 that before the earth was burned, and before its re-emerg- 

 ence from the waters, the time was one of brothers fight- 

 ing against each other, cruelty and luxury reigning. " The 

 age of axes, the age of lances, in which bucklers are cleft, 

 . the age of ' north winds,' the age of fierce beasts, 

 succeeds before the world falls to pieces. . . . Not one 

 dreams of sparing his neighbour. " :;: The Druid tells us that 

 it was " the profligacy of man " that provoked the deluge and 

 the conflagration. The Maori says that before the deluge 

 <; Man had become very numerous on the earth. Evil pre- 

 vailed everywhere." The Hawaiian relates that the earth 

 was destroyed by fire on account of the evil conduct of its in- 

 habitants. The Brazilian describes "the ingratitude of men 

 and their contempt for him who had made them." The tale 

 is everywhere the same : a few are hidden from the fire in a 

 great cave, or escape in a canoe from the overwhelming flood, 

 to become the parents of a new race. If we grant that the 

 stories had a religious origin, that the flood and fire were 

 believed to be sent as punishments for sin, we may then 

 ask, In what way was the tradition transmitted? Was it 

 originally a legend handed down through many centuries to 

 the descendants of those who really experienced the calamity 

 in a certain locality ? If so. it must be of stupendous anti- 

 quity, since the story is the property of ancient Briton, 

 Scandinavian, Greek, Hindustani, Chinese, North and South 

 American Indians, and Polynesian. The children of that one 

 primitive people which experienced the flood must have 

 differentiated into all these extremely foreign tribes. A far 

 more probable theory is that the story, the property of one 

 people, has been diffused to the others by communication. 

 This, too, would necessitate a great antiquity ; but for such 

 antiquity there is good evidence. The more study one gives 

 to the races of men the more impressed the mind becomes 

 with the necessity for great spaces of time in which the drama 

 even of man's life on earth can be played. Long periods are 

 necessary for even the most simple phases of human existence 



* Ida Pfeiffer's " Visit to Iceland," p. 333. 



