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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



favored by analogy ; and that it contra- 

 dicts all that we know of prehistoric man 

 (p. 40). Thus far it might perhaps be con- 

 tended in reply, (1) that the preliminary 

 objection to the supernatural is a pure 

 pditlo principii, and wholly repugnant to 

 "scientific method"; (2) that it is not in- 

 conceivable that revelation might be indefi- 

 nitely graduated, as well as human knowl- 

 edge and condition ; (3) that it is in no way 

 repugnant to analogy, if the greatest mas- 

 ter of analogy. Bishop Butler,* may be 

 heard upon the subject; and (1) that our 

 earliest information about the races from 

 which wc arc least remote, Aryan, Semitic, 

 Accadian, or Egyptian, oifers no contradic- 

 tion and no obstacle to the idea of their 

 having received, or inherited, portions of 

 some knowledge divinely revealed. 



But I do not now enter upon these top- 

 ics, as I have a more immediate and defined 

 concern with the work of Dr. Reville. 



It only came within the last few months 

 to my knowledge that, at a period when ray 

 cares and labors of a distinct order were 

 much too absorbing to allow of any atten- 

 tion to arcliKological history. Dr. Roville had 

 done me the honor to select me as the rep- 

 resentative of those writers who find war- 

 rant for the assertion of a primitive revela- 

 tion in the testimouy of the Iloly Script- 

 ures. 



This is a distinction which I do not at 

 all deserve : first, because Dr. Reville might 

 have placed in the field champions much 

 more competent and learned f than myself ; 

 secondly, because I have never attempted 

 to give the proof of such a warrant. I 

 have never written ex professo on the sub- 

 ject of it ; but it is true that in a work pub- 

 lished nearly thirty years ago, when de- 

 structive criticism was less advanced than 

 it now is, I assumed it as a thing generally 

 received, at least in this country. Upon 

 some of the points, which group themselves 

 round that assumption, my vic'ws, like those 

 of many other inquirers, have been stated 

 more crudely at an early, and more mature- 

 ly at more than one later period. I admit 

 that variation or development imposes a 



* " Analogy," part 11, chap, ii, § 2. 

 + I will only name one of the most rocont, Br. 

 Keusch, the author of " Blbel und Katur " (Bonn, 



hardship upon critics, notwithstanding all 

 their desire to be just; especially, may I 

 say, upon such critics as, traversing ground 

 of almost boimdless extent, can hardly, ex- 

 cept in the rarest cases, be minutely and 

 closely acquainted with every portion of it. 



I also admit to Di\ Reville, and indeed 

 I contend by his side, that in an historical 

 inquiry the authority of Scripture can not 

 be alleged in proof of the e.Kistcnce of a 

 primitive revelation. So to allege it is a 

 preliminary assumption of the supernatural, 

 and is in my view a manifest departure 

 from the laws of "scientific" procedure: 

 as palpable a departure, may I venture to 

 say ? as that preliminary exclusion of the 

 supernatural which I have already pre- 

 sumed to notice. My own offense, if it be 

 one, was of another character ; and was 

 committed in the early days of Homeric 

 study, when my eyes perhaps were dazzled 

 with the amazing richness and variety of 

 the results which reward all close investi- 

 gation of the text of Homer, so that objects 

 were blurred for a time in my view, which 

 soon came to stand more clear before me. 



I had better perhaps state at once what 

 my contention really is. It is, first, that 

 many important pictures drawn, and indi- 

 cations given, in the Homeric poems supply 

 evidence that can not be confuted not only 

 of an ideal but of an historical relationship 

 to the Hebrew traditions, (1) and mainly, as 

 they are recorded in the Book of Genesis ; 

 (2) as less authentically to be gathered 

 from the later Hebrew learning ; and (3) as 

 illustrated from extraneous sources. Sec- 

 ondly, any attempt to expound the Olympian 

 mythology of Homer by simple reference 

 to a solar theory, or even to Nature-worship 

 in a larger sense, is simply a plea for a 

 verdict against the evidence. It is also 

 true that I have an unshaken belief in a 

 Divine Revelation, not resting on a.ssump- 

 tion, but made obligatory upon me by rea- 

 son. But I hold the last of these convic- 

 tions entirely apart from the others, and I 

 derived the first and second not from pre- 

 conception, of which I had not a grain, but 

 from the poems themselves, as purely as I 

 derived my knowledge of the Peloponnesian 

 War from Thucydides or his interpreters. 



T])e great importance of this contention 

 I do not deny. I have produced in its favor 



