THE DELUGE OF NOAH 123 



ourselves drifting back to the faith of our childhood, 

 or may congratulate ourselves on having adhered to 

 it all along, even when the current of opinion tended 

 strongly to turn us away. 



In illustration of the present aspects of the 

 question I make two extracts, one from Lenormant's 

 Beginnings of History ', another from a recent work of 

 my own. 



' We are/ says Lenormant, * in a position to affirm 

 that the account of the Deluge is a universal tradition 

 in all branches of the human family, with the sole 

 exception of the black race, and a tradition every- 

 where so exact and so concordant cannot possibly be 

 referred to an imaginary myth. No religious or cosmo- 

 gonic myth possesses this character of universality. 

 It must necessarily be the reminiscence of an actual 

 and terrible event, which made so powerful an im- 

 pression upon the imaginations of the first parents 

 of our species that their descendants could never 

 forget it. This cataclysm took place near the 

 primitive cradle of mankind, and previous to the 

 separation of the families from whom the principal 

 races were to descend, for it would be altogether 

 contrary to probability and to the laws of sound 

 criticism to admit that local phenomena exactly 

 similar in character could have been reproduced at 

 so many different points on the globe as would 

 enable one to explain these universal traditions, or 

 that these traditions should always have assumed an 

 dientical form, combined with circumstances which 



