vii HASISADKA'S ADVENTURE 259 



what closely into their credentials, and to accept 

 none but conclusive evidence of their existence. 



To the majority of my respected contemporaries 

 this reasoning will doubtless appear feeble, if not 

 worse. However, to my mind, such are the only 

 arguments by which the Chaldaean theology can 

 be satisfactorily upset. So far from there being 

 any ground for the belief that Ea, Anu, and Bel 

 are, or ever were, real entities, it seems to me 

 quite infinitely more probable that they are 

 products of the religious imagination, such as 

 are to be found everywhere and in all ages, so 

 long as that imagination riots uncontrolled by 

 scientific criticism. 



It is on these grounds that I venture, at the 

 risk of being called an atheist by the ghosts of 

 all the principals of all the colleges of Babylonia, 

 or by their living successors among the Neo- 

 Chaldseans, if that sect should arise, to express 

 my utter disbelief in the gods of Hasisadra. 

 Hence, it follows, that I find Hasisadra's account 

 of their share in his adventure incredible ; and, 

 as the physical details of the flood are inseparable 

 from its theophanic accompaniments, and are 

 guaranteed by the same authority, I must let 

 them go with the rest. The consistency of such 

 details with probability counts for nothing. The 

 inhabitants of Chaldsea must always have been 

 familiar with inundations ; probably no genera- 

 tion failed to witness an inundation which rose 



