vii HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 265 



persons who are duly conversant with even the 

 elements of natural science decline to take the 

 Noachian deluge seriously ; and that, as I also 

 pointed out, candid theologians, who, without 

 special scientific knowledge, have appreciated the 

 weight of scientific arguments, have long since 

 given it up. But, as Goethe has remarked, there 

 is nothing more terrible than energetic ignorance ; l 

 and there are, even yet, very energetic people, 

 who are neither candid, nor clear-headed, nor 

 theologians, still less properly instructed in the 

 elements of natural science, who make prodigious 

 efforts to obscure the effect of these plain truths, 

 and to conceal their real surrender of the his- 

 torical character of Noah's deluge under cover of 

 the smoke of a great discharge of pseudoscientific 

 artillery. They seem to imagine that the proofs 

 which abound in all parts of the world, of large 

 oscillations of the relative level of land and sea, 

 combined with the probability that, when the 

 sea-level was rising, sudden incursions of the sea 

 like that which broke in over Holland and formed 

 the Zuyder Zee, may have often occurred, can be 

 made to look like evidence that something that, 

 by courtesy, might be called a general Deluge has 

 really taken place. Their discursive energy drags 

 misunderstood truth into their service ; and " the 

 glacial epoch " is as sure to crop up among them 



1 " Es ist nichts schrecklicher als eine thatige Unwissenheit. " 

 Maximen und Reflexioncn, iii. 



