210 Dr Fleming on the Geological Deluge. 
will the student of moral science admit its truth ? Those indi- 
viduals, in Britain, who cherish the highest respect for the au- 
thority of revelation, consider the information which Moses com- 
municates as having been derived from a higher source than 
Egyptian tradition ; and even the author of the strange remark 
acknowledges (p. 149-)? that the Egyptians themselves had for- 
gotten, for a long period, the tradition, u as we do not find any 
traces of it in the most ancient remaining fragments from that 
country. All of these, indeed, are posterior to the devastations 
committed by Cambyses.” But where is the proof that the 
Egyptians possessed those traditions which the Jewish legislator 
has recorded, a thousand years before any traces of them occur 
in the monuments of their country, except the very inadequate 
one, 66 that Moses and his people came out of Egypt !” The 
cultivator of moral science, whose attention has long been arrest- 
ed by the purity of the theism of the Jews, will naturally in- 
quire, If Moses obtained all his knowledge of the creation and 
the deluge from the opinions or traditions of the Egyptians, 
may he not have derived his knowledge of the moral law from 
the same source ? And may not the inquirer infer, that the 
prohibitory statutes against idolatry were forgotten by the 
Egyptians (and continue to be so), as had happened to them 
with respect to their traditions of the deluge, immediately after 
they had succeeded in impressing on the mind of the Jewish le- 
gislator a correct idea of their importance ! 
To such results, in my opinion, would Baron Cuvier’s views 
legitimately lead. Nor, in the last edition of his great work, 
does he treat the authority of Moses with higher respect, since 
he considers the book of Genesis, as consisting of the shreds of 
former works, or, to use his own words, “ II suffit de la lire 
pour s’apercevoir qu’elle a ete compose en par tie avec des mor- 
ceaux d’ouvrages anterieurs.”— -1. lxxxi. 
Having made these preliminary remarks, I now proceed to 
point out those differences of character which appear to exist be- 
tween the geological and Noachian deluges, and which prevent 
us from inferring their identity. 
1. The geological deluge, as interpreted by Baron Cuvier, 
was of such a nature as to permit the escape of different races of 
men by different routes. The Mongolian and Caucasian races 
