Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/287

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To the Editor:—My attention has just been called to the inquiries in the August number of the concerning the reply I would make to a number of objections which arise in connection with my theory of the Noachian Deluge. As they are apparently made in good faith I will briefly remark upon them, though it would require a volume fully to discuss the points raised.

1. The question respecting Noah's supposed relation to paleolithic man is answered by saying that it is by no means proved that paleolithic man in Europe and America was not coteraporaryconteraporary [sic] with civilized man in Egypt and Babylonia, whose existence is now thrown back in those countries several thousand years before the Christian era. I do not know that there is any evidence that paleolithic man anywhere developed into neolithic man, and so on to a stage of comparative civilization by his own efforts. It seems more likely that he received his new arts by contact with higher races than that he made the inventions of his own accord. Certainly, in America, he did not pass out of the 'stone age,' by himself.

2. With regard to the age of Noah as given in the Scriptures when his surviving children were born it is enough to say that language, like isolated geological facts, has to be interpreted; and it is a fair question whether Noah, here, is not the name of a dynasty, like Pharaoh, or of a family, like Israel. That is to be determined by a thorough study of the literature involved. Israel is indeed the name of a man, but it is constantly used to designate the whole body of his descendants. In so brief an account of a long period of history as we have in the early chapters of Genesis, it would not be strange if much more was compressed into single words than would be done in a fuller history.

3. In reference to the specific statement of facts, it is proper to remark that outside of mathematical and dry scientific treatises, there is little specific statement of facts by anybody. When I read in the papers that the whole town turned out to witness a pageant, I do not expect on inquiry to find that there were no women and children or busy or indifferent men absent, nor do I charge the writer with misrepresenting the facts in making the general statement. But, on the other hand, I take the nature of language into consideration and interpret it to mean simply that there was a great crowd, which had the appearance of containing everybody in the town. Again, when I read in a scientific treatise, as I frequently do, that a fact, or explanation of a fact, is 'generally' admitted, I do not charge the writer with either dishonesty or ignorance if it is found that nine tenths of the people of the world have heard neither of the fact nor of the explanation, nor yet if it is found that both the alleged fact and its explanation is disbelieved by a considerable portion of the civilized world. There are few questions on which there is perfect unanimity of judgment, hence if we use the word 'generally' at all, outside of mathematics, we must use it in a modified sense and leave the interpretation to the context.

Applying this well-known principle of interpretation to the case in hand, it is possible to get a pretty definite