inary men; if the divine intelligence is supposed to
be so imperfect that it cannot foresee the consequences of its own
contrivances; if the supernal powers can become furiously angry with the
creatures of their omnipotence and, in their senseless wrath, destroy
the innocent along with the guilty; or if they can show themselves to
be as easily placated by presents and gross flattery as any oriental or
occidental despot; if, in short, they are only stronger than mortal
men and no better, as it must be admitted Hasisadra's deities proved
themselves to be--then, surely, it is time for us to look somewhat
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-Chaldaeans, 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 Chaldaea must always have been familiar with inundations;
probably no generation failed to witness an inundation which rose
unusually high, or was rendered serious by coincident atmospheric
or other disturbances. And the memory of the general features of any
exceptionally severe and devastating flood, would be preserved by
popular tradition for long ages. What, then, could be more natural
than that a Chaldaean poet should seek for the incidents of a great
catastrophe among such phenomena? In what other way than by such an
appeal to their experience could he so sure