It is upon this and other unimpeachable grounds that, as I
ventured to say some time ago, 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;<9> 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 historical 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.
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