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