APPENDIX. ANIMADVERSIONS ON A RECENT RECENSION.

×It is not my practice to notice the observations which have been made from time to time upon the pamphlets by which I have endeavoured, in the course of the present undertaking, to lay before the public some indication of its progress; and I should have continued to observe the same rule in the case of a recension of my pamphlet upon the Biblical Cosmology, which appeared some time since without the name of its author, had not the objections which it contains been directed, not against the conclusions of that pamphlet, which the writer has not been at the pains to examine, but against the method upon which the present work is founded. To objections of that kind it is due to the reader, if not to the writer, that some answer should be given; and I propose accordingly to state them in the order in which they are made, and to reply to each with such brevity as is consistent with the gravity of the subject, and with the respect which, whatever may be thought of the manner of the recension, is due to the questions which it raises.¹ NB-06-031 NB-06-009

○The first objection is, that a work of considerable extent has been for many years announced, and that nothing has hitherto appeared but pamphlets. To this I have already replied in the Preface, so far as a reply was necessary; and I will add here only that the writer appears to suppose that the interval between the first collection of a testimony and its final employment in an argument is an interval of idleness, whereas it is the interval in which the testimony is compared with every other that bears upon it, and in which it is determined whether it is to be received, and in what character. The head of Dagon, in which a place first entered nearly thirty years since is only now employed, and is employed even now with its proof deferred, may serve to show the reader, if it does not show the writer, of what nature that interval is.² NB-36-004 NB-03-014

×The second objection is, that my etymologies rest upon the likeness of sounds. If the writer had read the sixth thesis, or had been able to read it before he wrote, he would have perceived that the objection is one which I have myself urged, and with greater force than he has urged it, against the method of those who find a name in every word which resembles it; and that the distinction which I have there drawn, between a name which is preserved in the mouths of a people and a name which is recovered by the comparison of syllables, is precisely the distinction which his objection overlooks. When Josephus relates that "time has not at all hurt the name of Chus; for the Ethiopians, over whom he reigned, are even at this day, both by themselves, and by all men in Asia, called Chusites," he does not offer an etymology, and I do not employ one: the name is preserved, and it is the preservation of the name which is the testimony.³ That I have, in other places, admitted the comparison of syllables as a confirmation of what had been otherwise established, I do not deny; but the writer will find no place in which I have admitted it as a proof. NB-06-009 NB-06-031

×The third objection is, that I do no more than follow Mr. Bryant, a writer of the last century, and correct his mistakes. I am not ashamed to acknowledge my obligations to a writer to whose industry every inquirer into these subjects is indebted, nor to confess that the design of his work is that with which, of all the designs which have been proposed, I have the most sympathy. But to correct a writer is not to follow him; and the corrections which I have proposed are not corrections of detail. Mr. Bryant ascribes the corruption of the primitive tradition to the sons of Chus, whom he makes the most considerable and the most enterprising branch of the whole family; I ascribe it to the line of Ham in its two principal branches, and give to Mizraim at least an equal share.⁴ Mr. Bryant makes the worship of the sun the original from which the deifying of ancestors was derived: "The Deity, which they originally worshiped, was the Sun. But they soon conferred his titles upon some of their ancestors: whence arose a mixed worship"; I make the solar worship a mode of corruption, and a late one, and reverse the order of the two.⁵ A writer who differs from another upon the agent of the corruption and upon the order of its modes may, I think, be acquitted of having done no more than follow him. NB-07-003 NB-22-009

○The fourth objection is, that my knowledge of the East is at second hand. I do not profess to have more than second-hand knowledge there, and I have nowhere professed it. Where I have had occasion to employ the testimonies of India, I have employed them as they are given in the essay of Sir William Jones upon the gods of Greece, Italy and India, which is the only authority upon that subject to which I have had access; I have said so in every place in which I have employed them; and I have in no place rested upon them any part of the argument which could not stand without them.⁶ The objection would have force against a writer who had represented the Indian testimonies as a principal support of his system; it has none against one who has admitted them only as confirmation, and has stated in each instance the channel through which they reached him. NB-22-035 NB-40-009

○I have now replied to the four objections which the recension contains, and I do not think it necessary to notice the manner in which they are urged, which is such as might have been expected from a writer who had determined his judgment of the work before he had seen it. I am content to leave the decision between us to those whose leisure and whose learning permit them to examine the testimonies themselves; and I have no doubt that, when the present volume and those which are to follow it have been laid before them, the writer of the recension will be among the first to perceive that the objections which he urged with so much confidence were directed against a method which he had not been at the pains to understand.⁷ NB-06-031 NB-07-003 NB-36-004