Darwinism. The Noachian Flood

Darwinism. The Noachian Flood: A lecture delivered before the Torquay Natural History Society, Jan. 31st, 1870.

The whole point at issue is the universality of the Noachian Deluge, and the narrative has been thought to be uncompromising in its declarations that all the earth, to the very mountain-tops, was indeed enveloped in water, and, excepting the handful rescued in the ark, that all men and cattle and creeping things and fowls of the air were inexorably destroyed.  But to this view of the narrative there is more than one objection upon the very surface of the narrative itself.  And, by way of preface, let it be remarked how vague and indefinite is the use in ordinary language of such terms as ‘all’ and ‘every’ and ‘universal.’