Forlong - Rivers of Life

Introductory Chapter.
Jove is the boundless Sprit, Jove the Fire.
That warms the world with feeling and desire.
The Seas Jove, the Sun, the lunar ball,
Jove king supreme, the sovereign source of all.
All power is his, to Him all glory give,
For his vast form embraces all that live.” 1
To return to the world’s age, and to the impossibility of our getting any religious
historical glimmering, beyond the days when the mighty Sanskrit-speaking race swept
in a torrent from the west and north into India, I may note here what some authorities
say on this subject. The Chinese say that their race is several hundreds of
thousands of years old.
Some astrological records of ancient Kaldea say, . . 474,300 years
Plato, writing 350 years B.C., says (and puts this down as the
date of Zoroaster’s birth) “before his time,” . . . 9,000 ,,
The Septuagint (Greek translation) of the Old Testament, 5,872 ,,
executed in third century B.C., says, before that translation.
The Jewish Talmud says it took place before its time . . 5,344 ,,
Josephus writing about the time of Christ says, . . 4,658 ,,
and so on guessed the men of old; but what says modern philosophy? which, without
implicitly believing or denying we should, as reasonable men, respectfully listen to.
Surely the science and research, and earnest love of truth which characterises the
philosophy of our times, should be received with much more deference and respect than
the old tales, loose and often garbled quotations from old writings, which
have come down to us, often we know not from whom, or whence, or from what
times—the philosopher only asks us to pause and reflect on his sayings, not to frame a
dogma and utter an anathema against those who cannot agree with him.
Professor Agassiz estimates the age of the human skeletons in the coral reef of
Florida at 10,000 years, and adds that 135,000 years are needed for the formation of
the post-tertiary southern half of that peninsula. Another writers says that the Falls of
Niagara have been cut back at least six miles since the Champlain Epoch, for the lake
deposits formed by the old extension of Lake Ontario, and containing similar shells to
those now lying near the entrance of the lake, are found both at Goat Island and on either
side of the gorge near the whirlpool. Six miles then at least of the gorge have been
excavated since the formation of these deposits. Dana says, “Taking the rate at one
foot a year, the six miles will have required over 34,000 years; if at one inch a year,
which is eight feet and one-third in a century, 380,000 years.” The former was Sir
Charles Lyell’s estimate, which, if considered too great, is probably outdone in the
other extreme of one inch a year; if, however, we take the mean of these two
estimations, namely six inches a year, the time would then be 68,000 years since the
probably close of the Champlain Epoch. The human skeleton beneath the fourth
cypress forest of New Orleans must, it is said, have been buried there 50,000 years
1 [From an Orphic fragment quoted by Aristotle and Proclus, printed in Cory, Ancient Fragments; possibly
Forlong’s own verse-rendering, perhaps influenced by Thomas Taylor’s in his Orphic Hymns. — T.S.]
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