42. The impossibility of such multiplication is made still more evident, if we admit with Genesis that the deluge destroyed the entire human race, with the exception of Noah and his immediate family, which was not numerous in the year of the world 1656, or 2348 B.C. It cannot thus, in reality, be true that the present population of the globe dates only from Noah, or from about this time. According to the Hebrew records, they had established themselves in Egypt 612 years after the deluge. It cannot be that this powerful empire could have been peopled in so short a time, besides other countries, in less than six centuries by the sole descendents of Noah; such a supposition is decidedly inadmissible.
Let us, moreover, observe that the Egyptians received the Hebrews as strangers. It would be contrary to reason to suppose that they had lost all remembrance of their common origin and of their reunion; for we know that at that time they religiously kept records and monuments of their history.
Exact logic, corroborated by stern facts, clearly shows in the most unequivocal manner that men have existed on Earth through an indefinitely long period of time - certainly that the origin of the race is greatly anterior to the epoch assigned by Genesis. It is the same with the doctrine of the diversity of primitive sources. In order to demonstrate the impossibility of a proposition being a correct one, it must be shown that a contrary proposition is demonstrable. If geology discovers authentic traces of the presence of man before the great deluge period the demonstration becomes still more absolute.
