Also in Grecian mythology Prometheus (Adam) figures as the son of Deucalion (Noah), and also of Japetus (Japhet); and so, too, Adam and Noah, in the Mahabharata, are equally in tradition in the person of Manou (_vide_ Gainet, i. 199), and in Mexico in the person of the god Quetzalcoatl (_vide infra_, p. 326). Before, however, pursuing the special subject of this inquiry further, it appears to me impossible to avoid an argument on a subject long debated, temporarily abandoned through the exhaustion of the combatants, and now again recently brought into prominence through the writings of Mr Gladstone, Dr Dollinger, Mr Max Müller, and others--the source and origin of mythology.[126] [126] This chapter was written before the publication of Mr Cox's "Mythology of the Aryan Nations." It will be seen, however, that I indulge the hope that much that is seductive, and much even that is systematic, in Mr Cox's view, will be found to be compatible with the line I have indicated. Now, here, I am quite ready to adopt, in the first place, the opinion of L'Abbé Gainet, that every exclusive system must come to naught, "que toutes les tentatives qu'on ai faites pour expliquer le polythéisme par un système exclusif tombent à faux et n'expliquent rien." Yet, whilst fully admitting an early and perhaps concurrent admixture of Sabaism,[127] I consider that the facts and evidence contained in the pages of Rawlinson will enable us to arrive at the history of idolatry by a mode much more direct than conjecture. The pages of Rawlinson prove the identity of Nimrod and Belus, and his worship in the earliest times. On the other hand, there has been a pretty constant tradition[128] that Nimrod first raised the standard of revolt against the Lord; and the erection of the tower of Babel seems to show a state of things ripe for idolatry. Here recent discovery and ancient tradition concur in establishing hero-worship as among the earliest forms of idolatry. But further, the Arab tradition of Nimrod's apotheosis, analogous to the mysterious and miraculous disappearance of Enoch (_vide infra_, p. 192), suggests how hero-worship might become almost identical with the worship of spirits, which L'Abbé Gainet inclines to think the first and most natural mode. If there was a tradition among them that one of their ancestors was raised up to heaven,[129] why may they not have argued, when their minds had become thoroughly corrupted, that their immediate ancestor, the mighty Nimrod, had been so raised? and when one ancestor was deified the rest would have been deified in sequence, or according to their relationship to him. What, again, more likely than that, when through the corruptions of mankind the communications of the Most High ceased, they should turn to those to whom the communications had been made, at first perhaps innocently in intercession, and, as corruption deepened, in worship?[130]