The prominence of sun worship will not have escaped observation; but this discovery cannot militate against my position, for I have already shown (p. 160) that such admixture was probable, and also indicated how it was likely to have come about. Any hostile argument which would seek to deprive those ceremonies of their significance must be directed to the extrusion of the diluvian symbols. Further trace of these diluvian ceremonies might be traced in the Buddhist systems; but it would open out too large a question for discussion here. CHAPTER XII. _SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ON TRADITION._ DE MAISTRE'S VIEW.[234] "We have little knowledge of the times which preceded the Deluge.... A single consideration interests us, and it must never be lost sight of, and that is, that chastisements are ever proportioned to crimes, and crimes always proportioned to the knowledge of the criminal; in such sort that the Deluge supposes unheard-of crimes, and that these crimes suppose a knowledge infinitely transcending that which we possess.... This knowledge, freed from the evil which had rendered it so noxious, survived in the first family the destruction of the human race. We are blinded as to the nature and advance of science by a gross sophism which has fascinated every eye; it is to judge of times when men saw effects in their causes by those in which men painfully ascend from effects to causes, in which they are only concerned with effects, in which they say it is useless to occupy themselves with causes, and in which they do not know what constitutes a cause. They never cease repeating--'Think of the time that has been required to know such and such a thing.' What inconceivable blindness! A moment only was required. If man would know the cause of a single phenomenon of nature, he would probably comprehend all the rest. We are unwilling to see that truths, the most difficult to discover, are very easy to understand.... 'These things,' as Plato says, 'are perfectly and easily learned if any one teaches them, [Greek: ei didaskoi tis]; but,' he adds, 'no one will teach them us, unless, indeed, God shows him the road, [Greek: all oud an didaxeien ei mê Theos yphêgoito].' 'I doubt not,' said Hippocrates, 'that the arts were in the first instance favours ([Greek: theôn charitas]) granted to men by the gods.'... Listen to sage antiquity in its account of the first men: it will tell you that they were marvellous men, and that beings of a superior order deigned to favour them with the most precious communications. On this point there is no disagreement, ...