Through Nature to God. Fiske John

οὖσα ἐκ τῶν φαινομένων, ὥσπερ μοχθηρὰ τραγῳδία.—Aristotle, Metaphysica, xiii. 3.

I

       The Serpent's Promise to the Woman

       Table of Contents

      "Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Genesis iii. 5.

The legend in which the serpent is represented as giving this counsel to the mother of mankind occurs at the beginning of the Pentateuch in the form which that collection of writings assumed after the return of the Jews from the captivity at Babylon, and there is good reason for believing that it was first placed there at that time. Allusions to Eden in the Old Testament literature are extremely scarce,[1] and the story of Eve's temptation first assumes prominence in the writings of St. Paul. The marks of Zoroastrian thought in it have often been pointed out. This garden of Eden is a true Persian paradise, situated somewhere in that remote wonderland of Aryana Vaëjo to which all Iranian tradition is so fond of pointing back. The wily serpent is a genuine Parsee serpent, and the spirit which animates him is that of the malicious and tricksome Ahriman, who takes delight in going about after the good creator Ormuzd and spoiling his handiwork. He is not yet identified with the terrible Satan, the accusing angel who finds out men's evil thoughts and deeds. He is simply a mischief-maker, and the punishment meted out to him for his mischief reminds one of many a curious passage in the beast epos of primitive peoples. As in the stories which tell why the mole is blind or why the fox has a bushy tail, the serpent's conduct is made to account for some of his peculiar attributes. As a punishment he is made to crawl upon his belly, and be forever an object of especial dread and loathing to all the children of Eve.

      What, then, is the crime for which the serpent Ahriman thus makes bitter expiation? In what way has he spoiled Ormuzd's last and most wonderful creation? He has introduced the sense of sin: the man and the woman are afraid, and hide themselves from their Lord whom they have offended. Yet he has been not altogether a deceiving serpent. In one respect he had spoken profound truth. The man and the woman have become as gods. In the Hebrew story Jehovah says, "Behold the man is become as one of us;" that is to say, one of the Elohim or heavenly host, who know the good and the evil. Man has apparently become a creature against whom precautions need to be taken. It is hinted that by eating of the other tree and acquiring immortal life he would achieve some result not in accordance with Jehovah's will, yet which it would then be too late to prevent. Accordingly, any such proceedings are forestalled by driving the man and woman from the garden, and placing sentinels there with a fiery sword which turns hither and thither to warn off all who would tread the path that leads to the tree of life. The anthropomorphism of the story is as vivid as in those Homeric scenes in which gods and men contend with one another in battle. It is plainly indicated that Jehovah's wrath is kindled at man's presumption in meddling with what belongs only to the Elohim; man is punished for his arrogance in the same spirit as when, later on, he gives his daughters in marriage to the sons of the Elohim and brings on a deluge, or when he strives to build a tower that will reach to heaven and is visited with a confusion of tongues. So here in Eden he has come to know too much, and Ahriman's heinous crime has consisted in helping him to this interdicted knowledge.

      The serpent's promise to the woman was worthy of the wisest and most astute of animals. But with yet greater subtlety he might have declared, Except ye acquire the knowledge of good and evil, ye cannot come to be as gods; divine life can never be yours. Throughout the Christian world this legend of the lost paradise has figured as the story of the Fall of Man; and naturally, because of the theological use of it made by St. Paul, who first lifted the story into prominence in illustrating his theory of Christ as the second Adam: since by man came death into the world, by man came also the resurrection from death and from sin. That there is truth of the most vital sort in the Pauline theory is undeniable; but there are many things that will bear looking at from opposite points of view, for aspects of truth are often to be found on both sides of the shield, and there is a sense in which we may regard the loss of paradise as in itself the beginning of the Rise of Man. For this, indeed, we have already found some justification in the legend itself. It is in no spirit of paradox that I make this suggestion. The more patiently one scrutinizes the processes whereby things have come to be what they are, the more deeply is one impressed with its profound significance.

      Footnotes

      [1] Isaiah li. 3; Joel ii. 3; Ezekiel xxviii. 13, xxxi. 8, 9.

II

       The Pilgrim's Burden

       Table of Contents

      

But before I can properly elucidate this view, and make clear what is meant by connecting the loss of innocence with the beginning of the Rise of Man, it is necessary to bestow a few words upon a well-worn theme, and recall to mind the helpless and hopeless bewilderment into which all theologies and all philosophies have been thrown by the problem of the existence of evil. From the ancient Greek and Hebrew thinkers who were saddened by the spectacle of wickedness insolent and unpunished, down to the aged Voltaire and the youthful Goethe who felt their theories of God's justice quite baffled by the Lisbon earthquake, or down to the atheistic pessimist of our own time who asserts that the Power which sustains the world is but a blind and terrible force without concern for man's welfare of body or of soul,—from first to last the history of philosophy teems with the mournful instances of this discouragement. In that tale of War and Peace wherein the fervid genius of Tolstoi has depicted scenes and characters of modern life with truthful grandeur like that of the ancient epic poems, when our friend, the genial and thoughtful hero of the story, stands in the public square at Moscow, uncertain of his fate, while the kindly bright-faced peasant and the eager pale young mechanic are shot dead by his side, and all for a silly suspicion on the part of Napoleon's soldiery; as he stands and sees the bodies, still warm and quivering, tossed into a trench and loose earth hastily shovelled over them, his manly heart surges in rebellion against a world in which such things can be, and a voice within him cries out,—not in the mood in which the fool crieth, but with the anguish of a tender soul wrung by the sight of stupendous iniquity,—"There is no God!" It is but the utterance of an old-world feeling, natural enough to hard-pressed and sorely tried humanity in those moments that have come to it only too often, when triumphant wrong is dreadfully real and close at hand, while anything like compensation seems shadowy and doubtful and far away.

      It is this feeling that has created the belief in a devil, an adversary to the good God, an adversary hard to conquer or baffle. The feeling underlies every theological creed, and in every system of philosophy we find it lurking somewhere. In these dark regions of thought, which science has such scanty means for exploring, the statements which make up a creed are apt to be the outgrowth of such an all-pervading sentiment, while their form will be found to vary with the knowledge of nature—meagre enough at all times, and even in our boasted time—which happens to characterize the age in which they are made. Hence, well-nigh universally has philosophy proceeded upon the assumption, whether tacit or avowed, that pain and wrong are things hard to be reconciled with the theory that the world is created and ruled by a Being at once all-powerful and all-benevolent. Why does such a Being permit the misery that we behold encompassing us on every side? When we would fain believe