MOSAIC GENESIS.

The six days. — The lost paradise.

THE SIX DAYS.

— CHAPTER I — 1. In the beginning God created heaven and the Earth. — 2. The Earth was formless and entirely bare; darkness covered the face of the abyss and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. — 3. Now, God said: Let there be light, and the light was made. — 4. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. — 5. He gave the light the name of day and the darkness the name of night, and out of evening and morning the first day was made.

God also said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate some waters from others. — 7. And God made the firmament and separated the waters that were beneath the firmament from those that were above the firmament. And so it was done. — 8. And God gave the firmament the name of heaven; out of evening and morning the second day was made.

God further said: Let the waters that are under heaven be gathered together in one place, and let the dry element appear. And so it was done. — 10. God gave the dry element the name of earth and called seas all the waters gathered together. And he saw that this was good. — 11. He said further: Let the earth bring forth the green herb that bears seed and fruit-bearing trees that give fruits, each one of a kind, and that contain within themselves their seeds, that they may reproduce upon the earth. And so it was done. — 12. The earth then brought forth the green herb that carried within it its seed, according to its kind, and fruit-bearing trees that contained within themselves their seeds, each one according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. — 13. And out of evening and morning the third day was made.

God also said: Let there be bodies of light in the firmament of heaven, that they may separate day from night and serve as signs to mark the time and the seasons, the days and the years. — 15. Let them shine in the firmament of heaven and illuminate the Earth. And so it was done. — 16. God then made two great luminous bodies, one, greater, to preside over the day, the other, lesser, to preside over the night; he also made the stars. — 17. And he set them in the firmament of heaven, that they might shine upon the Earth. — 18. To preside over the day and the night and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. — 19. And out of evening and morning the fourth day was made.

God further said: Let the waters bring forth living animals that swim in the waters and birds that fly over the Earth beneath the firmament of heaven. — 21. God then created the great fishes and all the animals that have life and movement, which the waters brought forth, each one of a kind, and he also created all the birds, each one of a kind. He saw that it was good. — 22. And he blessed them, saying: Grow and multiply and fill the waters of the sea; and let the birds multiply upon the Earth. — 23. And out of evening and morning the fifth day was made.

God also said: Let the Earth bring forth living animals, each one of its kind, the domestic animals and the wild animals, in their different kinds. And so it was done. — 25. God therefore made the wild animals of the Earth in their kinds, the domestic animals and all the reptiles, each one of its kind. And God saw that it was good. — 26. He then said: Let us make man in our image and likeness, and let him rule over the fishes of the sea, the birds of heaven, the animals, over all the Earth and over all the reptiles that move upon the earth. — 27. God then created man in his image and created him in the image of God and created him male and female. — 28. God blessed them and said to them: Grow and multiply, fill the Earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fishes of the sea, over the birds of heaven and over all the animals that move upon the earth. — 29. God further said: I have given you all the herbs that bear their seed upon the earth and all the trees that enclose within themselves their seeds, each one of a kind, that they may serve you as food. — 30. And I have given them to all the animals of the earth, to all the birds of heaven, to everything that moves upon the Earth and that is living and animate, that they may have wherewith to feed themselves. And so it was done. — 31. God saw all the things that he had made; they were all very good. — 32. And out of evening and morning the sixth day was made. [In other translations verse 32 is incorporated into the preceding one] CHAPTER II — 1. Heaven and the Earth were thus finished, then, with all their adornments. — 2. God finished on the seventh day all the work that he had done and rested on that seventh day, after having finished all his works. — 3. He blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on that day he had ceased to produce all the works that he had created. — 4. Such is the origin of heaven and the Earth, and it is thus that they were created on the day the Lord made the one and the other. — 5. And that he created all the plants of the fields before they had come out of the earth and all the herbs of the plains before they had germinated. Because the Lord God had not yet caused it to rain upon the earth and there was no man to till it. — 6. But from the earth there rose up a spring that watered its whole surface.

The Lord God therefore formed man from the slime of the earth and breathed over his face a breath of life, and man became living and animate.

— After the explanations contained in the preceding chapters concerning the origin and constitution of the Universe, in conformity with the data furnished by Science, as to the material part, and by Spiritism, as to the spiritual part, it is fitting that we set in confrontation with all this the very text of the Genesis of Moses, so that each one may make the comparison and judge with knowledge of the case. A few complementary explanations will suffice to make comprehensible the parts that need special clarification.

— On certain points there is, no doubt, a notable concordance between the Mosaic Genesis and the scientific doctrine, but it would be an error to believe that it suffices to substitute six indeterminate periods for the six days of twenty-four hours of creation in order to make the analogy complete; it would be no less an error to believe that, apart from the allegorical sense of certain words, Genesis and Science walk side by side, the one being, as one sees, a simple paraphrase of the other.

— Let us note, in the first place, that, as has already been said (Chap. VII, no. 14), the number of six geological periods is entirely arbitrary, since that of the well-characterized formations rises to more than twenty-five.

That number, moreover, only determines the great general phases; it was only adopted, at the beginning, to fit things, as far as possible, into the biblical text, in an epoch, moreover not far distant, in which it was understood that Science should be controlled by the Bible.

This is the reason why the authors of the greater part of the cosmogonic theories, with a view to facilitating their acceptance, strove to put themselves in accord with the sacred text.

As soon as it leaned upon the experimental method, Science felt itself stronger and emancipated itself. Today, it is Science that controls the Bible.

On the other hand, Geology, taking as its point of departure solely the formation of the granitic terrains, does not include, in the number of the six periods, the primitive state of the Earth. Nor does it concern itself with the Sun, the Moon and the stars, nor with the whole of the Universe, those subjects belonging to Astronomy. To fit everything into Genesis, a first period must be added, one that embraces that order of phenomena and that could be called the astronomical period.

Furthermore, not all geologists consider the diluvian as forming a distinct period, but rather as a transitory and passing fact, which did not appreciably change the climatic state of the globe, nor mark a new phase for the vegetable and animal species, since, with few exceptions, the same species are found, both before and after the deluge. One may therefore disregard that period, without disregard for the truth.

— The comparative table here below, in which are summarized the phenomena that characterize each of the six periods, allows one to consider the whole and to note the relations and the differences that exist between the said periods and the biblical Genesis:

SCIENCE GENESIS I. — ASTRONOMICAL PERIOD. — Agglomeration of universal cosmic matter, at a point of space, into a nebula that gave origin, by the condensation of matter at various points, to the stars, to the Sun, to the Earth, to the Moon and to all the planets. Primitive, fluidic and incandescent state of the Earth. — Immense atmosphere laden with all the water in vapor and with all the volatilizable matters.

1st DAY. — Heaven and the Earth. — The light.

II. — PRIMARY PERIOD. — Hardening of the surface of the Earth, by the cooling; formation of the granitic strata. — Thick and burning atmosphere, impenetrable to the solar rays. — Gradual precipitation of the water and of the solid matters volatilized in the air. — Complete absence of organic life.

2nd DAY. — The Firmament. — Separation of the waters that are above the firmament from those that are below it.

III. — PERIOD OF TRANSITION. — The waters cover the whole surface of the globe. — First deposits of sediments formed by the waters. — Humid heat. The Sun begins to pass through the misty atmosphere. — First organized beings of the most rudimentary constitution. — Lichens, mosses, ferns, lycopods, herbaceous plants. Colossal vegetation. — First marine animals: zoophytes, polyparies, crustaceans. — Deposits of coal.

3rd DAY. — The waters that are below the Firmament gather together; the dry element appears. The earth and the seas. — The plants.

IV. — SECONDARY PERIOD. — Surface of the Earth little broken: shallow and marshy waters. Less burning temperature; more purified atmosphere. Considerable deposits of limestones by the waters. — Less colossal vegetation; new species; woody plants; first trees. — Fishes; cetaceans; aquatic and amphibious animals.

4th DAY. — The Sun, the Moon and the stars.

V. — TERTIARY PERIOD. — Great swellings of the solid crust; formation of the continents. Withdrawal of the waters to the low places; formation of the seas. — Purified atmosphere; present temperature produced by solar heat. — Gigantic terrestrial animals. Vegetables and animals of the present time. Birds.

5th DAY. — The fishes and the birds.

UNIVERSAL DELUGE VI. — QUATERNARY OR POST-DILUVIAN PERIOD. Terrains of alluvium. Vegetables and animals of the present time. — Man.

6th DAY. — The terrestrial animals. Man.

— From this comparative table, the first fact that stands out is that the work of each of the six days does not correspond in a rigorous manner, as many suppose, to each of the six geological periods.

The most notable concordance is verified in the succession of organic beings, which is almost the same, with little difference, and in the appearance of man, last. This is an important fact.

There is also a coincidence, not as to the numerical order of the periods, but as to the fact in itself, in the passage where one reads that, on the third day, “the waters that are beneath heaven gathered together in one place and the dry element appeared.” It is the expression of what occurred in the tertiary period, when the elevations of the solid crust laid bare the continents and repelled the waters, which went on to form the seas. It was only then that the terrestrial animals appeared, according to Geology and according to Moses.

— In saying that the Creation was made in six days, did Moses mean to speak of days of twenty-four hours, or did he employ that word in the sense of period, of duration? The first hypothesis is more probable, if we hold to the text above, firstly, because that is the proper sense of the Hebrew word ïôm, translated as day. Next, the reference to evening and morning, as limitations of each of the six days, gives ground to suppose that he meant to speak of common days. No doubt whatever can be conceived in this respect, it being said, in verse 5: “He gave the light the name of day and the darkness the name of night; and out of evening and morning the first day was made.” This, evidently, can only apply to the day of twenty-four hours, constituted of periods of light and of darkness. The sense becomes still more precise when he says, in verse 17, speaking of the Sun, the Moon and the stars: “He placed them in the firmament of heaven, that they might shine upon the Earth; that they might preside over the day and the night and separate the light from the darkness. And out of evening and morning the fourth day was made.”

Besides, everything, in the Creation, was miraculous and, once one enters upon the path of miracles, one can perfectly well believe that the Earth was made in six times twenty-four hours, above all when the first natural laws are unknown.

All civilized peoples shared in that belief, until the moment when Geology arose to demonstrate its impossibility to them.

— One of the points that have been most criticized in Genesis is that of the creation of the Sun after the light. They have tried to explain it, with the very aid of the data furnished by Geology, by saying that, in the first times of its formation, because it was laden with dense and opaque vapors, the terrestrial atmosphere did not allow the Sun to be seen, the Sun thus effectively not existing for the Earth. Such an explanation would, perhaps, be admissible if, at that epoch, there had already been inhabitants on the Earth who verified the presence or the absence of the Sun. Now, according to Moses himself, then there were only plants, which, however, could not have grown and multiplied without solar heat.

There is, therefore, evidently, an anachronism in the order that Moses established for the creation of the Sun; but, involuntarily or not, he did not err in saying that the light preceded the Sun.

The Sun is not the principle of universal light; it is a concentration of the luminous element at a point, or, in other words, of the fluid that, in given circumstances, acquires luminous properties. That fluid, which is the cause, necessarily had to precede the Sun, which is only an effect.

The Sun is a cause, relatively to the light that radiates from it; it is an effect, with relation to that which it received.

In a dark chamber, a lighted candle is a small sun. What was done to light the candle? The illuminating property of the luminous fluid was developed and that fluid was concentrated at a point. The candle is the cause of the light that is diffused through the chamber; but, if the luminous principle had not existed before the candle, the latter could not have been lighted.

The same occurs with the Sun. The error proceeds from the false idea, fostered for a long time, that the entire Universe began with the Earth. Hence the failure to understand that the Sun could be created after the light.

In principle, then, the assertion of Moses is perfectly exact: it is false in making one believe that the Earth was created before the Sun. Being, by its movement of translation, subject to the latter, the Earth had to be formed after it. This is what Moses could not know, since he was ignorant of the law of gravitation.

With the same idea one meets in the Genesis of the ancient Persians. In the first chapter of the Vendidad, Ormuz, narrating the origin of the world, says: “I created the light that went to illuminate the Sun, the Moon and the stars.” (Dictionary of Universal Mythology.) The form, here, is no doubt clearer and more scientific than in Moses and calls for no commentary.

— Moses evidently shared in the most primitive beliefs about cosmogony. Like those of his time, he believed in the solidity of the celestial vault and in superior reservoirs for the waters. That idea is found expressed without allegory, nor ambiguity, in this passage (verses

and following): “God said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it separate some waters from others. God made the firmament and separated the waters that were above the firmament from those that were below.”

(See: Chap. V:

Ancient and modern systems of the world: nos. 3, 4 and 5.)

According to an ancient belief, water was held to be the primitive principle, the generating element, wherefore Moses does not speak of the creation of the waters, it seeming that they already existed. “The darkness covered the abyss,” that is, the depths of space, which the imagination imprecisely figured occupied by the waters and in darkness, before the creation of the light. This is why Moses says: “The Spirit of God was carried (or hovered) over the waters.” The Earth being held to be formed in the midst of the waters, it was necessary to insulate it. It was then imagined that God had made the firmament, a solid vault, to separate the waters above from those that were upon the Earth.

In order to understand certain parts of Genesis, it is indispensable that we place ourselves at the point of view of the cosmogonic ideas of the epoch that it reflects.

— In the face of the progress of Physics and of Astronomy, such a doctrine is untenable. n Nevertheless, Moses attributes those words to God himself. Now, seeing that they express a notoriously false fact, one of two things: either God deceived himself in the narrative that he made of his work, or that narrative is not of divine origin. The first hypothesis not being admissible, one is forced to conclude that Moses only expressed his own ideas. (Chap. I, no. 3.)

— He conducted himself with more accuracy in saying that God formed man from the slime of the Earth. n Science, in effect, shows (Chap. X) that the body of man is composed of elements taken from inorganic matter, or, in other words, from the slime of the earth.

The woman formed from a rib of Adam is an allegory, apparently puerile, if admitted to the letter, but profound, as to its sense. It has for its aim to show that the woman is of the same nature as the man, that she is consequently equal to him before God and not a creature apart, made to be enslaved and treated like a helot. Holding her to have come from the very flesh of man, the image of equality is far more expressive than if she were held to be formed, separately, from the same slime. It is equivalent to telling man that she is his equal and not his slave, that he must love her as a part of himself.

— For uncultivated minds, with no idea of the general laws, incapable of grasping the whole and of conceiving the infinite, that miraculous and instantaneous creation presented something fantastic that struck the imagination. The picture of the Universe drawn out of nothing in a few days, by a single act of the creative will, was, for such minds, the most evident sign of the power of God.

What configuration, in effect, more sublime and more poetic of that power than the one that these words trace: “God said: Let there be light, and the light was made!”

God, creating the Universe by the slow and gradual action of the laws of Nature, would have seemed to them lesser and less powerful. Something marvelous was indispensable to them, something that departed from the common molds, otherwise they would have said that God was no more skillful than men. A scientific and rational theory of the Creation would leave them cold and indifferent.

Let us not, then, reject the biblical Genesis; on the contrary, let us study it, as one studies the history of the infancy of peoples.

It is a matter of an epoch rich in allegories, whose hidden sense one must investigate; which one must comment on and explain with the aid of the lights of reason and of Science.

But, while making its poetic beauties and its teachings veiled by the imaginative form stand out, one must point out expressly its errors, in the very interest of religion.

The latter will be much more respected when those errors cease to be imposed upon faith as truth, and God will appear more and more powerful, when his name is not enveloped in facts of pure invention. THE LOST PARADISE. n

— CHAPTER II. — 9. Now, the Lord God had planted from the beginning a garden of delights, in which he placed the man whom he had formed. — The Lord God had also caused to come out of the earth every kind of trees, beautiful to the eye and whose fruit was agreeable to the palate and, in the midst of the paradise, n the tree of life, with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Jehovah Eloim caused to come out of the earth, (min haadama) every tree beautiful to see and good to eat and the tree of life (vehetz hachayim) in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.)

The Lord therefore took the man and placed him in the paradise of delights, that he might cultivate it and keep it. — 16. He also gave him this command and said to him: Eat of all the trees of the paradise. (Jehovah Eloim commanded the man (hal haadam) saying: Of every tree of the garden you may eat.) — 17. But, do not by any means eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for as soon as you eat of it, you will most certainly die. (And of the tree of good and evil (oumehetz hadaat tob vara) you shall not eat, for on the day on which you eat of it you shall die.)

— CHAPTER III. — 1. Now, the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the Lord God had formed on the Earth. And it said to the woman: Why did God command you that you should not eat the fruits of all the trees of the paradise? (And the serpent (nâhâsch) was more cunning than all the terrestrial animals that Jehovah Eloim had made; it said to the woman (el haïscha): Did Eloim say: You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?) — 2. The woman answered: We eat of the fruits of all the trees that are in the paradise. (She, the woman, said to the serpent, of the fruit (miperi) of the trees of the garden we may eat.) — 3. But, as for the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the paradise, God commanded us not to eat of it and not to touch it, lest we run the danger of dying. — 4. The serpent replied to the woman: Certainly you will not die. But, it is that God knows that, as soon as you have eaten of that fruit, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.

The woman then considered that the fruit of that tree was good to eat; that it was beautiful and agreeable to the sight. And, taking of it, she ate it and gave it to her husband, who also ate. (She, the woman, saw that it was good, the tree as food, and that the tree was desirable to understand (léaskil), and she took of its fruit, etc.)

And as they heard the voice of the Lord God, who was walking in the evening through the garden, when a gentle wind blows, they withdrew into the midst of the trees of the paradise, in order to hide themselves from his sight.

Then the Lord God called Adam and said to him: Where are you? — 10. Adam answered him: I heard your voice in the paradise and I was afraid, because I was naked, that is the reason why I hid myself. — 11. The Lord retorted to him: And how did you know that you were naked, except because you ate the fruit of the tree of which I forbade you to eat? — 12. Adam answered him: The woman whom you gave me as a companion presented me the fruit of that tree and I ate of it. — 13. The Lord God said to the woman: Why did you do this? She answered: The serpent deceived me and I ate of that fruit.

Then, the Lord God said to the serpent: Because you have done this, you will be cursed among all the animals and all the beasts of the earth; you will crawl upon your belly and you will eat the earth all the days of your life. — 15. I will put an enmity between you and the woman, between her race and yours. She will crush your head and you will try to bite her heel.

God also said to the woman: I will afflict you with many ills during your pregnancy; you will give birth with pain; you will be under the dominion of your husband and he will dominate you.

He then said to Adam: Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the fruit of the tree of which I forbade you to eat, the earth will be cursed to you because of what you have done and only with much labor will you draw from it wherewith to feed yourself, during all your life. — 18. It will produce for you thorns and brambles and you will feed yourself with the herb of the earth. — 19. And you will eat your bread with the sweat of your face, until you return to the earth from which you were taken, because you are dust and into dust you will turn.

And Adam gave his wife the name of Eve, which means life, because she was the mother of all the living.

The Lord God also made for Adam and his wife garments of skins with which he covered them. — 22. And he said: Behold Adam become one of us, knowing good and evil. Let us prevent, then, now, that he put his hand to the tree of life, that he also take of its fruit and that, eating of that fruit, he live eternally. (Jehovah Eloim said: Behold, the man has become like one of us for the knowledge of good and evil; now he may stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life (veata pen ischlachyado velakach mehetz hachayim); he will eat of it and will live eternally.)

The Lord God made him go out of the garden of delights, so that he might go to work in the cultivation of the earth from which he had been taken. — 24. And, having expelled him, he placed cherubim n before the garden of delights, who made a sword of fire shine, to guard the way that led to the tree of life.

— Under a puerile and at times ridiculous image, if we hold to the form, the allegory often hides the greatest truths.

Could there be a fable more absurd, at first sight, than that of Saturn, the god who devoured stones, taking them for his children? And yet, what is there more profoundly philosophical and true than that figure, if we seek its moral sense! Saturn is the personification of time; all things being the work of time, he is the father of all that exists; but, also, everything is destroyed with time. Saturn devouring stones is the symbol of the destruction, by time, of the hardest bodies, his children; seeing that they were formed with time.

And who, according to that same allegory, escapes such destruction? Only Jupiter, symbol of the superior intelligence, of the spiritual principle, which is indestructible. This image is even so natural that, in modern language, without allusion to the ancient Fable, one says, of a thing that has finally deteriorated, that it has been devoured by time, eaten away, devastated by time.

All pagan mythology, besides, is in reality nothing more than a vast allegorical picture of the various faces, good and bad, of Humanity. For whoever seeks its spirit, it is a complete course of the highest philosophy, as happens with the modern fables. The absurdity lay in their taking the form for the substance.

— The same occurs with Genesis, where one must perceive great moral truths under material figures which, taken to the letter, would be as absurd as if, in our fables, we took in a literal sense the scenes and the dialogues attributed to the animals.

Adam personifies Humanity; his fault individualizes the weakness of man, in whom the material instincts predominate, which he does not know how to resist. n

The tree, as tree of life, is the emblem of spiritual life; 4 as tree of knowledge, it is that of the consciousness which man acquires, of good and evil, by the development of his intelligence and of free will, by virtue of which he chooses between the one and the other; it marks the point at which the soul of man, ceasing to be guided solely by the instincts, takes possession of its liberty and incurs the responsibility of its acts.

The fruit of the tree symbolizes the object of the material desires of man; it is the allegory of covetousness and concupiscence; it concretizes, in a single figure, the motives of drawing toward evil; the eating is the succumbing to temptation.

The tree rises in the midst of the garden of delights, to show that the seduction is in the very bosom of pleasures and to recall that, if he gives preponderance to material enjoyments, man binds himself to the Earth and turns away from his spiritual destiny. n

The death with which he is threatened, in case he infringes the prohibition that is made to him, is a warning of the inevitable consequences, physical and moral, arising from the violation of the divine laws that God engraved upon his consciousness. It is all too evident that here it is not a matter of corporeal death, since, after the fault was committed, Adam still lived a long time, but rather of spiritual death, or, in other words, of the loss of the goods that result from moral advancement, a loss figured by his expulsion from the garden of delights.

— The serpent is far today from being held to be a type of cunning; it therefore enters here more by its form than by its character, as an allusion to the perfidy of bad counsels, which insinuate themselves like the serpent and of which, for that reason, man often does not grow suspicious.

Besides, if the serpent, for having deceived the woman, was condemned to crawl upon its belly, one would have to deduce that before this animal had legs; but, in that case, it was not a serpent.

Why, then, should one impose upon the ingenuous and credulous faith of children, as truths, such evident allegories, whereby, falsifying their judgment, one causes them later to come to consider the Bible a tissue of absurd fables?

It must, besides, be noted that the Hebrew term nâhâsch, translated as serpent, comes from the root nâhâsch, which means: to make enchantments, to divine hidden things, being able, therefore, to mean: enchanter, diviner. With this acceptation, it is found in Genesis itself, chapter XLIV, vv. 5 and 15, with regard to the cup that Joseph had hidden in Benjamin's sack: “The cup that you stole is the one in which my Lord drinks and which he uses to divine (nâhâsch): n — Do you not know that there is no one who equals me in the science of divining (nâhâsch)?” In the book of Numbers, chapter XXIII, v. 23: “There are no enchantments (nâhâsch) in Jacob, nor diviners in Israel.” Hence the word nâhâsch also took on the meaning of serpent, the reptile that the enchanters had the pretension of enchanting, or that they made use of in their enchantments.

The word nâhâsch was only translated as serpent in the version of the Seventy — who, according to Hutcheson, corrupted the Hebrew text in many places — that version being written in Greek in the second century of the Christian era. Its inexactitudes resulted, no doubt, from the modifications that the Hebrew language had undergone in the interval that had elapsed, for the Hebrew of the time of Moses was a dead language, which differed from common Hebrew, as much as ancient Greek and literary Arabic differ from modern Greek and Arabic. n

It is, therefore, probable that Moses presented as the seducer of the woman the desire to know hidden things, aroused by the Spirit of divination, which accords with the primitive sense of the word nâhâsch, to divine, and, on the other hand, with these words:

“God knows that, as soon as you have eaten of that fruit, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods. — She, the woman, saw that the tree was covetable to understand (léaskil) and took of its fruit.”

It must not be forgotten that Moses wished to proscribe from among the Hebrews the art of divination practiced by the Egyptians, as is proved by his having forbidden them to interrogate the dead and the Spirit of Python.

(Heaven and Hell according to Spiritism, Chap. XI.)

— The passage that says: “The Lord was walking through the garden in the evening, when a gentle wind rises,” is an ingenuous and somewhat puerile image, which criticism did not fail to point out; but, there is nothing in it to surprise, if we refer to the idea that the Hebrews of primitive times formed of God. For those little developed intelligences, incapable of conceiving abstractions, God had to have a concrete form and they referred everything to humanity, as the only point they knew. Moses, for that reason, spoke to them as to children, by means of perceptible images.

In the case in question, the sovereign Power is personified, as the pagans personified, in allegorical figures, the virtues, the vices and abstract ideas. Later, men stripped the idea of the form, in the same way that the child, become adult, seeks the moral sense of the tales with which it was soothed.

One must, therefore, consider that passage as an allegory, figuring the Divinity watching in person over the objects of its creation. The great rabbi Wogue translated it thus: “They heard the voice of the Eternal God, traversing the garden, from the side whence the day comes.”

— If the fault of Adam consisted literally in having eaten a fruit, it could not, incontestably, by its almost puerile nature, justify the rigor with which it was punished.

Nor could one rationally admit that the fact is such as is generally supposed; if it were so, we would have God, considering it an irremissible crime, condemning his own work, since he had created man for propagation.

If Adam had understood thus the prohibition to touch the fruit of the tree and had conformed to it scrupulously, where would Humanity be and what would have become of the designs of the Creator?

God had not created Adam and Eve to remain alone on the Earth; the proof of this is in the very words that he addresses to them right after having formed them, when they were still in the terrestrial paradise:

“God blessed them and said to them: Grow and multiply, fill the Earth and subject it to your dominion.” (Genesis, Chap. I, v. 28.)

Since multiplication was a law, from the terrestrial paradise on, their expulsion from there cannot have had as its cause the supposed fact.

What gave credit to that supposition was the sentiment of shame that Adam and Eve manifested before the gaze of God and that led them to hide themselves. But, that very shame is a figure by comparison: it symbolizes the confusion that every guilty one experiences in the presence of the one whom he has offended.

— What, then, in the final analysis, was the fault so great as to merit drawing the perpetual reprobation of all the descendants of the one who committed it? Cain, the fratricide, was not treated so severely. No theologian can define it logically, because all, clinging to the letter, have turned within a vicious circle.

We know today that that fault is not an isolated, personal act, of an individual, but that it comprehends, under a single allegorical fact, the whole of the prevarications of which the Humanity of the Earth, still imperfect, can become guilty and that are summed up in this: infraction of the law of God. This is why the fault of the first man, this man symbolizing Humanity, has for its symbol an act of disobedience.

— In telling Adam that he would draw his nourishment from the earth with the sweat of his face, God symbolizes the obligation of labor; but, why did he make of labor a punishment? What would become of the intelligence of man, if he did not develop it through labor? What would become of the Earth, if it were not made fruitful, transformed, sanitized by the intelligent labor of man?

There it is said (Genesis, Chap. II, vv. 5 and 7): “The Lord God had not yet caused it to rain upon the Earth and there were no men on it to cultivate it. The Lord then formed, from the slime of the earth, man.” These words, brought near to these others: Fill the Earth, prove that man, from his origin, was destined to occupy the whole Earth and to cultivate it, as well as, moreover, that the paradise was not a circumscribed place, in a corner of the globe.

If the cultivation of the earth were to be a consequence of the fault of Adam, it would follow that, if Adam had not sinned, the Earth would remain uncultivated and the designs of God would not have been fulfilled.

Why did he say to the woman that, in consequence of having committed the fault, she would give birth with pain? How can the pain of childbirth be a chastisement, when it is an effect of the organism and when it is physiologically proven that it is a necessity? How can a thing that is produced according to the laws of Nature be a punishment? This is what the theologians have absolutely not yet explained and what they will not be able to explain, so long as they do not abandon the point of view in which they have placed themselves. Nevertheless, those words that seem so contradictory can be justified.

— Let us note, before all, that if, at the moment the two were created, the souls of Adam and Eve had come from nothing, as is still taught, they would have to be ignorant of all things; they would, therefore, have to be ignorant of what it is to die. Being alone on the Earth, as they were, while they lived in the paradise, they had not witnessed the death of anyone. How, then, could they have understood in what the threat of death that God made to them consisted?

How could Eve have understood that to give birth with pain would be a punishment, seeing that, having just been born to life, she had never had children and was the only woman existing in the world?

No sense, therefore, could the words of God have had, for Adam and Eve. Barely arisen from nothing, they could not know how nor why they had arisen from there; they could understand neither the Creator nor the motive of the prohibition that was made to them.

Without any experience of the conditions of life, they sinned like children who act without discernment, which makes still more incomprehensible the terrible responsibility that God made weigh upon them and upon all of Humanity.

— Nevertheless, what constitutes for Theology a dead-end alley, Spiritism explains without difficulty and in a rational manner, by the anteriority of the soul and by the plurality of existences, a law without which everything is mystery and anomaly in the life of man.

In effect, let us admit that Adam and Eve had already lived and everything at once is justified: God does not speak to them as to children, but as to beings in a state to understand him and who understand him, evident proof that both bring acquisitions previously realized.

Let us admit, moreover, that they had lived in a world more advanced and less material than ours, where the labor of the Spirit replaced that of the body; that, because they had rebelled against the law of God, figured in the disobedience, they had been removed from there and exiled, as punishment, to the Earth, where man, by the nature of the globe, is constrained to a corporeal labor, and we will recognize that God had reason to say to them: In the world where, from now on, you are to live, “you will cultivate the earth and from it draw your nourishment, with the sweat of your brow”; and, to the Woman: “You will give birth with pain,” because such is the condition of that world. (Chap. XI, no. 31 and following.)

The terrestrial paradise, whose vestiges have been sought in vain on the Earth, was, consequently, the figure of the happy world, where Adam had lived, or, rather, the race of Spirits whom he personifies.

The expulsion from the paradise marks the moment when those Spirits came to incarnate among the inhabitants of the terrestrial world and the change of situation was the consequence of the expulsion.

The angel who, wielding a flaming sword, bars the entrance of the paradise symbolizes the impossibility in which the Spirits of the inferior worlds find themselves, of penetrating into the superior worlds, before they merit it by their purification. (See, further on, the Chap. XIV, no. 8 and following.)

— Cain (after the murder of Abel) answers the Lord: My iniquity is exceedingly great, for it to be able to be forgiven me. — You expel me today from upon the Earth and I will go to hide myself from your face. I will go a fugitive and a vagabond over the Earth and anyone then who finds me will kill me. — The Lord answered him: No, this will not happen, for severely punished will be whoever kills Cain. And the Lord put a sign upon Cain, so that those who came to find him should not kill him. Having withdrawn from before the Lord, Cain remained a vagabond over the Earth and dwelt in the eastern region of Eden. Having known his wife, she conceived and gave birth to Henoch. He built (vaïehi bôné; literally: was building) a city that he called Henoch (Enochia) after the name of his son. (Genesis, Chap. IV, vv. 13 to 16.)

— If we cling to the letter of Genesis, here are the consequences at which we will arrive: Adam and Eve were alone in the world, after the expulsion from the terrestrial paradise; only subsequently did the two have the children Cain and Abel. Now, Cain having withdrawn to another region after having murdered his brother, did not see his parents again, who once more remained isolated. Only much later, at the age of one hundred and thirty years, was it that Adam had a third son, who was called Seth, after whose birth he still lived, according to the biblical genealogy, eight hundred years, and had more sons and daughters.

When, then, Cain went to establish himself to the east of Eden, there were only three persons on the Earth: his father and his mother, and he, alone, on his side. Nevertheless, Cain had a wife and a son. What woman could that be and where could he have espoused her? The Hebrew text says: He was building a city and not: he built, which indicates present action and not ulterior. But, a city presupposes the existence of inhabitants, seeing that it is not to be presumed that Cain made it for himself, his wife and his son, nor that he could have erected it alone.

From this very narrative, therefore, one must infer that the region was peopled; now, it could not be peopled by the descendants of Adam, who at that time were reduced to a single one: Cain.

Besides, the presence of other inhabitants stands out equally from these words of Cain: “I will be a fugitive and a vagabond and whoever finds me will kill me,”

and from the answer that God gave him. Whom could he fear would kill him and what use would the sign that God put upon him to preserve him from being killed have, since he would find no one?

Now, if there were on the Earth other men besides the family of Adam, it is that those men were there before him, whence is deduced this consequence, drawn from the very text of Genesis: Adam is neither the first, nor the only father of the human race. (Chap. XI, no. 34.) n

— There were needed the knowledge that Spiritism imparted concerning the relations of the spiritual principle with the material principle, 2 concerning the nature of the soul, 3 its creation in a state of simplicity and of ignorance, 4 its union with the body, 5 its indefinite progressive march through successive existences and through the worlds, which are so many steps on the path of perfecting, 6 concerning its gradual liberation from the influence of matter, through the use of free will, 7 the cause of its good or bad inclinations and of its aptitudes, 8 the phenomenon of birth and of death, 9 the situation of the Spirit in erraticity and, finally, 10 the future as the reward of its efforts to better itself and of its perseverance in good, in order that light might be shed upon all the parts of the spiritual Genesis.

Thanks to that light, man henceforth knows whence he comes, where he goes, for what reason he is on the Earth and why he suffers; he knows that he has in his hands his future and that the duration of his captivity in this world depends solely on himself.

Stripped of the cramped and paltry allegory, Genesis presents itself to him great and worthy of the majesty, the goodness and the justice of the Creator. Considered from that point of view, it will confound incredulity and will triumph. [1] Although the error of such a belief is very gross, with it children are still lulled at present, as if it were a matter of a sacred truth. Only trembling do the educators dare to venture upon a timid interpretation. How can they expect that this will not come later to make incredulous people?

[2] The Hebrew term haadam, man, from which Adam was composed, and the term haadama, earth, have the same root.

[3] Following some verses is found the literal translation of the Hebrew text, expressing more faithfully the primitive thought. The allegorical sense thus stands out more clearly.

[4] Paradise, from the Latin paradisus, derived from the Greek: paradeisos, garden, orchard, place planted with trees. The Hebrew term employed in Genesis is hagan, which has the same meaning.

[5] From the Hebrew cherub, keroub, ox, charab, to till; angels of the second choir of the first hierarchy, who were represented with four wings, four faces and ox feet.

[6] It is today perfectly recognized that the Hebrew word haadam is not a proper name, but means: man in general, Humanity, which destroys the entire structure raised upon the personality of Adam.

[7] In no text is the fruit specialized into the apple, a word that is found only in the children's versions. The term of the Hebrew text is peri, which has the same acceptations as in French, without determination of species and can be taken in a material, moral, allegorical sense, in a proper and figurative sense. For the Israelites, there is no obligatory interpretation; when a word has many acceptations, each one understands it as he wishes, provided that the interpretation is not contrary to grammar. The term peri was translated into Latin as malum, which applies as much to the apple as to any kind of fruits. It derives from the Greek melon, participle of the verb melo, to interest, to care for, to attract. [8] From this fact may one infer that the Egyptians knew mediumship by the glass of water? (Spiritist Review, of June 1868.)

[9] The term nâhâsch existed in the Egyptian language, with the meaning of black, probably because the blacks had the gift of enchantments and of divination. Perhaps also for this reason it is that the sphinxes, of Assyrian origin, were represented by a figure of a black person.

[10] This idea is not new. La Peyrère, a learned theologian of the seventeenth century, in his book Pre-Adamites, written in Latin and published in 1655, extracted from the original text of the Bible, adulterated by the translations, the evident proof that the Earth was inhabited before the coming of Adam, and this opinion is today that of many enlightened ecclesiastics.