of a true sense of power in good men it takes the form of a love of heavenly excellence and of a contempt of earthly weakness:—and it was from pride that the sin of man began. It was the first exercise of his free will.
In applying these views to the interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis, our Scot has practically to supersede its historical meaning by the allegorical. He explains any difficulties that he encounters in the narrative by the theory that it is accommodated to our lower understanding. It expresses truth by figures. The order of time for instance, he says, is so often violated in the Bible itself that there can be no objection to our ignoring it in our exposition. Adam must have sinned before he was tempted by the devil; else he would not have been accessible to temptation. The events that are related to have taken place in Eden, that is in the ideal state, really happened on earth and were consequential on Adam’s sin. For if paradise is human nature fanned after the image of God and made equal to the blessedness of the angels, then immediately he wished to leave his Creator, he fell from the dignity of his nature. His pride began before he consented to his wife. By this act man came into the domain of time and space; hence arose the physical distinctions of sex[1] and the rest of his bodily conditions, no less than the diversities of manners and thought that divide the human race. That which was single became manifold. We thus reach the ultimate result of the philosopher’s conception of evil. Sin is contemporaneous with the existence of the human body. It marks the transition
- ↑ Baur, 2. 302, considers that the Scot held this separation of sex as the most important consequence of the fall. I am inclined rather to think that he chose it as the most speaking example, the simplest way of denoting the material man. Who after Augustin could avoid regarding sex as the distinctive corporeal fact in man’s nature? Compare on this salient principle of Augustin, Milman, Latin Christianity I. 151.
many novel thoughts upon the reader. The theory of evil waits for its complete development until the fourth book. As yet he is content to speak of evil in a general way as though it actually existed. The contradictions of his work have been exaggerated by critics and seldom fail to resolve themselves on a closer scrutiny.
