complete
body. If not, when it was taken away, Adam would be a maimed person, and
robbed of a part of himself that was necessary. I say necessary, for
as much, as I suppose, that in the fabric of a human body nothing is
superfluous, and that no one bone can be taken away without endangering
the whole, or rendering it, in some measure, imperfect. But it, on the
other side, you say this rib was really useless to Adam, and might be
spared, so that you make him to have only twelve ribs on one side and
thirteen on the other, they will reply that this is like a monster,
as much as if the first man had been created with three feet, or three
hands, or had had more eyes, or other members, than the use of a human
body requires. But in the beginning we cannot but suppose that all
things were made with all imaginable exactness.

"For my part, I do not pretend to decide this dispute, but what more
perplexes me is, how, out of one rib, the whole mass of a woman's body
could be built? For a rib does not, perhaps, equal the thousandth part
of an entire body. If you answer that the rest of the matter was taken
from elsewhere, certainly, then, Eve might much more truly be said to
have been formed out of that borrowed matter, whatever it was, than out
of Adam's rib. I know that the Rabbinical doctors solve this business
quite another way, for they say the first man had two bodies, the one
male, the other female, who were joined together, and that God having
cloven them asunder, gave one side to Adam for a wife. Plato has, in his
'Symposium,' something very like this story, concerning his first man,
Anoroginus, who was afterwards divided into two parts, male and female.
Lastly, others conjecture that Moses gave out this original of woman to
the end that he might inspire a mutual love between the two sexes, as
parts of one and the same whole, so as more effectually to recommend his
own institution of marriage.... But leaving this subject, I will hasten
to something else.

"Now, the second article treats of God's, garden in Eden, watered with
four rivers arising from the same spring.... Those rivers are, by Moses,
called Pishon, Gishon, Hiddekal, and Perath, which the ancient authors
interpret by Ganges, Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates. Nor do I truly think
without some reason, for Moses seems to have proposed nothing more than
the bringing four of the most celebrated rivers of the whole earth to
the watering of his garden. Ah! but, say you, th