d made man, he "breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life, and man became a living soul," but apparently no such operation
was performed on Eve. Indeed, it is very difficult to prove from the
Bible that woman has a soul at all. Women should reflect on this. They
should also reflect on the invidious fact that they were not included
in the original scheme of things, but thrown in as a make-weight
afterwards. Let them ponder this a while, and the churches and chapels
in which this story is taught would soon be emptied. The majority of
those who occupy seats in such places wear bonnets, and most of those
who don't, go there for the sake of those who do.

When Adam had thus accosted his bride he grew prophetical. "Therefore,"
said he, "shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave
unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." In his desire to give the
institution of marriage the highest sanction, the writer of this story
perpetrated a gross anachronism. Adam had no parents, nor any
experience of marriage. Unless, therefore, we credit him with superhuman
prescience, it is absurd to make him talk in this way.

Eve's name, no less than Adam's, betrays the mythological character of
the story. It means the "mother of all," and was evidently applied to
her by the Jewish writers in order to signify her supposed relationship
to the human race.

While God was engaged in the work of creation, why did he not make two
human couples, instead of one? The arrangement he adopted involved the
propagation of the human species through incest Adam and Eve's sons must
have had children by their sisters. If two couples had been created,
their families might have intermarried, and mankind would not then have
sprang from the incestuous intercourse of the very first generation.
Surely omnipotence might have obviated the necessity of a crime against
which civilised consciences revolt with unspeakable disgust.

Adam and Eve were placed by God in the Garden of Eden. "Eden," says
Kalisch, "comprised that tract of land where the Euphrates and Tigris
separate; from that spot the 'garden in Eden' cannot be distant. Let it
suffice that we know its general position." Its exact position can never
be ascertained. What a pity it is that Noah did not occupy some of his
leisure time, during the centuries he lived after his exit from the ark,
in writing a typography of the antediluvian world! The Greeks placed
Paradise in the Islands of the B