paradise to Zarathrustra, likened it, in
every way, to heaven. There the first beings were, exempt from
physical necessities, pure intelligences, naked as the compilers of
Genesis translated, naked and unashamed, but naked and unashamed
because incorporeal, unincarnate and clothed in light, a vestment
which they exchanged for a garment of flesh, coats of skin as it is in
Genesis, when, descended on earth, their intelligence, previously
luminous, swooned in the senses of man.

In Egypt, the harper going out from Amenti sang: "Life is death in a
land of darkness, death is life in a land of light." There perhaps is
the origin of evil. There too perhaps is its cure. But the view
accepted there too is pre-existence and persistence, a doctrine
blasphemous to the Jew as it was to the Assyrian, to whom the gods
alone were immortal, and to whom, in consequence, immortal beings
would be gods. In the creed of both, man was essentially evanescent.
To the Hebrew, he lived a few, brief days and then went down into
silence, where no remembrance is. There, gathered among the Refaim to
his fathers, he remained forever, unheeded by God.

The conception, passably rationalistic and not impossibly correct,
veiled the beautiful allegory that was latent in the Eden myth. It had
the further defect, or the additional advantage, of eliminating any
theory of future punishment and reward. In lieu of anything of the
kind, there was a doctrine that evil, in producing evil, automatically
punished itself. The doctrine is incontrovertible. But, for corollary,
went the fallacy that virtue is its own reward. Against that idea Job
protested so energetically that mediaeval monks were afraid to read
what he wrote. Yet it was perhaps in demonstration of the real
significance of the allegory that a spiritualistic doctrine--always an
impiety to the orthodox--was insinuated by the Pharisees and instilled
by the Christ.

The basis of it rested perhaps partially in the idealism of the
prophets. The clamour of their voices awoke the dead. It transformed
the skies. It transfigured Jahveh. It divested him of attributes that
were human. It outlined others that were divine. It awoke not merely
the dead, but the consciousness that a god that had a proper name
could not be the true one. Thereafter mention of it was avoided. The
vowels were dropped. It became unpronounceable, therefore
incommunicable. For it was substituted the term vaguer, and therefore
more exact,