ogical Adam, the central postulate of a group of
dogmas, the support of a fabric of controversial thought, the lay
figure to fill out and wear the hypothetical dresses of a
doctrinal system; and there is the Scientific Adam, the first
specimen of the genus man, the supposititious personage who, as
the earliest product, on this grade, of the Creative organic force
or Divine energy, commenced the series of human generations. The
first is a hypostatized legend, the second a metaphysical
personification, the third a philosophical hypothesis. The first
is an attractive heap of imaginations, the next a dialectic mass
of dogmatisms, the last a modest set of theories.

Philo says God made Adam not from any chance earth, but from a
carefully selected portion of the finest and most sifted clay, and
that, as being directly created by God, he was superior to all
others generated by men, the generations of whom deteriorate in
each remove from him, as the attraction of a magnet weakens from
the iron ring it touches along a chain of connected rings. The
Rabbins say Adam was so large that when he lay down he reached
across the earth, and when standing his head touched the
firmament: after his fall he waded through the ocean, Orion like.
Even a French Academician, Nicolas Fleurion, held that Adam was
one hundred and twenty three feet and nine inches in height. All
creatures except the angel Eblis, as the Koran teaches, made
obeisance to him. Eblis, full of envy and pride, refused, and was
thrust into hell by God, where he began to plot the ruin of the
new race. One effect of the forbidden fruit he ate was to cause
rotten teeth in his descendants. He remained in Paradise but one
day. After he had eaten from the prohibited tree, Eve gave of the
fruit to the other creatures in Eden, and they all ate of it, and
so became mortal, with the sole exception of the phoenix, who
refused to taste it, and consequently remained immortal.

The Talmud teaches that Adam would never have died had he not
sinned. The majority of the Christian fathers and doctors, from
Tertullian and Augustine to Luther and Calvin, have maintained the
same opinion. It has been the orthodox that is, the prevailing
doctrine of the Church, affirmed by the Synod at Carthage in the
year four hundred and eighteen, and by the Council of Trent in the
year fifteen hundred and forty five. All the evils which afflict
the world, both moral and material, are direct results of Adam's