Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/72

54 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 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