Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/54

48 and final fall, probably was a period of many centuries more.

The first departure from perfect innocence must have been very slight. Such first departures always are. They begin in things so small that we do not see the evil in them. The first slight inclination is the preliminary step to a drunkard's grave; the first boyish cheat at marbles, the small beginning that leads to the forger's cell; the first fruit surreptitiously obtained from the mother's pantry, the trivial offense that may end in highway robbery. It is plain to perceive the nature of the first mistake of these primitive children of God; plain, not because it is so on the face of the literal narrative, but because the symbols by which it is related make it so.

Up to this time the description is that of the Garden of Eden as it was originally created by the Lord. All that from a spiritual point of view is lovely and lofty, is represented in the correspondences employed. By them we determine the character of the people whom they describe. But something new is introduced into Eden now—a feature which was not there when that garden was first planted; which was not there when man was put into the garden thus divinely formed. The woman is introduced upon the scene.

If Eden symbolizes man's state of love, the garden his intelligence, the tree of life the Lord