Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/80

74 guide; whether these so-called perceptions were not delusions; whether the best evidence was not the evidence of the senses; whether this being led by self was not a pleasant experience; whether it was really death to the soul; whether these old ideas of their forefathers were not mere superstitions having no foundation in common sense; and a hundred other similar doubts which the sensual principle is capable of insinuating, and then of satisfactorily answering to inflated self-consciousness and pride.

So was it, doubtless, that the serpent talked to the woman; and the woman, touched with the argument, goes direct to the man. That is, self-love being beguiled, in its turn beguiles the intellect. This, perhaps, was not the work of a year, nor of a hundred years. It was the working of the leaven of sensuousness in the human family for thousands of years, probably, dragging it down to the lower levels of life.

And in this we find the true history of the origin of evil. Evil originated, not in the machinations of a serpent who beguiled a single woman, but in self-love yielding to arguments founded on sensuous appearances. Man was created upright, but free. He inclined to self; he listened to the delusive whisperings of sense and his sensual nature; he let go his hold on God and his love, and so brought evil into the world.