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judiciously ; since beyond the limits of the earth , as it now exists ——that is , before the origin of the human race and the course of events connected with it—there can be for us no chronology that deserves the name * . ' * Of all the wonders with which the
collected traditions of Asia have so richly adorned the paradise of the primeval world , the Mosaic account has preserved only these —the two trees—of life , and of the knowledge of good and evil ; a speaking serpent , and a cherub ; the endless multitude of other marvels the venerable philosopher totally rejects , and even these , which he has retained , he has clothed in a narrative full of
instructive meaning . But one forbidden tree is planted in Paradise , and this , according to the seductive representations of the serpent , bears the fruit of that divine wisdom which man covets after . Could he aspire to anything loftier ? Could he , even in his fall , assume a nobler character ? Let any one compare this narrative , considered merely as an allegory , with the legends of other nations ; it surpasses them all in the beauty and delicacy with
which it symbolically represents what has ever been the source of all the weal and the woe of human nature . Our questionable struggles after knowledge , that-befits- us not—the wanton use and perversion of our free-agency—our restless widening and overstepping of the limits which moral laws mus $ t of necessity assign to the feebleness of a being , whose first duty is to know himself ; this is the fiery wheel under which we groan , and whose
revolution even now makes up almost the whole circle of our existence . This great truth Moses knew as well as we ; and he exhibits it to us , tied up in the knot of a story of infantine simplicity , in which are knitted together nearly all the encjs of the threads of humanity . In the Indian and Thibetian mythologies there are allusions to efforts for the attainment of immortality , and to the loss of . original felicity through misconduct ; but none of the
legends appear to me to attain to the clear depth , the childlike simplicity of this tradition of Moses , which contains only so much of the wonderful as serves to identify the age and country when and where it arose . The same narrative relates , that the first created human beings maintained an instructive intercourse with
Eloln ' that , under this divine direction , they attained , through the naming of animals , to the use of speech and a governing rea ^ son ; that when man , by forbidden means , would make himself like to God in the knowledge of evil , he did it to his own injury , and was removed , in consequence , to another place , and doomed to enter on a new and more artificial course of life : all which
circumstances of the tradition contain , under the veil of fable , truths more important to mankind , than the great systems which Jiave been invented concerning the original condition of Autochr thones . If , as we have seen , the prerogatives of human nature are nothing more than innate capabilities , which demand a pecu--* Book X ch , vi ., pp . 286 ,, 297 .
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1 6 B The Philosophy of the History of Mankind .
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1832, page 168, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1808/page/24/
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