AN ANXIEXT PROTEST AGAINST THE CURSE ON EVE. 



Bv PAUL HAUPT. 

 (,Rcad April 3j, igii.) 



In the Biblical Legend of the Fall of ^Man, which symbolizes the 

 first connubial intercourse,^ the Lord pronounces a curse on Eve, 

 saying, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy sighing;- in pain 

 thou wilt bear children ; nevertheless thy desire is' to thy husband 

 and he will rule over thee (Genesis, iii., i6).* 



The great pessimistic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer says 

 that the story of the Fall of Man contains the only metaphysical 

 truth found in the Old Testament; it is the acme of Judaism, dcr 

 Glanzpunkt des Judcntums; but it is an hors d' criivrc: the pessi- 

 mistic tendency of this legend has no echo in the Old Testament 

 which, on the whole, is optimistic, whereas the New Dispensation is 

 pessimistic, at least so far as this world is concerned." 



We all know what the forbidden fruif' in the midst of the 

 Garden" of Eden® means: he who eats of it loses his childlike inno- 

 cence; his eyes are opened, just as Adam and Eve perceived that 

 they were naked. Not to know good and evil, that is, what is 

 wholesome and injurious, means to be like a child.'' In the eight- 

 eenth book of the Odyssey (v. 228) Telemachus says to his mother 

 Penelope, I am intelligent and know good and evil,^" I am no longer 

 a child. ^^ In the Bible this phrase is used also of the second child- 

 hood : Barzillai of Gilead answered David, when the king asked him 

 to follow him to Jerusalem, I am this day fourscore years old and 

 can no longer discern between good and evil, that is, my intellect is 

 impaired by old age, I have become again like a child. 



The explanation of the Fall of Man as the first connubial inter- 

 course was given by the celebrated English philosopher Thom.\s 

 HoBBES in his Leviathan (London, 1651) and it may be traced back 

 to Clemext of Alexandria in the second century of our era.^- But 

 older than this philosophical explanation of original sin^^ is an 



PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC, L. 20I HH, PRI.NTED SEPT. 6, I9II. 



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