140 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III. 



ufe of it, and only retain the capacity of acquiring it: And tliis 

 we fee happens in common life; for a man by fancying liimfelf a 

 King may become mad, and fo lofe the ufe of intellect altogether 

 for a lime, but may again recover it. But we may fuppofe that a 

 man, though he may recover the ufe of intelle<fl:, which he has lofl: 

 in the way I have mentioned, may not recover all the knowledge 

 he had before he loft the ufe of his intelledl, but only part of it, by 

 feeing obj;£ts which put him in mind of it. And this I hold to have 

 been the cafe of our firfl: parents; and that, therefore, Plato is in 

 the right, when he maintains that all the knowledge, we acquire in 

 this life, is no more than Reminifcence of what we knew in our for- 

 mer life *. 



It may be obferved of this allegory of the Fall, that it fuppofey 

 man to have fallen at once, by eating the forbidden fruit. But 

 this is the nature of allegory, to fuppofe a thing done at once, which 

 may have been many years a-doing. And, therefore, I underftand 

 that man was for a confiderable time in that perverfion of his intcl- 

 le<fl, which made him think himfelf a god, before he loft the ufe of 

 it altogether and became a creature, fuch as Ariftotle has defcribed 

 him, only capable of intelletft and fcience. 



This account of the fall of man is, like the other things in our fa- 

 cred writings, perfe<3:ly agreeable to philofophy and the religion of 

 nature ; and accordingly Plato has maintained, as I have faid"i", that 

 there was an antecedent ftate of man, in which he was a more per- 

 fect animal than he is at prefent : And, indeed, I hold it to be alto- 

 gether irreconcileable with the wifdom and goodnefs of God, to fup- 

 pofe that man came out of the hands of his Creator an animal fo im~ 



perfeft 

 * See p. 202. of Vol. V. of this work, 



-!■ Page 380. and following of Vol. IV. 



