62 ESSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



in the first man. The same is obviously true of 

 what we call " civilization." Whether or no the 

 first man was " arboreal in his habits " a fact on 

 which we have no evidence we are told that he 

 was " naked," and we hear nothing as yet of even 

 shelter or fire. 



In what, then, did his greatness consist? Chris- 

 tian theology answers that the first man was not 

 only, as every man is, a free, self-conscious per- 

 sonality, capable, as the brutes are not, of knowing 

 and loving God, but a being who, by the grace 

 of God, was living in happy communion with God. 

 The difference between him and the non-moral 

 animals was that, w r hile both alike obeyed God's 

 Will, he did it consciously, knowing what he did, 

 and rejoicing in the knowledge. And his nature, 

 like theirs, was at harmony with itself. But when 

 Adam set up his own will against God's Will, he 

 separated himself from that Divine communion, 

 and lost the grace which alone had kept his nature 

 true to itself in holiness and righteousness. By 

 that withdrawal of God's grace, man finds himself 

 not only separated from God, but at strife with 

 himself his free-will not, indeed, destroyed (for 

 man is never on a level with the non-moral world), 

 but weakened, the image of God in him defaced, 

 the vision of God obscured, human nature unable 

 to restore itself to the communion which it had lost 

 and for which it longed. 



