216 WHAT IS LIFE? 



Thus finishes the first record of the creation, followed 

 by a second record. This second legend differs from 

 the first in marked degrees. 1 Here we have the legend 

 of the Garden of Eden. Now we find that man was 

 not created u male and female," but the male only- 

 one solitary male was only created " of the dust of 

 the ground." 2 And this poor wretch must have 

 lived a considerable time without any human asso- 

 ciation, for he was required to dress and keep this 

 Garden of Eden during the time vegetation was 

 flourishing. Then it bethought God of the solitary 

 condition of this poor human creature. "It is not 

 good that the man should be alone," said God ; 

 so he caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and 



1 " The two accounts of the creation of the heaven and earth, of 

 animal and vegetable life, and of man, are quite different. In the 

 first Man is created last, male and female, in the image of God, with 

 dominion over all the previous forms of matter and of life, which 

 have been created for his benefit. In the second Man is formed from 

 the dust of the earth immediately after the creation of the heavens 

 and earth and of the vegetable world, and subsequently all the beasts 

 of the field and fowls of the air are formed out of the ground, and 

 brought to Adam to name ; while, last of all, woman is made from a. 

 rib taken from Adam to be an helpmeet for him." ("Human 

 Origins," S. Laing, 1895, p. 220.) 



2 " This idea of these great fathers of the Eastern Church took 

 even stronger hold on the great father of the Western Church. For 

 St. Augustine, so fettered usually by the letter of the sacred text, 

 broke from his own famous doctrine as to the acceptance of Scripture 

 and spurned the generally received belief of a creative process like 

 that by which a toymaker brings into existence a box of playthings. 

 In his great treatise on Genesis he says : ' To suppose that God 

 formed man from the dust w^ith bodily hands is very childish. . . . 

 God neither formed man with bodily hands nor did he breathe upon 

 him with throat and lips.' ' : (" A History of the Warfare of Science 

 with Theology in Christendom," A. D. White, 1896, vol. i. p. 53.) 



