THE BRUISED SERPENT 179 



the theologian to believe not only that the serpent 

 of Paradise before its degradation walked erect on 

 two legs, as the Fathers taught — some going so far 

 as to give it a beautiful head as well as a ready 

 tongue— but also that after the devil had cast aside 

 the temporary coil something of his demoniac 

 spirit remained thereafter in it, to be transmitted 

 by inheritance, like a variation in structure or a 

 new instinct, to its remotest descendants. There 

 is the further objection, although not an important 

 one, that it would be unjust to afflict the serpent 

 so grievously for a crime of which it had only been 

 made the involuntary agent. 



Believers in an instinct in man inimical to the 

 serpent might still argue that the Scriptural curse 

 only goes to show that this reptile was already held 

 in general abhorrence — that, in fact, the feeling 

 suggested the fable. That the fable had some such 

 origin is probable, but we are just as far from an 

 instinct as ever. The general feeling of mankind, 

 or, at any rate, of the leading men during the 

 earliest civilised periods of which we have any 

 knowledge, was one of veneration, even of love, 

 for the serpent. The Jews alone were placed by 

 their monotheistic doctrine in direct antagonism to 

 all nature-worship and idolatry. In their leaders 

 — prophets and priests — the hatred of the heathen 

 and of heathen modes of thought was kept alive, 

 and constantly fanned into a fierce flame by the 

 prevalent tendency in the common people to revert 

 to the surrounding older and lower forms of religion, 



