Thomasius: “That evil is a necessary transition-point to good, is Satan's doctrine and philosophy.” The tree was mainly a tree of probation. It is right for a father to make his son's title to his estate depend upon the performance of some filial duty, as Thaddeus Stevens made his son's possession of property conditional upon his keeping the temperance-pledge. Whether, besides this, the tree of knowledge was naturally hurtful or poisonous, we do not know.
(c) Opportunity of securing physical immortality.—The body of the first man was in itself mortal (1 Cor. 15:45). Science shows that physical life involves decay and loss. But means were apparently provided for checking this decay and preserving the body's youth. This means was the “tree of life” (Gen. 2:9). If Adam had maintained his integrity, the body might have been developed and transfigured, without intervention of death. In other words, the posse non mori might have become a non posse mori.
The tree of life was symbolic of communion with God and of man's dependence upon him. But this, only because it had a physical efficacy. It was sacramental and memorial to the soul, because it sustained the life of the body. Natural immortality without holiness would have been unending misery. Sinful man was therefore shut out from the tree of life, till he could be prepared for it by God's righteousness. Redemption and resurrection not only restore that which was lost, but give what man was originally created to attain: 1 Cor. 15:45—“The first man Adam became a living soul. The last man Adam became a life-giving spirit”; Rev. 22:14—“Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have the right to come to the tree of life.”
The conclusions we have thus reached with regard to the incidents of man's original state are combated upon two distinct grounds:
1st. The facts bearing upon man's prehistoric condition point to a development from primitive savagery to civilization. Among these facts may be mentioned the succession of implements and weapons from stone to bronze and iron; the polyandry and communal marriage systems of the lowest tribes; the relics of barbarous customs still prevailing among the most civilized.
For the theory of an originally savage condition of man, see Sir John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, and Origin of Civilization: “The primitive condition of mankind was one of utter barbarism”; but especially L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, who divides human progress into three great periods, the savage, the barbarian, and the civilized. Each of the two former has three states, as follows: I. Savage: 1. Lowest state, marked by attainment of speech and subsistence upon roots. 2. Middle state, marked by fish-food and fire. 3. Upper state, marked by use of the bow and hunting. II. Barbarian: 1. Lower state, marked by invention and use of pottery. 2. Middle state, marked by use of domestic animals, maize, and building stone. 3. Upper state, marked by invention and use of iron tools. III. Civilized man next appears, with the introduction of the phonetic alphabet and writing. J. S. Stuart-Glennie, Contemp. Rev., Dec. 1892:844, defines civilization as “enforced social organization, with written records, and hence intellectual development and social progress.”
With regard to this view we remark:
(a) It is based upon an insufficient induction of facts.—History shows a law of degeneration supplementing and often counteracting the tendency to development. In the earliest times of which we have any record, we find nations in a high state of civilization; but in the case of every nation whose history runs back of the Christian era—as for example, the Romans, [pg 528] the Greeks, the Egyptians—the subsequent progress has been downward, and no nation is known to have recovered from barbarism except as the result of influence from without.
Lubbock seems to admit that cannibalism was not primeval; yet he shows a general tendency to take every brutal custom as a sample of man's first state. And this, in spite of the fact that many such customs have been the result of corruption. Bride-catching, for example, could not possibly have been primeval, in the strict sense of that term. Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1:48, presents a far more moderate view. He favors a theory of development, but with degeneration “as a secondary action largely and deeply affecting the development of civilization.” So the Duke of Argyll, Unity of Nature: “Civilization and savagery are both the results of evolutionary development; but the one is a development in the upward, the latter in the downward direction; and for this reason, neither civilization nor savagery can rationally be looked upon as the primitive condition of man.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:467—“As plausible an argument might be constructed out of the deterioration and degradation of some of the human family to prove that man may have evolved downward into an anthropoid ape, as that which has been constructed to prove that he has been evolved upward from one.”
Modern nations fall far short of the old Greek perception and expression of beauty. Modern Egyptians, Bushmen, Australians, are unquestionably degenerate races. See Lankester, Degeneration. The same is true of Italians and Spaniards, as well as of Turks. Abyssinians are now polygamists, though their ancestors were Christians and monogamists. The physical degeneration of portions of the population of Ireland is well known. See Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 146-160, who applies to the savage-theory the tests of language, morals, and religion, and who quotes Herbert Spencer as saying: “Probably most of them [savages], if not all of them, had ancestors in higher states, and among their beliefs remain some which were evolved during those higher states.... It is quite possible, and I believe highly probable, that retrogression has been as frequent as progression.” Spencer, however, denies that savagery is always caused by lapse from civilization.