Scenes and Portraits

by Frederic Manning

"'To what god is it dedicated?' I enquired of them.

"'It is dedicated to God,' replied Adam simply.

"And I was surprised that this man, who had so many needs, should have only one god; but very soon I found that his monotheism was but a rude crystallisation of the spiritual forces of earth and air, a kind of shamanism, though with the many considered as one. His god was the god of fertility, who had caused the earth to put forth grass, and the trees to bear fruit, and all things to bring forth after their kind; a god whose voice was heard on the wind of the day, and who breathed into man the breath of life. In his loneliness Adam had told himself stories as children do, and, as with children, his imagination had laid hold with such intensity of vision upon these fanciful adventures of his mind that he seemed to live in a little world of his own creating, a land of enchantment and of dreams. The wind, the waters, the leaves of the never silent trees, the birds and the beasts of the field, all spoke in what was to him an intelligible voice; and his god was a being not far removed from himself, enjoying, even as Adam himself did, the cool of the day, the blithe air, and the breath of the sweet flowers.

"'How came it that this particular tree should be forbidden to you?' I enquired of them, for I was curious of the spiritual workings of their minds.

"'In the day that we came into this garden,' answered Adam, 'I had a desire to eat of the fruit, and I stretched my hand toward the tree when I heard a voice upon the wind, saying: "In the day that ye eat thereof ye shall surely die."'

"'It is curious,' I murmured. 'The fruit is wholesome, one would think that to eat thereof would give life rather than death.'

"'If we ate of the fruit would we not die?' enquired Eve.

"'If ye ate of it you would know,' I answered, smiling at the simplicity of the question; and then I spoke to Adam of other things. I love the conversation of the young, O King. It brings back to me the time when I, too, had illusions, hopes, and ideals. The sole illusions remaining to mine old age are the illusion of life, and the hope that where we have failed our children may succeed. Adam believes that all men are naturally good, and that it is society which makes them evil; he does not see that society cannot be different from what it is since it is a purely natural development, and that its laws were not made by men, but are merely a recognition of certain instincts peculiar to mankind, and of the effects which the exercise of these instincts invariably produces. His point of view is that of the individual; and the egoism of the individual is always in conflict with the collective egoism of the state. He believes that men are born equal, and that society loads them with chains. He cannot grasp the seeming paradox that what he imagines to be the natural man is really artificial, and that what he imagines to be an artificial society is really the expression of natural laws. Adam himself is not natural, he is kindly and hospitable to strangers, he is gentle, and loves his wife, he is practically a monotheist.

"Every individual is like Adam in this. We are all idealists. All of us have excellent intentions; but the world is so constituted that we can never carry them out. Adam has never been in a great city, but he has seen from afar the huge towers of Uruk looming into the night, and they are to him in their proud invasion of the sky a symbol of man's rebellion against the decrees of God, who fashioned him to be a feeble creature, scratching about upon the surface of the earth, and to draw his whole being from that shallow deposit of productive soil which he cultivates laboriously. He considers our temples to be the work of some demonic agency, for he does not think it possible that beings similar to himself should uplift these gigantic masses into the air. Our works of pride are, therefore, evil to him, since they differ from the works of his native humility; to live like Adam is to live virtuously; and that which is different from his mode of life is evil."

Here Merodach and the Queen Parysatis laughed at the simplicity of Adam, and the Princess Candace also laughed because she did not understand why they were amused. Bagoas looked at his audience with a faint tolerant smile.