Partly by an undue thirst for knowledge, and partly by increasing sensuality, and the seduction of woman, man fell. Then passion and lust ruled in the human mind, and war with the animals began. In one of the Chinese sacred volumes, called the Chi-King, it is said that:
"All was subject to man at first, but a woman threw us into slavery. The wise husband raised up a bulwark of walls, but the woman, by an ambitious desire of knowledge, demolished them. Our misery did not come from heaven, but from a woman. She lost the human race. Ah, unhappy Poo See! thou kindled the fire that consumes us, and which is every day augmenting. Our misery has lasted many ages. The world is lost. Vice overflows all things like a mortal poison."[15:1]
Thus we see that the Chinese are no strangers to the doctrine of original sin. It is their invariable belief that man is a fallen being; admitted by them from time immemorial.
The inhabitants of Madagascar had a legend similar to the Eden story, which is related as follows:
"The first man was created of the dust of the earth, and was placed in a garden, where he was subject to none of the ills which now affect mortality; he was also free from all bodily appetites, and though surrounded by delicious fruit and limpid streams yet felt no desire to taste of the fruit or to quaff the water. The Creator had, moreover, strictly forbid him either to eat or to drink. The great enemy, however, came to him, and painted to him, in glowing colors, the sweetness of the apple, and the lusciousness of the date, and the succulence of the orange."
After resisting the temptations for a while, he at last ate of the fruit, and consequently fell.[15:2]
A legend of the Creation, similar to the Hebrew, was found by Mr. Ellis among the Tahitians, and appeared in his "Polynesian Researches." It is as follows:
After Taarao had formed the world, he created man out of aræa, red earth, which was also the food of man until bread was made. Taarao one day called for the man by name. When he came, he caused him to fall asleep, and while he slept, he took out one of his ivi, or bones, and with it made a woman, whom he gave to the man as his wife, and they became the progenitors of mankind. The woman's name was Ivi, which signifies a bone.[15:3]
The prose Edda, of the ancient Scandinavians, speaks of the "Golden Age" when all was pure and harmonious. This age lasted until the arrival of woman out of Jotunheim—the region of the giants, a sort of "land of Nod"—who corrupted it.[15:4]
In the annals of the Mexicans, the first woman, whose name was translated by the old Spanish writers, "the woman of our flesh," is always represented as accompanied by a great male serpent, who seems to be talking to her. Some writers believe this to be the tempter speaking to the primeval mother, and others that it is intended to represent the father of the human race. This Mexican Eve is represented on their monuments as the mother of twins.[15:5]