Certain learned authorities—as, for instance, Ewald and M. Maury—have striven to discover in the general order of Biblical history traces of this system of the four ages. But impartial criticism must admit that they have not made out their case; the foundations on which they have tried to establish their demonstration are so entirely artificial, so opposed to the spirit of the Scripture narrative, that they break down of themselves.[52] And, indeed, M. Maury is the first to allow that there is a fundamental opposition between the Biblical tradition and the legend of Brahminical India or of Hesiod. In this last, as he himself remarks, we see "no trace of a predisposition to sin transmitted by inheritance from the first man to his descendants, no vestige of original sin."
No doubt, as Pascal has so eloquently said, "it is in this abyss that the problem of our condition gathers its complications and intricacies, so that man is more inconceivable without this mystery than this mystery is inconceivable to man;" but the truth of the fall and of original sin is one of those against which human pride has most constantly rebelled, is, indeed, the one from which it spontaneously seeks to escape. Hence of all portions of primeval tradition as to the beginnings of humanity it has been the earliest obliterated. As soon as men felt the sense of exultation to which the progress of their civilization and their conquests in the material world gave birth, they repudiated the idea. Religious philosophers springing up outside the revelation which was held in trust by the chosen people took no account of the Fall; and, indeed, how could that doctrine have been made to harmonize with the dreams of Pantheism and emanation? By rejecting the notion of original sin, and substituting the doctrine of emanation for that of creation, most of the peoples of pagan antiquity were led to the melancholy theory of the four ages, such as we find it in the Sacred Books of India and the poetry of Hesiod. It was by the law of decadence and continual deterioration that the ancient world believed itself so heavily laden. In proportion as time passed and things departed further and further from their point of emanation, they corrupt themselves and grow ever worse. This is the effect of an inexorable fate and of the very force of their development. In this fatal evolution towards decline, there is no room left for human freedom; the whole revolves in a circle from which there is no means of escaping. With Hesiod, each age marks a decadence from the one that preceded it; and, as the poet explicitly declares regarding the iron age inaugurated by heroes, each of these ages taken separately follows the same descending scale as does their totality. In India the conception of the four ages or Yuga, by developing itself and producing its natural consequences, engenders that of the Manvantara. According to this new theory the world, after having accomplished its four ages of constant degeneration, undergoes dissolution (pralaya), things having reached such a pitch of corruption as to be no longer capable of subsisting. Then there springs up a new universe, with a new humanity—doomed to the same cycle of necessary and fatal evolution, which the four Yugas in turn go through, till a new dissolution takes place; and so on to infinity. Here we have, indeed, fatalism under the most cruelly inexorable form, and also the most destructive of all true morality. For there can be no responsibility where there is no freedom, nor is there in reality any good or evil where corruption is the effect of an irresistible law of evolution.
How far more consolatory is the Biblical statement, hard though it first appear to human pride, and how incomparable the prospects it opens out to the mind! It admits that man, almost as soon as created, fell from his state of original purity and Edenic bliss. In virtue of the law of heredity everywhere imprinted on Nature, it was the fault committed by the first ancestors of humanity in the exercise of their moral freedom which condemned their descendants to punishment, and by bequeathing to them an original taint predisposed them to sin. But this predisposition to sin does not condemn man fatally to its committal; he may escape from it by the exercise of his free will; and in the same way he may by personal effort raise himself gradually out of the state of material decline and misery to which the fault of his ancestors has brought him down. The pagan conception of the four ages unrolls before us a picture of constant degeneration, whereas the whole order of Biblical history from its starting-point in the earliest chapters of Genesis affords the spectacle of the progressive rise of humanity from the period of its original fall. On one hand, its course is conceived of as a continual descent; on the other, as a continual ascent. The Old Testament, which we must here embrace in one general view, occupies itself but little indeed with this ever-ascending course as regards the development of material civilization, of which, however, it cursorily points out the principal stages with a good deal of exactness. It rather traces for us the picture of moral progress, and of the more and more definite development of religious truth, the apprehension of which goes on ever gaining in spirituality, purity, and breadth amongst the chosen people, by a series of steps marked by the calling of Abraham, the promulgation of the Mosaic Law, and, lastly, by the mission of the prophets, who in their turn announce the last and supreme progress. This is to result from the coming of the Messiah, and the consequences of this last providential fact will go on continually developing themselves, and tending towards a perfection, the term of which lies in the Infinite. This notion of a rise after the fall, the fruit of man's free effort assisted by divine grace and working within the limit of his powers towards the accomplishment of the providential plan, is shown to us by the Old Testament as existing only in one people, the people of Israel; but the Christian spirit has extended the view to the universal history of mankind, and thus has arisen that conception of a law of continual progress unknown to antiquity, to which our modern society is so invincibly attached, but which is, we should never forget, an idea due to Christianity.
Zoroastrianism was unlike other pagan religions in this, that it could not fail to admit and preserve the ancient tradition of a first sin. Rather would it have been forced to construct for itself an analogical myth, had it not found such in the primitive memories that it bent to its own doctrines. The tradition squared, indeed, but too well with its system of a dualism having a spiritual basis, although as yet but imperfectly freed from confusion between the physical and moral worlds. It explained quite naturally how man, a creature of the good God, and consequently originally perfect, should have fallen under the power of the evil spirit, thus contracting a taint which in the moral order subjected him to sin, in the material to death, and to all the miseries that poison earthly existence. Thus the notion of the sin of the first authors of humanity, the heritage of which weighs constantly on their descendants, is a fundamental one in Mazdean books. The modification of legends relative to the first man even resulted in the mythic conceptions of the later periods of Zoroastrianism, in attaching a rather singular repetition of this first transgression to several successive generations in the initial ages of humanity.
Originally—and this is at present one of the points most solidly established by science—originally in those legends common to Oriental Aryans before their separation into two branches, the first man was the personage that the Iranians call Yima, and the Indians Yama. A son of Heaven and not of man, Yima united the characteristics that Genesis divides between Adam and Noah, fathers both, the one of antediluvian, the other of postdiluvian humanity. Later, he appears as merely the first king of the Iranians, but a king whose existence, as well as that of his subjects, is passed in the midst of Edenic beatitude in the paradise of Airyana-Vædja,[53] the dwelling-place of the earliest men. But after a time when life was pure and spotless, Yima committed the sin which weighs on his descendants, and in consequence of that sin, lost his power, was cast out of Paradise, and given up to the dominion of the serpent, the evil spirit Angromainyus,[54] who finally brought about Yima's death by horrible torments.[55] It is an echo of the tradition about the loss of Paradise ensuing upon a transgression prompted by the Evil Spirit that we find in what is incontestably one of the oldest portions of the Sacred Scriptures of Zoroastrianism.[56] "I created the first and the best of dwelling-places. I who am Ahuramazda: the Airyana-Vædja is of excellent nature. But against it Angromainyus, the murderer, created a thing inimical, the serpent out of the river and the winter, the work of the Dœvas."[57] And it is this scourge, caused by the power of the serpent, which occasions the departure for ever from the paradisiacal region.
Later, Yima appears as no longer the first man, or even the first king. The period of a thousand years assigned to his existence in Eden[58] is now divided between several successive generations, occupying the same space of time, from the moment when Gayomaritan, the type of humanity, began to find himself struggling against the hostility of the Evil Spirit up to the death of Yima. This is the system adopted by the Bundehesh. The history of the sin which made Yima lose his primal happiness, and subjected him to the power of the adversary, still remains connected with the name of that hero. But this transgression is no longer the original sin; and in order to be able to attribute it to the ancestors whence all humanity springs, its story is again told here (subserving a double purpose) in connection with the first pair whose existence was completely terrestrial and similar to that of other human beings—Masha and Mashyâna. "Man was; the father of the world was. Heaven was destined to be his on condition of his being humble in heart, and doing with humility the work of the law, of his being pure in thought, pure in word, pure in deed, and of his never invoking the Dœvas. Under these conditions man and woman were reciprocally to make each other's happiness. They drew near and became man and wife. At first they spoke these words: 'It is Ahuramazda who has given the water, the earth, the trees, the beasts, and the stars, the moon and the sun, and all the blessings which spring from a pure root and pure fruit.' Later, falsehood ran through their thoughts, perverted their disposition, and said to them: 'It is Angromainyus who has given the water, earth, trees, beasts, and all above-named things.' Thus, it was that in the beginning Angromainyus deceived them concerning the Dœvas, and to the end this cruel one has only sought to seduce them. By believing this lie, both became like unto demons, and their souls will be in Hell until the renewal of bodies."
"They ate during thirty days; they clothed themselves in black raiment. After these thirty days they went hunting; a white goat presented itself; with their mouths they drew milk from her udder, and nourished themselves with that milk which delighted them....
"The Dœva who told the lie, grew more bold, and presented himself a second time, and brought them fruits which they ate, and by so doing of the hundred advantages they enjoyed there remained to them only one.
"After thirty days and thirty nights a fat white sheep appeared; they cut off his left ear. Instructed by the celestial Yazata[59] they brought fire from the tree Konar, by rubbing it with a piece of wood. Both set fire to the tree; they blew up the fire with their mouths; they first burnt the branches of the tree Konar, next of the date-tree, and the myrtle.... They roasted the sheep, dividing it into three parts.[60] ... Having eaten of the flesh of the dog they covered themselves with the skin of that animal. Then they gave themselves up to the chase and made themselves garments of the hair of wild beasts."[61]
We may here observe that in Genesis also, vegetable food is the only one made use of by the first man in his state of bliss and purity; the only one promised him by God. Animal food does not become lawful till after the Flood. It is also after the Fall that Adam and Havah first clothe themselves with coats of skin made for them by Yahveh himself.