But this hostility to knowledge instituted in the garden of Eden has been perpetuated through all the ages. Faith has been held up as the all-important virtue, as by it the priests could get the people to believe anything. Somewhere Goethe says, "Belief is not the beginning but the end of knowledge." In the early days of the church it was found necessary to abandon reason. The world had too many philosophers who stood prepared to expose the superstitions which set themselves up with authority. The injunction given to and heeded by chiefly the low and ignorant was, "Do not examine; only believe and thy faith will make thee blessed." "Wisdom is a bad thing in life, foolishness is to be preferred." But this sentiment was older than that date, for we find in the writings of Paul the same teaching, "If any man among you seemeth to be wise, let him become a fool that he may be wise." At another time he insists that, "We are fools for Christ's sake." My advice is to eat of the fruit of knowledge, and have your eyes opened to the truth no matter what it is. It may be that some delusive Santa Claus may fade away in the distance before your clearer vision. Let it go. Nothing is so expensive as error. Seek to know the truth, and struggle to throw off such prejudices as tempt you to fashion truth to your own intellectual myopia or moral obliquities. Eat and become more truly a man; eat and become more beautifully a woman. "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life I have given every herb for meat." This writer never visited a menagerie. His knowledge of the habits of the animal kingdom are as innocent as if he had never sought for knowledge, had never examined natural history, or else he would have known that such animals as lions, tigers, and wolves could not feed on grass. The vultures of the air do not live upon seeds or hay, but must have fish or flesh. Daniel going into a den of lions fed on hay, would be about as brave as a milk maid's going into the stall to milk a cow. We cannot conjecture what state of mind the Mosaic cosmogonist could have been in when he described the lion as a herbivorous animal. It is so wide a departure from the most common knowledge of the habits of animals that our confidence in the accuracy of the historian is greatly shaken. It is commonly believed that if man had not eaten of the forbidden fruit he would have been immortal. Now the very fact that Adam and Eve ate at all, proves them to have been mortal. For eating implies a nutritive system, which means growth, maturity, and decay of the organism. Death is natural, and not a penalty--not a curse pronounced upon the primitive pair for disobedience. They would have died even if they had partaken of the tree of life.