The _Chinese_ have their Age of Virtue, when nature furnished abundant food, and man lived peacefully, surrounded by all the beasts. In their sacred books there is a story concerning a mysterious _garden_, where grew a _tree_ bearing "apples of immortality," guarded by a winged serpent, called a Dragon. They describe a primitive age of the world, when the earth yielded abundance of delicious fruits without cultivation, and the seasons were untroubled by wind and storms. There was no calamity, sickness, or death. Men were then good without effort; for the human heart was in harmony with the peacefulness and beauty of nature. The "Golden Age" of the past is much dwelt upon by their ancient commentators. One of them says: "All places were then equally the native county of every man. Flocks wandered in the fields without any guide; birds filled the air with their melodious voices; and the fruits grew of their own accord. Men lived pleasantly with the animals, and all creatures were members of the same family. Ignorant of evil, man lived in simplicity and perfect innocence." Another commentator says: "In the first age of perfect purity, all was in harmony, and the passions did not occasion the slightest murmur. Man, united to sovereign reason within, conformed his outward actions to sovereign justice. Far from all duplicity and falsehood, his soul received marvelous felicity from heaven, and the purest delights from earth." Another says: "A delicious _garden_ refreshed with zephyrs, and planted with odoriferous trees, was situated in the middle of a mountain, which was the avenue of heaven. The _waters_ that moistened it flowed from a source called the '_Fountain of Immortality_'. He who drinks of it never dies. Thence flowed _four rivers_. A Golden River, betwixt the South and East, a Red River, between the North and East, the River of the Lamb between the North and West." The animal Kaiming guards the entrance. 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]