But with respect to this portion, namely, the divine history itself, what I pray you, could be recorded more fabulous in the estimation of human reason, if you wish to follow that? For could any one be found who would believe this fact concerning the creation of Eve, if it were not thus openly declared? For here all the other creatures stand as plain examples to the contrary. Every other living creature is generated from male and female, and is so generated that it is the female that brings it into the light. But here the female herself is created from the male; and that too with a no less wonderful creation than that by which Adam himself was made a living soul, from the dust of the ground. These facts are mere monstrosities and outrageous absurdities, if you set aside the authority of the Holy Scriptures and follow the judgment of reason. Hence it is that Aristotle affirms that neither the first man nor the last man can be given as the foundation of an argument. And reason would force us to affirm the same of her naked self, without this text before us. For if it be received as a truth, a truth which the uniform law of the whole creation testifies, that nothing is born alive but from male and female, it is a true conclusion that the first man cannot be accounted for in that way. The same conclusion may also be declared to be correct by human reason concerning the creation of the world, which the philosophers of old therefore concluded to be eternal. For although reasons are put together by reason, by which is proved that the world is not eternal; yet reason herself, all the while, settles down with all her powers upon this basis of conclusion. For what beginning will reason find in nothing? And again, if you say that the world had a beginning and that there was a time in which the world had no existence it will immediately follow close upon your heels that, before the world there was nothing at all. Other absurdities will follow in an infinite series; by the multitude of which philosophers being struck plunged at once into the conclusion that the world was eternal.