1. _Innocence and the Fall._ If physical evolution be a reality, we have reason to believe that the infantile stage of human morals, as well as of human intellect, was much prolonged in the history of our first parents. This constitutes the period of human purity, when we are told by Moses that the first pair dwelt in Eden. But the growth to maturity saw the development of all the qualities inherited from the irresponsible denizen of the forest. Man inherits from his predecessors in the creation the buddings of reason: he inherits passions, propensities and appetites. His corruption is that of his animal progenitors, and his sin is the low and bestial instinct of the brute creation. Thus only is the origin of sin made clear—a problem which the pride of man would have explained in any other way had it been possible. But how startling the exhibition of evil by this new being as compared with the scenes of the countless ages already past! Then the right of the strongest was God’s law, and rapine and destruction were the history of life. But into man had been “breathed the breath of life,” and he had “become a living soul.” The law of right, the Divine Spirit, was planted within him, and the laws of the beast were in antagonism to that law. The natural development of his inherited qualities necessarily brought him into collision with that higher standard planted within him, and that war was commenced which shall never cease “till He hath put all things under His feet.” The first act of man’s disobedience constituted the Fall, and with it would come the first _intellectual_ “knowledge of good and of evil”—an apprehension up to that time derived exclusively from the divinity within, or conscience.[50] Footnote 50: In our present translation of Genesis, the Fall is ascribed to the influence of Satan assuming the form of the serpent, and this animal was cursed in consequence, and compelled to assume a prone position. This rendering may well be revised, since serpents, prone like others, existed in both America and Europe during the Eocene epoch, five times as great a period before Adam as has elapsed since his day. Clark states, with great probability, that “serpent” should be translated monkey or ape—a conclusion, it will be observed, exactly coinciding with our inductions on the basis of evolution. The instigation to evil by an ape merely states inheritance in another form. His curse, then, refers to the retention of the horizontal position by all other quadrumana, as we find it at the present day.