8. In fact, the whole Paradise story could never be made the basis for a dogma. The historicity of the serpent is denied by Saadia;(684) the rabbis transfer Paradise with the tree of life to heaven as a reward for the future;(685) and both Nahmanides the mystic and Maimonides the philosopher give it an allegorical meaning.(686) On the other hand, the Haggadic teachers perceived the simple truth that a life of indolence in Paradise would incapacitate man for his cultural task, and that the toils and struggles inflicted on man as a curse are in reality a blessing. Therefore they laid special stress on the Biblical statement: “He put man into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”(687) The following parable is especially suggestive: “When Adam heard the stern sentence passed: ‘Thou shalt eat the herb of the field,’ he burst into tears, and said: ‘Am I and my ass to eat out of the same manger?’ Then came another sentence from God to reassure him, ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,’ and forthwith he became aware that man shall attain a higher dignity by dint of labor.”(688) Indeed, labor transforms the wilderness into a garden and the earth into a habitation worthy of the son of God. The “book of the generations of man” which begins with Adam is accordingly not the history of man’s descent, but of his continuous ascent, of ever higher achievements and aspirations; it is not a record of the fall of man, but of his rise from age to age. According to the Midrash(689) God opened before Adam the book with the deeds and names of the leading spirits of all the coming generations, showing him the latent powers of the human intellect and soul. The phrase, “the fall of man,” can mean, in fact, only the inner experience of the individual, who does fall from his original idea of purity and divine nobility into transgression and sin. It cannot refer to mankind as a whole, for the human race has never experienced a fall, nor is it affected by original or hereditary sin. Chapter XXXVI. God’s Spirit in Man 1. Man is placed in an animal world of dull feelings, of blind and crude cravings. Yet his clear understanding, his self-conscious will and his aspirations forward and upward lead him into a higher world where he obtains insight into the order and unity of all things. By the spirit of God he is able to understand material things and grasp them in their relations; thus he can apply all his knowledge and creative imagination to construct a world of ideals. But this world, in all its truth, beauty and goodness, is still limited and finite, a feeble shadow of the infinite world of God. As the Bible says: “The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inward parts.”(690) “It is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty, that giveth them understanding.”(691)