That there were Schopenhaueresque ideas among some of the Solomonic school may be seen in Koheleth (Ecclesiastes), who says, "Be not overwise; why commit suicide?" (vii. 16.) I have remarked elsewhere that the story of the serpent in Eden may have been put there as a fling at Solomon and the scientific people, but on the other hand it may be argued that it was a fable devised by the Solomonic school to show how Jahveh was outwitted in his attempt to breed a race of idiots, for fear mankind might become as clever as himself. For it was not the serpent that deceived Adam and Eve, but Jahveh, in saying the forbidden fruit was fatal; the serpent told them the truth. The folk-tale that Solomon's staff was gnawed by a worm, and his crowned body reduced to dust, suggests the idea of grandeur laid low by some insignificant form, and in the same way Jahveh's creation was overthrown by a worm. This humiliation of Jahveh has been now somewhat lessened by the theory that Satan took the form of the serpent, which Dante calls the worm, but nowhere in the Bible is there any confusion of the reptile in Eden with any devil. "If," says Kalisch, "the serpent represented Satan it would be extremely surprising that the former only was cursed, and that the latter is not even alluded to." In Genesis the extreme cleverness of the serpent is recognized, and the truth of his statement to Eve admitted, while Jahveh is shown in the ridiculous light of having his deception about the fruit exposed by a worm, and betaking himself to curses all round. These be thy gods, O Christians--for the Jews absolutely ignored the tale in all their scriptures, and in the New Testament Paul alone alludes to it. [57] The serpent in Eden is evidently the symbol of wisdom, of medical art--Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek--lifted in the wilderness by Moses, and recognised by Jesus ("Be wise as serpents"), with whom as an uplifted healer of mankind the serpent-symbol was associated. But all of this is in contradiction to the curses of Jahveh on the serpent, and on those to whom the serpent brought wisdom. The fable, therefore, seems to be composed of two antagonistic parts; it is a Solomonic anti-Jahvist fable with an anti-Solomonic moral. In the Parsî religion the fall of man was due to the first man having been deceived by the Evil One into ascribing the good things in creation to him--the Evil One. In the same way the Christian ascribes to the Evil One man's first taste of wisdom--the knowledge of good and evil--and believes his first step above the brute to be a fall. In the Parsî religion that fall of man, by a lie, was recovered from by the creation of a new man. But in Christendom man has not recovered from his fall, nor can he ever recover from it so long as he disregards the new man's word, "Be wise as serpents," and continues to confuse his wisdom with diabolism.