Speculation Regarding the Origin of Man
Speculation Regarding the Origin of Man
The Scheme of the Solar Universe - The Fall of Man But The Shadow - The Fall of Spirit - Man the Microcosm of Being - His Pre-Existence.
All human beliefs that are derived from oral, traditional, monumental, or sacerdotal sources, incline to ascribe the origin of man to a purer and more spiritualized cause than that of human generation.
The favorite and widely diffused idea of the ancients, that man incurred the penalty of mortal birth and the discipline of a mortal existence by disobedience, pervades so universally the foundations of all religious system, that it demands from philosophy some more rational explanation than the contemptuous stigma of "myth." Whence comes myth, and can it any more explain the origin of ideas than a shadow can account for form without a substance? We can accept nothing, learn nothing, hope for nothing, from modern theology; for it teaches no philosophy, owns allegiance to no science, and is amenable to no requirements of reason or justice. And yet even she cherishes, in her usual materialistic way, the dogmas of original sin and the fall of many from a state of primeval innocence.
Who can render account of these opinions? And since time cannot quench them, nor the devotees of classical lore and antique philosophy blot them out from the "wisdom of the ages," why not seek to harmonize them with those glimpses of an inner and higher life with which all human records are so mysteriously illuminated?
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