of fresh nutriment. In the balancing of these two actions life
consists. The loss of their equipoise soon terminates them both;
and that is death. Upon the whole, then, scientifically speaking,
to cause death is to stop "that continuous differentiation and
integration of tissues and of states of consciousness"
constituting life. 2 Death, therefore, is no monster, no force,
but the act of completion, the state of cessation; and all the
bugbears named death are but poor phantoms of the frightened and
childish mind.

Life consisting in the constant differentiation of the tissues by
the action of oxygen, and their integration from the blastema
furnished by the blood, why is not the harmony of these processes
preserved forever? Why should the relation between the integration
and disintegration going on in the human organism ever fall out of
correspondence with the relation between the oxygen and food
supplied from its environment? That is to say, whence originated
the sentence of death upon man? Why do we not live immortally as
we are? The current reply is, we die because our first parent
sinned. Death is a penalty inflicted upon the

2 Spencer, Principles of Psychology, pp. 334-373.

human race because Adam disobeyed his Maker's command. We must
consider this theory a little.

The narrative in Genesis, of the creation of man and of the events
in the Garden of Eden, cannot be traced further back than to the
time of Solomon, three thousand years after the alleged
occurrences it describes. This portion of the book of Genesis, as
has long been shown, is a distinct document, marked by many
peculiarities, which was inserted in its present place by the
compiler of the elder Hebrew Scriptures somewhere between seven
and ten centuries before Christ.3 Ewald has fully demonstrated
that the book of Genesis consists of many separate fragmentary
documents of different ages, arranged together by a comparatively
late hand. Among the later of these pieces is the account of the
primeval pair in paradise. Grotefend argues, with much force and
variety of evidence, that this story was derived from a far more
ancient legend book, only fragments of which remained when the
final collection was made of this portion of the Old Testament.4
Many scholars have thought the account was not of Hebrew origin,
but was borrowed from the literary traditions of some earlier
Oriental nation. Rosenmuller, Von Bohlen, and others, say it bears
unmistakabl