38)
hard and dry: it must rain first in order that the desert may be
turned into a green meadow, as is the case still every year when
the showers of spring come. The ground further requires
cultivation by man that the seed may spring forth. No regard is
paid to any natural sequence of the acts of creation: man, the
most helpless of all beings, appears first, and finds himself
placed on a world entirely bare, without tree or bush, without
the animals, without woman. Man is confessedly the exclusive
object of interest, the other creatures are accounted for by
their importance to him, as if this only conferred on them a
right to exist. The idea explains matter: mechanical possibility
is never consulted, and we do not think of asking about it. Want
of taste could find no lower deeps than when this or that scholar
goes from Genesis ii. 21 to count his ribs, or comes to
the conclusion that the first man was hermaphrodite.
In the first account we stand before the first beginnings of sober
reflection about nature, in the second we are on the ground of
marvel and myth. Where reflection found its materials we do not
think of asking; ordinary contemplation of things could furnish
it.
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