protest against resting the whole malice of certain sins upon their hygienic effects. But it is not a protest against teleological ethics. Quite the contrary is the case. To avoid doing an action for fear of violating a type is as much a purposive act as to avoid doing it for fear of injuring our health.

And so when Dr. Ryan complains that in very many authors the ultimate end is made too important to the detriment of “rational nature", we suggest that, the ultimate end of man being (from one point of view) the perfection of his rational nature, the charge does not sound a very serious one. We should prefer to say that many authors lay too much stress on utilitarian motives with the result that (as Dr. Ryan so truly and forcibly points out) they are hard pressed to explain the absolute universality of moral laws, even in cases where a Utilitarian would be forced to allow an exception.

The "ultimate end," then, would appear to be a sufficient ground of morality if only it is properly envisaged; and its part in Ethics needs no restricting. Bare intuition into the goodness or badness of an act apart from any consequences at all is, if not unthinkable, at least unworkable. We should find ourselves with nothing on our hands save Kant's empty form. The fact is that the highest and the lowest moral motives alike have reference to the ultimate end. St. Paul acts as though he had no will save Christ's; the struggling sinner nerves himself by thinking of the pains of Hell. The former has a fuller idea of his end: all selfishness has gone out of it. The sinner has a lower idea of his end. Yet there is reference to God in his action; mere fear of pain would have no moral value; he must recognise, at least implicitly, that Hell means absence from God.

The question, as Dr. Ryan says, is no academic one. The current treatment of Ethics in Catholic text-books is not always satisfactory. But by way of remedy we suggest, not that teleology should be in any degree abandoned, but that it should be widened. We can surely give an intelligible account of man's last end which will explain the absolute universality of the moral law without emptying it of all its content. Aristotle's method, as St. Thomas saw, will suffice, though his results are inadequate. To have an adequate notion of man's end requires a sound Natural Theology. And men's notion of that end will be further broadened the more they can rise from the level of thought where "egoism" and "altruism" are regarded as sufficient but alternative principles of conduct, or where, again, we are asked to choose between an imperative without content, and a utility which has mere

pleasure as its end. This does not mean that we shall ever be able to dispense with sanctions or with positive law. Nor will a growing realisation of man's end diminish the reference to the divine will which constitutes the formal obligation of the act. Obligation does not become hypothetical by becoming reasonable; nor, to sum up, does action become utilitarian by being teleological.

CHARLES PLATER.

ASSYRO-BABYLONIAN ELEMENTS IN THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF THE FALL

Francesco Mari, D. D.

The Assyro-Babylonian archeological researches which have thrown so much light on the opening narratives of the Book of Genesis, have thus far produced no monument or text which can be said with certainty to correspond with the biblical account of the Fall. A few years ago much was made of the discovery of a terra cotta seal, now preserved in the British Museum (89, 326,) and which was even labelled "Adam and Eve in Paradise." On this seal appears in the middle a tree with horizontal branches from which are hanging two pieces of fruit. Seated on opposite sides of the tree are two draped figures, each in the attitude of stretching forth the hand towards the fruit. Behind the figure on the left is traced a vertical, undulating line, which might be taken to represent a serpent. Doubtless this represents the scene of the fall of our first parents, was the conclusion jumped at by several enthusiastic scholars. However, a more careful examination of the monument soon showed that the identification of the scene with that of the biblical narrative had been premature. The tree in the center was recognized as the sacred tree of the Babylonians, and as regards the two figures, there is nothing to indicate that they represent a man and a woman rather than two men. Nor does anything appear to represent the seemingly essential element of the biblical scene, namely the giving of the fruit to the man by the Furthermore, one of the figures-the one on the rightbears the characteristic symbol of the horns showing that it was intended to represent a divinity. True, the vertical undulating line behind the figure on the left is generally admitted to be meant for a serpent, but the association of the serpent with the sacred tree is not rare in Babylonian mythological representations as may be seen on some of the seals mentioned by Jeremias.' It appears that this association of the serpent with the sacred tree is simply the illustration of a scene belonging to the famous and extremely popular epic of Gilgamesh. For at the end of the eleventh tablet of this poem it is 1Das Alte Testament, p. 104-105.

narrated that Ut Napishtim had promised to the hero of the story a mysterious plant bearing a name signifying "He who is old becomes young." After much labor and fatigue Gilgamesh obtains possession. of the plant, but while he goes down into a cistern to wash himself, a serpent attracted by the odor of the plant approaches and carries it off. Gilgamesh perceiving his last hope thus extinguished, sits down and weeps. The figure in question has indeed little or no correspondence with this scene, but it may have been intended to recall it after a fashion. The question of the interpretation of the figure is not yet settled, for the presence therein of a serpent, at first denied by some, has been reaffirmed by Jeremias, who has made the seal the object of accurate critical examination. The presence of the horns in the tableau is not of itself decisive, since it is not improbable that the first man was deified in Babylonian legend-a process so easy in polytheistic religions-as in fact, it appears to have occurred in the case of Adapa, the first man created by Ea. At all events, in either case, the serpent would symbolize a malignant genius—one envious of the happiness of mankind.

In the absence therefore of any Babylonian monument or text having an acknowledged direct reference to the biblical account of the Fall, it is worth while to seek out and examine certain traces and indications, which if taken separately, would afford no solution of the problem, but which when viewed in their ensemble and in their cumulative indirect bearing, throw an interesting light on the question at issue.

In the first place, it should be carefully noted that in the biblical narrative of the Fall, certain elements are essential, others only secondary. Among the essential factors of the story must certainly be placed first, the state of happiness anterior to the Fall, and in which man lived in familiar intercourse with God and in peace with the animals, and secondly, a fall or lapse of some kind which entailed the passage from that happy condition to an unhappy state of existence. These seem to constitute the essential elements of the episode; to the secondary ones belong the dramatic scene and setting as described in the narrative of the Yahwistic writer.

The idea of an epoch of primeval happiness, of a golden age when men lived in familiar converse with the gods, is to be met with 'Lagrange. Etudes sur les Religions Sémitiques. Ed. I. p. 349.

in the traditions of well nigh all peoples, and it is therefore needless to insist upon it here. In the Bible this happy state is expressed by the picture of the garden of Eden in which Yahweh places the first man, and by the natural loveliness wherewith He adorns this beautiful abode. "And Yahweh God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed." The remembrance of this happy abode appears in all the subsequent biblical literature, and while in the Old Testament it became the symbol of earthly felicity, in the New it was used to designate the realm of celestial bliss. Thus Lot compares the fertile and luxurious region extending along the banks of the Jordan to "the Garden of Yahweh"; the prophet Isaias when promising the restoration of Sion, says that "the Lord hath made her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of Yahweh," and Ezechiel finds no stronger image of returning felicity than "the garden of God." The last named prophet gives us a vivid description of this garden in his account of the ruin of the King of Tyre. That proud monarch had said: "I am a god, I sit in the seat of God in the midst of the seas." But God commands the prophet to weep over his downfall, and Ezechiel responding as it were to the proud vauntings of the King, says: "Thou wast in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering.... Thou wast the anointed cherub that covereth....I have destroyed thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire." In this passage Ezechiel evidently compares by way of allusion the fall of the King of Tyre to the fall of primitive man, and recalls by the words "garden of God" the abode of original happiness. The description does not correspond in all particulars, for while in Genesis the cherubim were set to guard the approach of the garden and the tree of life after the expulsion of our first parents, in the prophetic description the cherub is represented as a friendly and protecting genius prior to the fall.

Of this garden of delight we find among the Babylonians only a few reminiscences scattered and uncertain, but which when brought "Gen. ii, 8. The Hebrew 17 signifies simply the garden of Eden, the latter word being nothing more than the name of a place situated towards the East, in which Yahweh had located the garden. The corresponding term in Assyrian seems to be edium, signifying a plain or desert. In later Hebrew the term came to signify voluptas, pleasure, as in Is. li, 3. Cf. also the Greek nový. The cognate equivalent of the word is found in the Assyrian gannatu, and in corresponding words of the other Semitic languages, with the signification of a garden with trees, like the Persian παράδεισος,

'Cf. Gen. xiii, 10; Is. li, 3; Ez. xxxi, 8, 9 (cf. xxxvi, 35.)