beginning to end, is derived from it so totally.
286 The Literal Meaning of Genesis alities consequent upon those perfect works of God, from which he rested on the seventh day.
21. A very proper question, however, is what this spring might be that was capable of watering the face of the whole earth. lf it existed at that time, after all, and has since been blocked up or has dried up, we have to look for the reason. Now, I mean, we see that there is no such spring by which the whole face of the earth is watered. So perhaps the sinfulness of mankind also earned this punish ment, to have the vast and lavish flow of that spring cut off and the lands deprived of such ready-made fertility, thus adding to the hard labor of their inhabitants.
Human guesswork could certainly assert this (though it is not recounted by any text of scripture) were it not tripped up by the fact that the sin of mankind, which was punished by the imposition of hard labor, occurred after the delights of Paradise. Now Paradise had its own outsize spring—which we will have to talk about in greater detail at its own place13—from whose single head, the story tells us, four great rivers flowed, well known to the nations. So where was that spring or those rivers when this one spring, greatest of them all, was coming up from the earth and watering all the face of the earth? lt is certain, you see, that Gihon, one of those four which is said to be the Nile, was not at that time watering Egypt, when a spring was coming up from the earth and saturating not only Egypt but all the face of the earth.
22. Or must we suppose that God wished to water the whole earth from one gigantic spring, so that the things he had originally planted in it could from now on start growing with the help of this moisture, each through the number of days proper to the various species, and that later on, having planted Paradise, he cut off the flow of that spring, and filled the earth with many springs, as we now see it, while he divided the flow from the one spring of Paradise into four huge rivers? In this way the rest of the earth, full of various kinds of its creatures14 working their way through the appropriate numbers of their growing times, would also have its springs and rivers, and Paradise, planted in the choicest place, would send out those rivers from the head of its own spring.
Or did he first of all irrigate the whole earth from that one spring of Paradise, flowing much more abundantly to begin with, and in this way fertilize it all to bring forth through the numbers of their growing times those species which he had created in it without any intervals of time? And then later on did he cut off that vast spouting gush of waters in that place, in order that from then on they
13. Gn 2:10-14. See below. Book V111, 7, 13-14. 1 treat Paradise as a proper name, because it is most likely that Augustine and his contemporaries also thought of it like that. 1t is in origin a Persian word meaning a park, introduced into the Genesis story by the Greek translators, where the Hebrew just has the ordinary word for "garden." 14. The earth can claim plants as in a special way "its" creatures, since their whole existence, from beginning to end, is derived from it so totally.
Book V 287 might flow from various river heads and springs through the whole earth? And next after that, in the region of that spring, which was no longer irrigating the whole earth, but only issuing in those four memorable rivers, did he then plant Paradise as a place in which to put the man he had made?
The place ofconjecture where scripture is silent
8. 23. Now not everything is written in scripture about how the ages ran their course after that first establishment of things, and how various stages followed one another in the management of creatures made at the beginning and finished on that sixth day, but only as much as the Spirit who was inspiring the author judged would be enough, not only to provide knowledge of things that had happened, but also to foreshadow things that were to come. So we in our igno rance have to fill in by conjecture the gaps which he by no means out of igno rance left in the picture. In this we have to strive in our own small way, to the extent that he assists us, to ensure that no absurdity or contradiction is attributed to the holy scriptures, which would offend the good sense of readers and lead them to conclude that things which could not have happened are mentioned by scripture as having happened, and so to decide either to give up the faith, or to have nothing to do with it in the first place.
The particular instance of this spring
9. 24. Accordingly, we have to ask about this spring, how what is said about it, that it was coming upfront the earth and watering the wholeface of the earth, should not seem to be impossible. If what we have already said about it should seem to people to be impossible, let them look for another explanation them selves, but still one which will demonstrate the truthfulness of this statement of scripture—which certainly is truthful, beyond any shadow of doubt, even if it were not demonstrated. Should they wish by their arguments, I mean, to convict it of being false, then either what they are going to say about the setting up and management of creatures will have not a word of truth in it, or else if it is true, then the reason they think what scripture says is false will be because they do not understand it.
Thus they might contend that it is quite impossible for the whole face of the earth to have been irrigated from one spring, however vast, because if it was not irrigating the mountains then it was not irrigating the whole face of the earth, while if it was also irrigating the mountains, then this was not now the bestowal of fatness but the inundation of a flood, and if the earth was then like that, every thing was all sea, and the dry land had not yet been separated from it.
10, 25. We can answer them by saying that this could have happened at successive times, just as at a definite time the Nile floods all the flat lands of