The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
BOOK EIGHT 57 lose him his life. It does not matter what syllables make up its name; one uses the Latin word peccatum (sin) or malum (evil), for example, as a sign of that which he fixes upon in his mind.
For how do we understand what is meant when the resurrection is spoken of, which we have never experienced? Is it not because we are aware of what it is to live, and as we call the privation of that state death, so we designate as resurrection the return to the state which we perceive? And whatever word may be used to designate the same thing in any other language, the mind perceives a sign in the spoken word, and at the sound it recognizes what it would think even without the sign.
It is remarkable how nature, even before any experience, avoids the loss of what it possesses. Who taught the beasts of the field to avoid death except a feeling they have for life? Who taught the small child in arms to cling to the one who carries him if that person threatens to throw the child to the ground? This fear begins at a certain time in the baby's life, yet it is before he experiences any such fall.
35. To the first man and woman, therefore, life was already sweet, and undoubtedly they tried to avoid losing it. When God instructed them in this matter, whatever sounds or other means He used, they were able to understand. They could not be persuaded to sin unless they were first persuaded that they would not die as a result, that is, that they would not lose what they possessed and what they found joy in possessing. We shall discuss this in its proper place.
If there are those who are puzzled over how the first man and woman were able to understand God when He named or threatened what they had not experienced, they should take note and see how we recognize without any doubt or hesitation the names of all things outside of our experience only from their contraries which we have known, if they are the names of privations, or from similar things, if they are the names of positive ideas. Surely no one will ask how the first man and woman were able to speak or to understand another speaking since they had not learned to speak by growing up among those who do or by studying under a teacher. It is certainly no problem for God to