Part 6

“In the next place, as it is his object to slander our scriptures, he [Celsus] ridicules the following statement: ‘And God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which he had taken from the man, made he a woman,’ and so on; without quoting the words which would give the hearer the impression that they are spoken with a figurative meaning. He would not even have it appear that the words were used allegorically, although he says afterward, that ‘the more modest among Jews and Christians are ashamed of these things, and endeavor to give them somehow an allegorical signification.’”

It is not an accident that the fruit of the tree of life was conceived by Christians at an early date as an apple or pomegranate, the symbol of Aphrodite. We must assume that the apples of the Hesperides which Hercules was requested to obtain, and also the apples of Iduna bestowing immortality upon the Teutonic gods, possess ultimately the same significance as the apple of Eve.

* * * * *

We do not mean to gather here all the traditions about the origin of woman, but we will quote two accounts from a modern book of Hindu tales, called _A Digit of the Moon and Other Love Stories from the Hindu_, and translated from the original manuscripts by F. W. Bain. Here we are told of a king who falls in love with a princess when he sees her picture. He leaves his kingdom in the hands of his ministers and travels out in search of his love, accompanied by his faithful companion Rasakósha.[33] The passage containing the story of the origin of woman reads thus:

“One day, as they rested at noon beneath the thick shade of a _Kadamba_[34] tree, the King gazed for a long time at the portrait of his mistress. And suddenly he broke silence, and said, ‘Rasakósha, this is a woman. Now, a woman is the one thing about which I know nothing. Tell me, what is the nature of women?’ Then Rasakósha smiled, and said: ‘King, you should certainly keep this question to ask the Princess; for it is a hard question. A very terrible creature indeed is a woman, and one formed of strange elements. _A propos_, I will tell you a story: listen.

“‘In the beginning, when Twashtri[35] came to the creation of woman, he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man, and that no solid elements were left. In this dilemma, after profound meditation, he did as follows: He took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant’s trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees,[36] and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot’s bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the _kókila_,[37] and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the _chakrawáka_;[38] and compounding all these together, he made woman and gave her to man. But after one week man came to him and said: Lord, this creature that thou hast given me makes my life miserable. She chatters incessantly, and teases me beyond endurance, never leaving me alone: and she requires incessant attention, and takes all my time up, and cries about nothing, and is always idle; and so I have come to give her back again, as I cannot live with her. So Twashtri said: Very well: and he took her back. Then after another week, man came again to him, and said: Lord I find that my life is very lonely since I gave back that creature. I remember how she used to dance and sing to me, and look at me out of the corner of her eye, and play with me, and cling to me; and her laughter was music, and she was beautiful to look at, and soft to touch: so give her back to me again. So Twashtri said: Very well: and gave her back again. Then after only three days, man came to him again, and said: Lord, I know not how it is; but after all, I have come to the conclusion that she is more of a trouble than a pleasure to me: so please take her back again. But Twashtri said: Out on you! Be off! I will have no more of this. You must manage how you can. Then man said: But I cannot live with her. And Twashtri replied: Neither could you live without her. And he turned his back on man and went on with his work. Then man said: What is to be done? for I cannot live either with or without her.’

“And Rasakósha ceased, and looked at the King. But the King remained silent, gazing intently at the portrait of the Princess.”

Another story, of like character, is told in the same book, on pages 372-374, only with the difference that it points out a lesson for woman that she must cleave to her husband because she possesses no independent existence by herself. (The same, however, in the Indian story is not true of man.) This is the explanation the faithful wife Wanawallari gives to the Brahman who tempts her to leave her husband. She says:

“Once there was a time when there were neither men nor women, but the universe existed alone. And then one day, when the Creator was meditating with a view to further creation, he said to himself: ‘Something is wanting to complete the creation which I have created. It is blind, and unconscious of its own curious beauty and excellence.’ Thereupon he created a man. And instantly the creation became an object of wonder and beauty, being reflected like a picture in the mirror of the mind of the man. Then the man roamed alone in the world, wondering at the flowers and the trees and the animals, and at last he came to a pool. And he looked in and saw himself. Then full of astonishment, he exclaimed: ‘This is the most beautiful creature of all.’ And he hunted incessantly through the whole world to find it, not knowing that he was looking for himself. But when he found that in spite of all his endeavors he could never do more than see it on the surface of pools, he became sad and ceased to care about anything. Then the Creator, perceiving it, said to himself: ‘Ha! this is a difficulty which I never foresaw, arising naturally from the beauty of my work. But now, what is to be done? For here is this man, whom I made to be a mirror for my world, snared in the mirror of his own beauty. So I must somehow or other cure this evil. But I cannot make another man, for there would be two centers to the circle of the universe. Neither can I add anything to the circumference of nature, for it is perfect in itself. There is necessary, therefore, some third thing: not real, for then it would disturb the balance of the universe; nor unreal, for then it would be nothing: but poised on the border between reality and nonentity.’ So he collected the reflections on the surface of the pools, and made of them a woman. But she, as soon as she was made, began to cry. And she said: ‘Alas! alas! I am, and I am not.’ Then said the Creator: ‘Thou foolish intermediate creature, thou art a nonentity only when thou standest alone. But when thou art united to the man, thou art real in participation with his substance.’ And thus, O Brahman, apart from her husband a woman is a nonentity and a shadow without a substance: being nothing but the mirror of himself, reflected on the mirror of illusion.”

* * * * *

Early Christian art took little or no interest in the parents of mankind. So far as we can discover neither the catacombs of Rome nor Christian sarcophagi are adorned with representations of Adam and Eve. Wherever they may occur they are rare exceptions. There is no trace of them in the _fondi d’oro_ (gold-bottomed glasses), nor in the mosaics. In painting they become more and more frequent in the beginning of the Middle Ages, and we reproduce here, as one of the oldest representations of the subject, a picture from the so-called Alcuin Bible preserved in the British Museum.

The name “Alcuin Bible” is not justified, for the work dates from some time after Alcuin; but after all it comes from his school, and the book was produced in Tours about the middle of the ninth century, still showing the influence of the brilliant scholar of Charlemagne’s court.

We will say here that the so-called Alcuin Bible is severely criticized by Anton Springer on account of “the ugliness of its figures,” but there is more to be seen in this picture than mere awkwardness of style. The psychology of the picture here reproduced is exceedingly good. The eyes of Adam and Eve, and of the Lord in rebuking them, show real appreciation of the mental processes of the individuals. God walks into the garden with his finger raised, like a teacher who rebukes children caught stealing apples. God’s finger is not straight, a fact which presupposes a close observation of life. His eyes express kindliness as well as admonition, while Adam and Eve stand conscience-stricken by the side of the tree. They do not dare to look into the face of God, and Adam, with his clumsy hand, points to Eve as the cause of the evil, while her face expresses admission, though in her turn she lays the blame on the snake which stands erect at her left.

It is true that the technique is abominable. The heads are ridiculously large, and the hands are out of proportion. The bodies do not express the beauty generally credited to both Adam and Eve as the most perfect handiwork of God. The paints in the picture are reported to be no better than the drawing. The flesh is of a gray color shaded with maroon streaks. In contrast to the sickly and poverty-stricken appearance of the human couple the good Lord is dressed in gold, like a wealthy nobleman of the age, and the scene is shown to be in Paradise by the trees too being overlaid with gold. Nevertheless the situation is very clearly a garden, copied from nature, and the very story, with all its details, could be reconstructed from this picture.

In time, with the advance of art, the figures of Adam and Eve come more and more to assume the artistic appearance of natural beauty. Adam and Eve represent mankind in its primitive state, devoid of spirituality but perfect in health and vigor. It is noteworthy that Christian art portrays in them paganism in its rudeness and ignorance, and so they acquire a certain relationship to Greek antiquity.

In the Renaissance we reach a perfection in the figures of Adam and Eve which attains the ideal of classical beauty. Every painter believed it his duty to represent the two fatal scenes, the fall of man and the expulsion from Paradise. Similar scenes also begin to appear in sculptured reliefs. A scene on one side of the large pillars in the front of the cathedral at Orvieto is devoted to the subject of Eve’s creation.

The creation of man and woman is the first scene portrayed on Ghiberti’s great bronze entrance-doors of the baptistery at Florence. These beautiful

reliefs represent the beginning of a new and greater period of art. It is Ghiberti’s merit to have created an originally Christian conception quite different from the classical reliefs of plastic art. We observe in his work evidence of a close study of garments and draperies, and the attempt to bring out not only bodily beauty but a spiritual expression and allegorical meaning. Most of the characters presented are plainly portraits of men and women who have served as living models.

In the lower left corner of this panel on Ghiberti’s door God is creating man. In the center he is raising Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam, who lies prostrate on the ground. God is here always surrounded and assisted by angels, who lift up Eve while the good Lord watches her rise. In the middle left part of the picture we see Adam and Eve taking the apple from the serpent which is entwined about the tree between them. In the right corner our unfortunate ancestors are being driven out of Paradise. Eve stands in despair, while Adam is visible in the rear.

Michelangelo’s Creation of Eve is represented on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, and is perhaps the most vigorous expression of the original strength of the mother of mankind. It will be observed that here too Eve comes from Adam’s side, although the picture seems to show her fully grown.

From among the more modern pictures we reproduce a drawing by Gustave Doré representing Adam and Eve. Here we see them in their state of innocence, Eve being pictured as reclining on the ground, while Adam looks upon her in love and admiration.

Of the more recent pictures we will mention only those of Schnorr von Carolsfeld, who has succeeded most effectively in striking the proper traditional note in Bible illustrations. He represents Adam and Eve according to the dogmatic belief of Protestant Christianity. In the scene here reproduced they are portrayed after their expulsion from Paradise in their comfortable primitive home, where Adam, leaning on his hoe, rests from his labors while Eve sits in the background with a distaff in her hand, and their two sons are playing about them.

* * * * *

And now, in conclusion, the question as to the place of this theme in the art of the future. Has not the present generation lost interest in our ancestors? Since the legend is no longer believed literally, our artistic imagination is not attracted so strongly by it. The story of the fall of man has become an allegory, an interesting tale, but it is no longer a truth. We believe now in evolution, and so Gabriel Max has pictured a new Eve for us which is the mother of modern man,--the mother who bequeaths to her son a deeper comprehension of life and a truer insight into the nature of things.

The picture is at first sight repulsive, but the more we look at it and the more we study the artist’s intentions, the more it grows on us. Here is a primitive couple of the ape-man type, fossil remains of which have been found in the Neanderthal, in Cannstatt and in Spy. They must have been very savage, and we shudder at their appearance. How unpleasant it would be to meet such creatures in a lonely forest! The male is very brutish while the female shows traces of a dawning intelligence.

Verily, we discover in this scene represented by Gabriel Max a close resemblance to pictures of the holy family. And considered rightly, the similarity is by no means fortuitous, for here we have indeed a holy family. It is an uncultured primitive couple of a speechless tribe of forest men, yet the hope of progress and a brave determination to take up the battle of life for the sake of the babe that is born to them becomes visible in the mother’s eyes.

After all, the wife of _homo alalus_, of the primitive speechless man, is still the same Eve. There is the same sacrifice of motherlove, the same determination of bringing to life the man of the future, the higher, better, nobler man, whose life will be much more worth living than was her own.

This is the secret of life, that we live not for ourselves but for others. If mankind were one great immortal being, how monotonous life would be; how egotistical would all our aspirations become! But nature renders all egotism futile. None of us finds an abiding home here on earth; we pass away and new generations fill the places we leave vacant.

Daily the world grows older, and yet it remains ever young. There is the same happiness, the same bliss and joy that ever thrilled the heart of a mother. Christianity has abolished Venus, the great mother goddess, but Eve has taken her place; and if Eve too is to be deposed, mankind will still cling to the old idea of eternal womanhood, the patron of love and loveliness, of wifehood and of motherhood.

APHRODITE IN ART.

The oldest assured statues of Venus, of an all-nourishing mother goddess, are perhaps the little figurines frequently found in Mesopotamia representing “the Lady” or Beltis (the feminine of Bel, “the Lord”) in the shape of a naked woman, sometimes with a child in her arms; but we may fairly well assume that even the artists of the stone age took up this all-absorbing subject, and if this be the case we may be justified in calling the torso of a naked female figure discovered in Brassempouy, a Venus,--so far the oldest Venus that has come down to us.

In India the goddess of beauty was revered under the name of Lakshmi, and we need not doubt that she still finds worshipers among the Hindu population of to-day, but there are no statues left of the age of ancient Brahmanism. All monuments are of comparatively late origin; in fact the large mass of Hindu idols is quite modern, although it represents art and religious notions of a typically primitive character.

Another and, as it seems, independent development can be traced from the worship of stone pillars or bethels. A _bethel_, i. e., “house of God,” well known from the Bible as a monument of divine revelation, developed gradually into the representation of a stiff female figure like the Diana of Ephesus, but we cannot doubt that the primitive idea of it was the worship of an all-nourishing mother. From her the Greek conception of the chaste moon goddess, the virgin Artemis or Diana, developed in course of time; but the Diana of Ephesus still preserves symbols of a pantheistic conception of the All under the allegory of a mother goddess. (For illustrations see pages 152 and 153.)

Among the Semites the oldest bethels, or houses of God, were pillars of stone. We need not assume that they were gods or goddesses, for judging from Biblical information they may be interpreted as monuments marking a holy place, i. e., a spot where a deity had revealed himself in some way.

The primitive form of a bethel,[39] or as the Greeks transcribed the Phenician term, βαίτυλος, has often been represented on coins. Sometimes two columns are placed, one on each side, and the stone is frequently accompanied with the symbols of the goddess, fruit and eggs; sometimes doves perch on the sanctuary; sometimes the pillar is covered with a temple roof. We know one instance in which it bears the symbol of a Latin cross and gradually it assumes in a coarse style the features of a woman. Such is the beginning of the manufacture of idols which at first are extremely stiff and assume only gradually--indeed very slowly--an artistic shape.

At the dawn of the historic age the oldest Greek statues and paintings of Venus show her fully robed and draped. Great numbers of Aphrodite amulets of small size and made of glazed terra-cotta have been found mainly on the Ægean islands where her cult had spread from Babylon and Syria. They resemble the Babylonian Beltis statuettes in having

the arms crossed over the breast, but as a rule their hips are unnaturally broad. Some of them have a bird’s (possibly a pigeon’s) head and all have large ears with earrings.

The very oldest real statues of Aphrodite, products of primitive manufacture, have been lost, and none of the temple idols have survived Christian iconoclasm, but we have information that Kanachus[40] in the sixth century before Christ, and Kalamis, Phidias and Alcamenes in the fifth, have represented the goddess as dignified and severe. We reproduce here drawings of archaic statues fully dressed. Some of them are still awkward but give evidence of the artist’s reverence. An archaic Venus of the style familiar in Pompeii was formerly regarded as a Moera but to-day after Gerhard’s interpretation it is considered as a Venus Proserpina.

The statue by Kalamis which once stood upon the Acropolis at Athens and was called Aphrodite Sosandra[42] is also fully dressed, but much more graceful. A veil is tied about her hair, and in her right hand the goddess is clasping some folds of her upper garment, while her extended left hand holds a pomegranate blossom.

Among the Attic votive reliefs there is one interpreted as Aphrodite and Ares,[43] which shows

Aphrodite unveiling her face to Ares. She holds a pitcher in her right hand and is pouring its contents into a vessel in his hands. It is also to be noted that the action takes place above an empty altar. The child behind her in this connection can only represent her son Eros.

In the National Museum at Rome there is an Attic sculpture of the fifth century which is somewhat bolder in showing the outlines of the figure. This Aphrodite is clad in a very diaphanous garment, the left breast being quite uncovered.

In the beautiful statue by Alcamenes, a copy of

which is still preserved in the Louvre, the dress seems to be of slightly heavier texture and the posture more simple and dignified. In her left hand the goddess holds a pomegranate and is lifting with

her right hand a corner of her drapery above her right shoulder.

It was in the days of the highest development of

Greek art that the greatest artists dared to show the goddess of love in perfect nudity. The statues of Phidias still retain the severe expression of her divine character, but Praxiteles endeavors to show her beauty as in primitive times without any dress, in a careless but graceful and artistic pose. So at least appears the most authoritative record of her appearance on the Cnidian coin. Other statues, especially the Vatican marble known as the Venus of Praxiteles, are partly dressed. It is assumed that many replicas of ancient masterpieces did not follow their originals in all details.

This statue of Praxiteles was ordered by the Cnidians from the artist for public worship, and when finished they placed it in the temple of Aphrodite Euploia built especially to serve as a shrine for