GARD OF EDEN.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 13706, 22 September 1908, Page 7

GARD OF EDEN.

WHERE WAS IT?

Modern criticism, ears Professor Serviss, in one of bis speculative articles on the origin of . things, regards Adam and Eve as legendary characters and the Garden of Eden as a. myth. Yet there must have been a first man and a flint woman, rven if ">h*y were only a grade hi"her tran monkeys .and they must have had alocal habitation somewhere' on the earth. All the hypotheses which place the earthly paradise somewhere in Asia have no bet:er basis than the limitations of history. Because we find the earliest historical nations grouped abour the plateau of Iran, and because Hebrew history in particular points backward in "ihat direction, it is assumed that the birthplace of the human race was in that, part of Asia. But the Hebrew legend concerning Adam and Eve was simply an outgrowrh of older traditions, and if these traditions could be traced to their ultimate source it would be discovered that they led gradually back to the spot, or region, where creatures sufficiently intelligent to communicate their impressions and memories from on** to another first found a freehold on this planet. Can that spot- or region now be recognised* If so, then we can answer the question, where did the real Adam and Eve live? It"liegins "to look as' if the "answer may be found. Geological science is contributing to it. When some explorer finds the Xorth Pole he may set his foot on the very place in question. The whole riepd at present is towards the recognir tion of the North Polar region of the earth a* that whei« the first, stable land appeared, and as the place where climatic conditions earliest reached a state suitable to the presence of organic life. Retcent studies bring out- clearly the fac* that tlie areas above the Arctic Ocean; jrhich have remained undisturbed since an • early Paleozoic time, have formed a central move againbi which the more southern portions of Eurasia and Xorth America have been folded. j,.' When geologists, speak of '"Poleozoic time" they are referring to an epoch of i almost unimaginable remotene.«s. Every step that they, take shows moie convinc- I ngly that the "'liibdsphere," as. thry call enclosing rocky shell of the globed jw in ton inual movement. First <onttoental ; mounds: "rise and '- mountains begin to grow; then the high levels artworn down, and the sea invades the margins of the continents. At piesenr we are living near the beginning- of a cycle of mountain grow.h. But around the North Pole the ancient masss of the eaitbV crnbt has remained through cycle after cycle virtually undisturbed. .;7 V There, then, it Is rmtttral t<>conclude, the ftrsfe land life emerged" into .eristence. TheAd-wnand /Eve of that; paradise were beautiful- and perfect creatures ;oy ilifi<m; but whoVlcan *et limits -to. the'" ancestral voices'; that iaye been';'•■'" prophesying " down through the ages which have beheld the evolution of terrestrial 1 life to its crowning phenomenon—man? Is it not conceivable thai a kind of race memory, of immense antiquity, is the real basis of the paradise myths, and that this memory runs dimly back to the time when the first intelligence began to glow on the first stable and habitable land surrounding the northern poiut of the earth's anisT