intelligence.

I had also discerned in the opening of Genesis things which could
not be literally received. The geography of the rivers in Paradise is
inexplicable, though it assumes the tone of explanation. The curse
on the serpent, who is to go on his belly--(how else did he go
before?)--and eat dust, is a capricious punishment on a race of
brutes, one of whom the Devil chose to use as his instrument. That
the painfulness of childbirth is caused, not by Eve's sin, but by
artificial habits and a weakened nervous system, seems to be proved
by the twofold fact, that savage women and wild animals suffer but
little, and tame cattle often suffer as much as human females.--About
this time also, I had perceived (what I afterwards learned the Germans
to have more fully investigated) that the two different accounts of
the Creation are distinguished by the appellations given to the divine
Creator. I did not see how to resist the inference that the book
is made up of heterogeneous documents, and was not put forth by the
direct dictation of the Spirit to Moses.

A new stimulus was after this given to my mind by two short
conversations with the late excellent Dr. Arnold at Rugby. I had
become aware of the difficulties encountered by physiologists in
believing the whole human race to have proceeded in about 6000 years
from a single Adam and Eve; and that the longevity (not
miraculous, but ordinary) attributed to the patriarchs was another
stumbling-block. The geological difficulties of the Mosaic cosmogony
were also at that time exciting attention. It was a novelty to me,
that Arnold treated these questions as matters of indifference to
religion; and did not hesitate to say, that the account of Noah's
deluge was evidently mythical, and the history of Joseph "a beautiful