To some, perhaps, the foregoing reflections may seem to possess a
certain morbid character. Morbid? But what is disease precisely? And
what is health?

May not disease itself possibly be the essential condition of that which
we call progress and progress itself a disease?

Who does not know the mythical tragedy of Paradise? Therein dwelt our
first parents in a state of perfect health and perfect innocence, and
Jahwé gave them to eat of the tree of life and created all things for
them; but he commanded them not to taste of the fruit of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. But they, tempted by the serpent--Christ's
type of prudence--tasted of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, and became subject to all diseases, and to death, which
is their crown and consummation, and to labour and to progress. For
progress, according to this legend, springs from original sin. And thus
it was the curiosity of Eve, of woman, of her who is most thrall to the
organic necessities of life and of the conservation of life, that
occasioned the Fall and with the Fall the Redemption, and it was the
Redemption that set our feet on the way to God and made it possible for
us to attain to Him and to be in Him.

Do you want another version of our origin? Very well then. According to
this account, man is, strictly speaking, merely a species of gorilla,
orang-outang, chimpanzee, or the like, more or less hydrocephalous. Once
on a time an anthropoid monkey had a diseased offspring--diseased from
the strictly animal or zoological point of view, really diseased; and
this disease, although a source of weakness, resulted in a positive gain