CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CURSE ON KNOWLEDGE.

A Bishop on intellect-The Bible on learning-The Serpent and Seth -A Hebrew Renaissance-Spells-Shelley at Oxford-Bookburning-Japanese ink-devil-Book of Cyprianus-Devil's Bible -Red letters-Dread of Science-Roger Bacon-Luther's Devil -Lutherans and Science.

IN Lucas van Leyden's picture of Satan tempting Christ (Fig. 6), the fiend is represented in the garb of a University man of the time. From his head falls a streamer which coils on the ground to a serpent. From that serpent to the sceptical scholar demanding a miracle the evolution is fully traceable. The Serpent, of old the 'seer,' was in its Semitic adaptation a tempter to forbidden knowledge. This was the earliest priestly outcry against 'godless education.'

During the Shakespere tercentenary festival at Stratfordon-Avon, the Bishop of St. Andrews declared that there is not a word in the Bible warranting homage to Intellect, and such a boast beside the grave of the most intellectual of Englishmen is in itself a survival illustrating the tremendous curse hurled by jealous Jehovah on man's first effort to obtain knowledge. That same Serpent of knowledge has passed very far, and his curse has many times been repeated. In the Accadian poem of the fatal Seven, as we have seen, it is said, 'In watching was their office;' and the Assyrian version says, 'Unto heaven that which was

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THE BIBLE ON LEARNING.

not seen they raised.' On the Babylonian cylinders is inscribed the curse of the god of Intelligence (Hea) upon man-Wisdom and knowledge hostilely may they injure him.'1 The same Serpent twined round the staff of Esculapius and whispered those secrets which made the gods jealous, so that Jove killed the learned Physician with a flash of lightning. Its teeth were sown when Cadmus imported the alphabet into Greece; and when these alphabetical dragon's-teeth had turned to type, the ancient curse was renewed in legends which connected Fust with the Devil.

The Hebrews are least among races responsible for the legend which has drifted into Genesis. Nor was the Bishop's boast about their Bible correct. The homage paid to Solomon was hardly on account of his moral character. He spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.'2 While the curse on man for eating the fruit of knowledge is never quoted in the Hebrew scriptures, there are many indications of their devotion to knowledge; and their prophets even heard Jehovah saying, 'My people are destroyed through lack of knowledge.' It is not wonderful, therefore, that we find among the Jews the gradual growth of a legend concerning Seth, which may be regarded as a reply to the curse on the Serpent.

The apotheosis of Seth in rabbinical and mussulman mythology represents a sort of Semitic Renaissance. As we have seen in a former chapter, the Egyptians and 1 'Chald. Genesis,' by George Smith, p. 84.

2 This text was engraved by Mrs. Rose Mary Crawshay on a tomb she had erected in honour of her humble neighbour, Mr. Norbury, who sought knowledge for its own sake. Few ancient scriptures could have supplied an inscription so appropriate.

THE SERPENT AND SETH.

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Greeks identified Set with Typhon, but at the same time that demon was associated with science. He is astronomically located in Capricorn, the sphere of the hierophants in the Egyptian Mysteries, and the mansion of the guardians of science. Thus he would correspond with the Serpent, who, as adapted by the Hebrews in the myth of Eden, whispers to Eve of divine knowledge. But, as detached from Typho, Seth, while leaving behind the malignancy, carried away the reputation for learning usually ascribed to devils. Thus, while we have had to record so many instances of degraded deities, we may note in Seth a converted devil. In the mussulman and rabbinical traditions Seth is a voluminous author; he receives a library from heaven; he is the originator of astronomy and of many arts; and, as an instructor in cultivation, he restores many an acre which as Set he had blighted. In the apocryphal Genesis he is represented as having been caught up to heaven and shown the future destiny of mankind. Anastasius of Sinai says that when God created Adam after his own image, he breathed into him grace and illumination, and a ray of the Holy Spirit. But when he had sinned this glory left him. Then he became the father of Cain and Abel, But afterwards it is said Adam 'begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name 'Seth,' which is not said of Cain and Abel; and this means that Seth was begotten in the likeness of unfallen man in paradise-Seth meaning 'Resurrection.' And all those then living, when they saw how the face of Seth shone with divine light, and heard him speak with divine wisdom, said, He is God; therefore his sons were commonly called the sons of God.1

1 Mr. Baring-Gould, quoting this (from Anastasius Sinaita, 'Odnyós, ed. Gretser, Ingolst. 1606, p. 269), attributes this shining face of Seth to his previous character as a Sun-god. (Old Test. Legends,' i. 84.)

That this 'Resurrection' of departed glory and wisdom was really, as I have said, a Renaissance-a restoration of learning from the curse put upon it in the story of the Serpent-is indicated by its evolution in the Gnostic myth wherein Seth was made to avenge Satan. He took under his special care the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and planted it in his father's grave (Fig. 8). Rabbins carried their homage to Seth even to the extent of vindicating Saturn, the most notorious of planets, and say that Abraham and the Prophets were inspired by it. The Dog (Jackal) was, in Egyptian symbols, emblem of the Scribe; Sirius was the Dog-star domiciled with Saturn; Seth was by them identified with Sirius, as the god of occult and infernal knowlege. He was near relative of the serpent Sesha, familiar of Æsculapius, and so easily connected with the subtlest of the beasts in Eden which had crept in from the Iranian mythology.

This reaction was instituted by scholars, who, in their necessarily timid way of fable, may be said to have recovered the Tree of Knowledge under guise of homage to Seth. It flourished, as we have seen (chap. xi.), to the extent of finally raising the Serpent to be a god, and lowering Jehovah who cursed him to a jealous devil!

But the terror with which Jehovah is said to have been inspired when he said, 'The man has become as one of us, to know good and evil,' never failed to reappear among priesthoods when anything threatened to remove the means of learning from under their control. The causes of this are too many to be fully considered here; but the main cause unquestionably was the tendency of learning to release men from the sway of the priest. The primitive man of science would speedily discover how many things. existed of which his priest was ignorant, and thus the germ

1 King's 'Gnostics,' p. 53, n.

BOOK-BURNING.

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of Scepticism would be planted. The man who possessed the Sacred Books, in whole or in part, might become master of the spells' supposed to be contained in its words and sentences, and might use them against the priests; or, at any rate, he might feel independent of the ordinary apparatus of salvation.

The anxiety of priests to keep fast hold of the keys of learning, so that no secular son of Adam should become 'as one of them,' coupled with the wonderful powers they professed ability to exercise, powerfully stimulated the curiosity of intellectual men, and led them to seek after this forbidden fruit in subtle ways, which easily illustrated the story of the Serpent. The poet Shelley, who was suspected at Oxford because of his fondness for chemistry, recognised his mythological ancestry, and used to speak of 'my cousin, the Serpent.' The joke was born of circumstances sufficiently scandalous in the last generation to make the Oxonian of to-day blush; but the like histories of earlier ages are so tragical that, when fully known by the common people, they will change certain familiar badges into brands of shame. While the cant goes on about the Church being the protector of learning through the dark ages, the fact is that, from the burning of valuable books at Ephesus by christian fanatics (Acts xix. 19) to the present day, the Church has destroyed tenfold more important works than it ever produced, and almost suffocated the intellectual life of a thousand years. Amid the unbroken persecution of the Jews by christian cruelty, which lasted from the early eleventh century for five hundred years, untold numbers of manuscripts were destroyed, which might have now been giving the world full and clear knowledge concerning ages, for whose records archæological scholars are painfully exploring the crumbled ruins of the East.

Synagogues were believed to be temples of