1. INTRODUCTION.

WALKING once alone in a pleasant grove to dispel my disturbing thoughts, and seeing that the trees were shedding their foliage, and that the falling leaves were flying about - for autumn was then taking its turn in the revolution of the year, and dispersing the decorations of summer-from being sad I became serious, while I recollected the delights which that grove, from spring even to this season, had communicated, and so often diffused through my whole mind.

(From the visible things of the world it appears that there is nothing which does not pass through its times and its ages, consequently also the whole earth with human societies.) ¹

But on seeing this change of scene I began to meditate on the vicissitudes of times; and it occurred to me whether all things relating to time do not also pass through similar vicissitudes, namely, whether this is not the case, not only with forests but also with our lives and ages; for it is evident that they, in like manner, commencing from a kind of spring and blossom, and passing through their summer, sink rapidly into their old age, an image of autumn. Nor is this the case only with the periods of men's individual lives, but also with the ages or eons of the world's existence, that is, with the general lives of societies, which from their infancy, integrity, and innocence, were formerly called the golden and silver ages, and which, it is now believed, are about to be succeeded by the last or iron ages, which will shortly moulder away into rust or the dust of clay.

¹ The text has inserted comments on the side of the page. These comments exist periodically throughout the text and have been placed in parentheses at approximately where they occur.

87. PART TWO which discusses the marriage of the first-born or Adam and the soul, the intellectual mind, the state of integrity, and the image of God.

PART SECOND. CONCERNING THE MARRIAGE OF THE FIRST-BORN.

THERE was a grove, distant some furlongs from the Paradise of the first-born, surrounded with winding streams, and divided into insular forms by meanderings derived from those streams; the whole likewise was an orchard, in the midst of which also was a most excellent tree, which by its size and beauty emulated the tree of life, or the maternal tree of the other grove. There was nothing of pleasantness and of beauty in one grove which did not exist effigied in the other, insomuch that if those two groves had been included in the same plot of ground, they might have been called consorts, or, as it were, conjugial partners.

[2] The first-born, on a time, led by the winding of the paths, arrived at the spot about twilight, and when he could not retrace his footsteps by reason of the shade of approaching night, he betook himself into the midst of this garden, and lay down under the branching shelter of the above-mentioned fruit-tree, on a bed and couch a little elevated by flowers which had been gathered together, for the sake of taking sleep and passing the night. When sudden sleep closely disposed his external limbs, and presently their interior fibres, instantly there appeared to him a nymph, most beautiful in face and body, at the sight of whom, from a sort of sympathetic warmth, he was so enkindled, that suddenly a soft flame glowed in all his relaxed fibres, and when he attempted to enfold the nymph in his arms, she, as it were, like a bright cloud, fled from him, seeming to elude his touch and endeavor. He, in consequence, being more vehemently inflamed, and attempting to catch her in her flight, so wounded the joints of his breast that one of his ribs seemed to him to leap out of its place, the nerves being so distended by the operation of the mind, and the blood in the breast being put in commotion by the heart; but after some struggle, he seemed to himself to catch her, when he gave her frequent kisses, which he repeatedly impressed mostly upon her lips and mouth. At this moment, when she appeared still more beautiful by reason of the sparkling of a new flame, he suddenly awoke, and perceived with grief, that she was only the apparition of a dream; not aware that that fruit-tree under which he rested, in like manner as his maternal one, carried a similar egg, from which his future consort was to be born; that it was for her, as represented in his sleep, that he had striven with so much love; that the branch at his breast, lying in his bosom, was what he embraced in his arms; and that the very egg itself was what he pressed with his lips and his kisses, and thus infused into it a vital soul from his own.