Note 17 — FIRST SECTION.

Already in his time St. Jerome affirmed: omnem concubitum coniugale esse peccatum, nisi causa procreandi sobolem (that all conjugal coition is a sin, except for the sake of begetting offspring); and Andr. Beverland (de peccato originali—On Original Sin, p. 60.); Ingenitum nefas nil aliud est, quam coeundi ista libido, (Inborn sin is nothing else than the foul craving for coition). With this should be compared the view of Lycurgus, which Plutarch cites in his life of him.

Also Athenaeus (Deipnosoph. Bk. XXI. p. 510.) says: προκριθείσης γοῦν τῆς’ Ἀφροδίτης, αὕτη δ’ ἐστὶν ἡ ἡδονὴ, πάντα συνεταράχθη. (thus Aphrodité being rather chosen,—now this is sensual pleasure,—all was thrown into confusion.) Clement of Alexandria, Paedog. bk. II. ch. 10. Ψιλὴ γὰρ ἡδονὴ, κἂν ἐν γάμῳ παραληφθῇ, παράνομός ἐστι καὶ ἄδικος καὶ ἄλογος. (For base pleasure—i.e. pleasure for its own sake,—even though it have been enjoyed in wedlock, is unlawful and unjust and unreasonable.)—Philo, De opificio mundi, pp. 34, 35, 38. De Allegoria, II. p. 1100. ὄφιν εἶναι σύμβολον ἡδονῆς. (the snake is the symbol of sensual pleasure.) With some coarseness Rabbi Zahira explains the Fall. The Tree, he says, that bore the forbidden fruit signifies the instrument of generation in Man; not the Tree in the midst of the garden of Eden, he comments, but the Tree in the midst of the body, which is not in the midmost of the garden, but in the midmost of the Woman, for it is there that the garden is planted. Nork, “Braminen und Rabinen,” (Brahmins and Rabbis). Meissen 1836. large 8vo. pp. 91.