8

Milton’s Primaeval Man.

THE chief interest of our last study, that of Milton’s he insists on the importance of such trial to moral
in the fact of their resemblance to Man. growth :-
Angels, lay
This resemblance is the result not so much of
&dquo;
I cannot praise an ignorant and cloistered
poetical licence on the poet’s part as of deliberate virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never
opinion. Milton endorses the tradition according&dquo; sallies out and seeks her adversary, but slinks out
to which Man was created to fill the &dquo; vacant room of the where that immortal garland is to be
race

caused by rebellion in the angelic ranks. The run for, without dust and heat.... That
not
limitations to which he is subjected, the tests which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is
imposed upon him, are intended to prevent the contrary. That virtue, therefore, which is but a
recurrence of so great a catastrophe. This new youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows
not the utmost that vice promises to her followers
Angel, the last-born and darling son of the Creator,
is to be carefully trained and tested before entering and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure.&dquo;’2
upon his inheritance : he must serve as a proba- It is true that he so far makes Adam an ex-
tioner before being admitted to the full privileges ception, as to suggest in his case the knowledge
of his order. Thus we find his limitations, his of good might have been acquired without the
comparative ignorance and subjection, as much knowledge of evil :-
insisted on as his knowledge and freedom. He is &dquo; Perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell
represented, it is true, as not only innocent, but into of knowing good and evil-i.e. of knowing
noble and majestic, replete with all natural good- good by evil.&dquo; 3
ness, wise with intuitive knowledge. He is also But we need not suppose him to mean that even
immortal, beautiful to look at, and knows, naturally, in unfallen man, good could have been developed
neither sickness nor pain. But if in these respects without a struggle. On the contrary, the tempta-
he is only &dquo;a little lower than the Angels,&dquo; he is tion to which Adam succumbs is a trial which must
lower none the less, and that not only as the head have lifted him higher if it had not worsted him.
of a lower a distinct &dquo; shecies,&dquo; but as
creation, Had he resisted it, he and his race would doubtless
occupying lower
a step on the ladder which he have been strengthened and purified by successive
must climb if he is to fulfil the law of his being. probations, adapted to their increasing virtue.
For Milton believes in evolution, if not in the Men were to dwell on earth-
modern sense of the word, still in a very real sense. &dquo;’I’ill, by degrees of merit raised,
...

To him all creation is an ascending scale of forms, They open themselves at length the way
to

closely linked, the lower forms sustaining the higher, Up hither, under long obedience tried,
And earth be changed to heaven, and heaven to earth.&dquo;4
and capable of eventual assimilation with them-
&dquo; Each in their several active spheres assigned Or, as Raphael puts it to Adam-
Till body up to spirit work.&dquo; 1 &dquo;1’our bodies may at last turn all to spirit,
His Paradise, like that of most modern theologians, Improved by tract of time, and wing’cl ascend
is the home not of manhood, ideally considered, Ethereal, as we ; or may at choice
Here or in heavenly Paradises dwell.&dquo;-’5
but of childhood. Milton’s ideal Man-Man, as
he was made capable of becoming-is not Adam, Earth, in short, was to have been a sort of fore-
but rather Abdiel, in whom we find the fire and court of heaven, itself becoming slowly &dquo; more
freedom, the tried courage, the conscious virtue re6ned, more spiritous and pure,&dquo; as its inhabitants
which are so dear to the heart of the poet, but became more and more fitted, by continual prac-
which weakness and inexperience make impossible tice, for the exercise of angelic functions.
to Adam. It is this tried virtue that gives the One difficulty must beset all speculations on this
Angel his moral superiority. Milton is nowhere subject, a difficulty familiar to us in connection
more eloquent than in the famous passage in which 2 3
Areopagitica. Ibid.
1 Paradise Lost, v. 477, 478. P.L.
4
vii. I57-I60. Ibid.
5 v. 497-500.

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with the temptations of Christ. How are we to pleasant stages, Man might have passed to the
conceive of a sinless being-Adam, Abdiel, Christ Promised Land. He has to turn aside into the
-as tempted to evil at all ? IN7hat is there on wilderness, and there, with painful steps, and by
which temptation can lay hold ? Milton feels the rough and circuitous paths, to find, if it may be,
difficulty, and-as far, at least, as Adam is con- his original goal. He has lost all the equipments
cerned-he meets it characteristically. He has for his journey,-the immortality which he shared
recourse here as elsewhere to the arbitrary will with the Angels, his natural rectitude, even the
of GOD. He separates GOD from goodness, and power of will, which left him free to stand or fall.
supports his view by a literal interpretation of the The death which overtakes him affects soul and
. story of the apple. Man, he contends, could not body alike, or rather-for Milton does not believe
have been tempted to sin, as j-//~,―&dquo; the lust of in &dquo;soul and body &dquo;-the entire man. There is
the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life,&dquo;- no intangible spiritual existence, no Hades life, no
for his inclinations were naturally holy ; but he Paradise of the spirit, while the body sleeps. The
could be tempted to an act innocent in itself, yet man dies absolutely, is non-existent, till he is re-

involving the sin of disloyalty, as being arbitrarily created, for bane or bliss, on the day of resurrec-
forbidden :- tion.’ So, too, his will is hopelessly crippled, his
&dquo;It was necessary that something should be inclinations hopelessly depraved, except as rein-
forbidden or commanded as a test of fidelity, and forced by miraculous aid,-the &dquo; grace &dquo; unneeded
that an act in its own nature indifferent, in order by the Angels,’ as it was unneeded by unfallen
that man’s obedience might be thereby manifested. man. And, at best, it is only a fragment of the
For since it was the disposition of man to do what millions doomed by his error whom Adam foresees
was right, as being naturally good and holy, it was as restored by One who
not necessary that he should be bound by the ‘‘ Shall <ju«11
The adversary Serpent, and bring back
obligation of a covenant to perform that to which
Through the world’s wilderness long-
he was of himself inclined.&dquo;1 wandered man
And again- Safe to eternal Paradise of rest.&dquo; 5
&dquo;Seeing that man was made in the image of The &dquo;greater part,&dquo; so Milton assures us, are to
GOD, and had the whole law of nature so implanted perish by the way.
and innate in him, that he needed no precept to Milton’s tragedy does not, as a rule, affect us
enforce its observance, it follows that if he received much. This is
perhaps because, while it has lost
any additional commands ... these commands some of its hold on our belief, it has lost none on
formed no part of the law of nature, which is our memories. It has become less true to us,
sufficient of itself to teach whatever is agreeable to without
ceasing be trite. If we would realise its
to
right reason-that is to say, whatever is intrinsically sadness, we must compel ourselves to see with
good. Such commands, therefore, must have been Milton’s eyes, to combine the poet’s freshness of
founded on what is called positive right, whereby
insight with the theologian’s faith. We must
GOD, or any one invested with lawful power, com- imagine it true, not in substance only, but in detail ;
mands or forbids what is in itself neither good nor not as a
mystery, but as a series of syllogisms, of
bad.&dquo;’=2 which every conclusion must be pressed with a
If we are tempted to ask-Is not this to make
remorseless logic. Doing this, we may perhaps
GOD the Author of sin, nay, according to Milton, of understand how the
the lifelong and eternal misery of millions ? we are for a
poet, when he cast about him
tragedy that might best express the weariness
landed in the difficulties that confronted us in our
and disappointment of his later life, rejected one by
first study; and, at least, we must allow that Milton’s
one the subjects that had suggested themselves to
suggestion is an ingenious and consistent one. him during the years of waiting rejected even the
The test, as we know, proves fatal. The &dquo;mortal
Cllristus Patiens, to occupy hitnself with the saddest
taste&dquo; of &dquo; that forbidden tree&dquo; makes the starting-
of all histories, the master-tragedy of the human race.
point of Milton’s tragedy. By that first sin the 3
easy way is barred, along which, by short and T.C.D. chap. vii. "Of the Death of the Body."
4
Ibid. chap. ix. "Of the Special Government of
1
A Treatise Christian
on Doctrine, chap. " Of the 5
x.
Angels." P.L. xii. 3II-3I4.
Special Government of Man." 2
Ibid. 6
See the list given by Garnett and other biographers.

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