The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [398]
These two myths from the dawn of civilisation represent the most sophisticated attempts by pre-scientific man to account for the fundamental way in which Homo sapiens differs from every other species on earth. All other animals live out their lives entirely by instinct. They can only act as they have been genetically programmed to act, by nature. They thus live in a state of complete unity with nature. What marks out mankind from all other species is that, somewhere far back in prehistory, our ancestors began to develop an entirely new level of consciousness which allowed them to step outside that natural frame. For the first time in the history of life on this earth, there was one species which no longer lived entirely in accordance with the dictates of instinct in everything it did. At first almost imperceptibly, then more and more, it began to develop the capacity to choose how to do things differently: as in the way it learned how to use sticks and stones to catch the animals it hunted for its food; to strip off their skins to provide warm clothing; to use fire to make their meat more edible, and language in which to converse.
But along with this new level of consciousness came something else that was entirely new. Each member of this new species now had a sense of its own separate, individual existence. It had what we call an ego. And in this respect it was totally different from any other creature. It is meaningless to speak of an egocentric fish or bee or elephant. But Homo sapiens, both individually and collectively, has the capacity to act selfishly. And it is this which has presented him with a problem which is unique in the animal kingdom.
All this is what these stories of the `Fall' are unconsciously designed to symbolise. When Adam and Eve arrive in Paradise they are in a state of `innocence, reflecting that state of nature where every animal lives in unthinking obedience to instinct all its life long. In this sense, like any other animals, they are not responsible for their actions, But their expulsion from the garden marks their emergence from this state of nature. It is their new ability to choose between one form of behaviour and another which lies at the root of their sense of a distinction between good and evil. It is their ability to re-order the terms of their relationship with the rest of nature which gives them superiority over all other forms of life. It is this peculiar form of consciousness, standing apart from nature, which makes the human race selfconscious, giving them the sense that they must hide away parts of their body from general view. And it is this sense of their own finite, individual existence which tells each human being that one day its life must come to an end: which is why Adam and Eve know for the first time they will eventually have to die.
The Greek version of the story adds further elements to the message. The names of the two brothers, Prometheus and Epimetheus, `forethought' and `afterthought, reflect another extraordinarily important consequence of the emergence of this new form of consciousness. This is that it creates the power of imagination: the ability to create mental images of that which is not present to the physical senses. An animal which lives entirely by instinct can live only in the moment, at one point of time. Although many other species can learn from experience, only human beings can rise above the present moment altogether, to cast their mind's eye forward and back in time: to imagine events which have not yet happened or to summon up memories of that which happened in the past.
But the most significant consequence of all is that