there exists nothing but the potential of the absolutely perfect; and it is on this account that in the opening chapter of the Bible we read that God saw that all his work was good --- the Divine eye could find no flaw anywhere; and we should note carefully that this absolutely good creation included Man also.

But as soon as we descend to the Intellectual world, which is the world of man's conception of things, it is quite different; and until man comes to realise the truly spiritual, and therefore perfectly good, essential nature of all things, there is room for any amount of misconception, resulting in a corresponding misdirection of man's creative instrument of Thought, which thus produces correspondingly misinformed realities.

Now the perfect life of Adam and Eve in Eden is the picture of Man as he exists in the spiritual world. It is not the tradition of some bygone age, but a symbolical representation of what we all are in our innermost being, thus recalling the words of the Master recorded in the Gospel of the Egyptians [possibly The Gospel of Thomas --- Ed]. He was asked when the Kingdom of Heaven should come and replied, "When that which is without shall be as that which is within" --- in other words, when the perfection of the innermost spiritual essence shall be reproduced in the external part. In the story of Man's pristine life of innocence and joy in Paradise, we are