- My brothers... I have risen beyond the present,
and my spirit has unveiled.
What has my spirit unveiled? It has unveiled the past...
- Adam, Adam, where are you?
My eyes searched for him and did not see him; I called him and he did not answer me. Adam had not yet come.
Where was Adam?
He did not appear to me. Nor did Moses come to tell me where the first man of Genesis was hidden.
For I saw one man, two men, many men, and in the midst of them I did not see Adam, and none of them knew Adam. They were the primitive men, those whom my absorbed spirit contemplated.
It was the first day of Humanity; but what humanity, my God!...
It was also the first day of the feeling of will and of light; But of a feeling that differed only from sensation, of a will that only managed to dispel some of the shadows of instinct.
First of all, man sought to eat. And he ate. Then he sought a companion, joined with her, and they had children, resembling their father and mother.
Finally, he raised his eyes towards the sky and, falling heavily upon the earth, slept. How nebulous and sad is the first day of Humanity...
My spirit sought man, and, finding him, retreated. It returned to observe him and, again, retreated. For my spirit did not see the man of Paradise. It saw much less than man, it saw little more than an animal.
His eyes did not reflect the light of intelligence. His brow disappeared beneath his tangled and shaggy hair. His mouth, disproportionately open, projected forward. His hands resembled feet, and frequently used them. A thick, hairy skin covered his hard, dry flesh, which did not conceal the ugliness of his skeleton.
Oh, if you had seen, as I have, the man of the first day, with his long, emaciated arms hanging down by his body, and his large hands drooping to his knees, your spirit would have closed its eyes so as not to see, and would have sought sleep to forget!
The man of the first days of Humanity ate and drank, but he did not eat or drink like a man; he walked, but he did not walk like a man; he saw, but he did not see like a man; he loved and hated, but he did not love or hate like a man.
His eating was like devouring; he drank by lowering his head and submerging his thick lips in the water; his gait was heavy and unsteady, as if his will did not intervene; his eyes wandered, expressionless, over objects, as if vision were not reflected in his soul; His love and his hate, born from his satisfied or thwarted needs, were as fleeting as the impressions imprinted on his mind, and as crude as the needs from which they originated.
Primitive man spoke, but not like a man. He emitted some guttural sounds, accompanied by gestures, necessary to respond to his most urgent needs.
He fled from society and sought solitude. He hid from the light and indolently sought, in the darkness, the satisfaction of his natural needs. He was a slave to the crudest selfishness. He sought food only for himself.
He found a companion at certain times, when the desires of the flesh were most imperious, and, his appetite satisfied, he retreated again to solitude, no longer caring for his companion or children.
He was extremely lazy. Stretched out on the ground, he fed on whatever was within his reach; and, whenever he moved, his gestures revealed repugnance and disgust. He would pass by the corpse of another man, fix a stupid gaze upon it, and go on.
He never laughed; never did his eyes shed tears. His pleasure was a cry, his pain a groan.
His thoughts were superficial, uncertain, and fleeting; his ideas were elementary and confused; they left no trace in his soul other than that which a dream leaves in you, incoherent and fleeting.
Thinking fatigued him; he fled from thought as from light.
He considered terrestrial animals as equal in nature to himself, and considered birds superior to man.
The sky turned and the stars shone above his head, but he perceived neither the movement of the sky nor the brilliance of the stars.
For him, there was no earth beyond what his eyes could see, nor other beings beyond those discovered by his crude senses. He lived without knowing the reason for his life; he died without ever having thought of dying.
Oh, if you had seen, as I did, the man of the first day, with his long, gaunt, drooping arms, and his large hands that reached his knees, your spirit would have closed its eyes so as not to see, and would have sought sleep to forget!
...After the first day of Humanity, the body of man appears less ugly, less repugnant to the contemplation of my soul. His forehead begins to align with the upper part of his face, when the wind whips and lifts the rough locks that cover it.
His eyes are more lively and transparent, his nose is more refined and upturned, and his mouth is less prominent.
...His arms are less long and emaciated, his flesh is less dry, his hands less bulky, and with longer fingers, the bones of his skeleton are more rounded, better arranged for the movement of the joints; there is greater elasticity in his muscles and more transparency in the skin that covers his body.
In his gaze, he reflects the first ray of intellectual light; it is an inquiring gaze, the awakening of the sleeping spirit. In his walk, now less slow and hesitant, one notices the manifestation of a will directed towards a goal.
He seeks out his wife, and no longer abandons her. He attends the birth of his children, with whom he shares warmth and food.
He moves his hesitant tongue, stammering in his attempts to communicate. He feels new needs—and tries out ways to express them, to satisfy them. Here is the principle of language: need.
Now, he perceives other animals as inferior and learns to consume some to satiate his hunger.
He suspects that not everything ends where his sight reaches; that, behind his mountain, another and something more rises.
In his gaze, I see surprise and curiosity replacing stupidity. He still flees from objects he encounters for the first time, but little by little he loses the fear caused by novelty. He avoids, accepts—and, finally, takes in his hands what caused him fear. His face, his gestures, and his exclamations reveal the emotions that populate his mind and his heart.
He is the soldier who has just achieved a great triumph over an invincible enemy. Fear. Fear, more powerful in him than all his calculations and feelings.
The roar of the beasts, the rumble of thunder, the flash of lightning, the sinister rumor that precedes the storm, the frequent earthquakes, the eruptions of volcanoes, and not only this; Everything new, everything unknown, chills him with astonishment, disturbs him, and annihilates him.
He forgets his companion, forgets his children, and believes he is going to die. Because now, he knows he has to die, and the fear of death surpasses all his other fears. He has seen the corpses of other men many times and understands the moment of his own death as inevitable.
He no longer seeks shadow and solitude, as on the first day; he flees from darkness because he has a very specific fear, death; and he flees from solitude because he recognizes himself as weak and powerless. His wife and children are his usual companions.
He admires, with childlike enthusiasm, the sunrise when his consciousness and his hopes are renewed. He contemplates, anxiously, the twilight that precedes the great darkness, as if the end of each day were a kind of death, like the darkness of eyes that close forever.
— Will you return? — he asks, saddened, at the horizon.
And the Sun reappears... And the man falls to his knees in gratitude, contemplating the rebirth of the Sun and, in his crude and incipient language, exclaims:
— Thank you, my protector — my God! You come to console me. To you I owe my happiness and my joy. I adore you!...
Benefit was the first god of Humanity, personified in the Sun, because the Sun was the greatest of benefits that the intelligence of primitive man could conceive.
Do not take this primitive adoration for blasphemy or heresy; it is the starting point of natural religion. It is also the root of the morality of human actions—the first manifestation of gratitude of the creature to the unknown superior power.
Signed:
— I, John.
Text adapted from the original
IN Roma e o Evangelho,
José Amigó y Pellicer, 1874.
https://www.luzespirita.org.br/leitura/pdf/l99.pdf
