Principles for the investigation of the original state of man
St. Thomas was familiar with the ancestors of the renaissance philosophers; he knew materialism in its earliest forms; the dreams and memories of the pagans were packed away on the shelves of his memory. But when he came to treat of the original state of man, he resorted to none of these; rather he was content to go to the factual account in the Book of Genesis, examine it, analyst draw out its implications, fill in its blank spots with reasonable hypotheses to give us a full picture of man in his first home.
The integrity of nature
Before plunging into the story itself, St. Thomas lays down some fundamental principles that give his whole treatment a unity which makes its rational character stand out strikingly. The first principle he insists on is that nothing that was natural to man was lost by man's sin. When we speak of fallen nature or of the wounds suffered by nature through the sin of Adam, we do not mean that human nature suffered a bad smash-up and was condemned to hobble through the ages a hopeless cripple. True enough, human nature was injured, but in the same sense that a man is injured when he is left naked by the roadside. Objectively, he is in the same condition as a man who has never had any clothes, though he certainly feels a great deal worse. So human nature now is in the same condition it would have been had Adam never received any extraordinary gifts; but it has been stripped of those gifts which Adam did receive. This is not a gratuitous assumption. There are sins enough in the world to give us material for a thorough check on the fact that sin, in itself, does nothing to destroy the integrity of human nature.
Cause and essential notion of superiority of the original state
By way of a second principle, St. Thomas points out that the cause of the original perfection of man was his original justice. That is, man was created in sanctifying grace with his soul completely subject to God; this subjection extended right on down so that man's sensible appetite was subject to his reason, and the physical world was subject to man. These two, original justice and original perfection, went hand in hand in Adam. They were, however, quite capable of separation, for one was within the order of nature, though not of human nature, while the other was above all nature. So, in the Blessed Virgin Mary, there was the same supernatural perfection and perfect justice as in Adam, with the same complete subjection of her soul to God; but without the accompanying extraordinary gifts of Adam's original perfection.
The individual in the Garden of Eden
The extraordinary gifts that went to make up the original perfection of Adam were not supernatural but preternatural; that is, they were not entirely above the powers of all created nature but they did not belong to man by the principles of his nature. The immortality given to Adam, for example, was quite different from the immortality to be enjoyed after the general resurrection; this latter is something intrinsic, flowing from the body's participation in the spiritual qualities of the soul. While that of Adam was an extrinsic thing, supplied to the first man from an outside source. His immunity from suffering, or impassibility, was not that incapacity for injury which the blessed in heaven will enjoy because of the penetration of the body by the spiritual qualities of the soul; it was rather an escape from harm through prudence and providential care, an extrinsic rather than an intrinsic gift. Man's dominion over the created world followed the lines of his dominion over himself: as his sense appetite obeyed his reason, so did the animals obey his command; but, as he had no power of command over his vegetative powers, so neither could he command the vegetative and physical powers of the world, but he could use their help without impediment.
In other words, while the individual man in the Garden of Eden had considerable advantages over the individual man or woman of today, he was not in any way essentially different.
His intellectual equipment and progress: That of Adam
Adam started off the human race on its long life; as its proper starting point, he represented that race in its perfection. Just as he began with physical perfection -- without the bother of being born, growing up, developing his muscles and so on -- so he also started off with an intellectual perfection. In fact, this latter perfection was quite necessary in view of his position as head of the race and, consequently, as teacher of all who should come after him.
As the first human teacher, Adam brought an equipment to his task that has never been equalled since by any member of that noble profession. He did not see God directly, seeing the divine essence, for that is quite super natural and, once had, cannot be lost; that is, if Adam knew God in this way, he could not have sinned. Rather, he knew God as we know Him, but more perfectly. After all, he had none of the worries about bread and butter clothing and housing, not to speaks of the family's future, that distracts the mind of man today. Moreover, the clarity of his insight was not the least bit clouded by passion. From the effects of God, particularly from the act of the human intellect and the nature of the human soul, Adam's mind rose quickly and easily to a knowledge of God. His knowledge of the angels was had in the same way. But it is important to notice that Adam knew these things and all others as we know them, through intelligible species.
As for his knowledge of other things, well, Adam had to teach and govern the human family and, obviously, he could not teach what he did not know. His natural knowledge extended to all those, things that men are intended to know, that is, all those things implicitly contained in the first natural principles of knowledge. St. Thomas inclined to the belief that this knowledge -- an extraordinary gift not to the individual Adam but to Adam as head of the human race -- was an explicit, complete and perfect knowledge. Not that Adam knew every singular thing: that this stone would fall into this river at such a time, and so on. Nor did he know future free things, like the thoughts of men. His supernatural knowledge (his knowledge of the mysteries of faith) was limited to those things necessary for the correct government and guidance of human life in that original state of existence.
We do not have a full grasp of the intellectual stature of Adam unless we look beyond the rich deposit of knowledge given him to the use he could make of it. Many a deeply learned man is the answer to a swindler's fondest hopes; many an expert in one line is a simpleton in another. We make our mistakes through haste, prejudice, passion, insufficient evidence, in a word, because our reason is not in complete command of the situation. Adam's reason was in absolute command, command of his own kingdom and of the world; he was incapable of mistakes in judgment and reasoning. He was, then, a deeply learned, very wise and exceedingly clever man.
That of his children
If we were born in paradise, we would have had all the advantages of reason in full command; but we could not have looked forward to such equipment as was given to Adam as head of the race. There would still have been school days, and plenty of them. We would have acquired our knowledge through the senses, we would have had to discover things for ourselves, be taught by others and so, bit by bit, pick up full knowledge. It would have been a much easier job, it is true, than it is today for nothing, either in ourselves or in the outside world, would have interfered with the process of learning -- no day dreaming, no laziness, no heat, cold, hunger, thirst or stomach-ache.
His will, his justice and his peace
For all his cleverness, Adam might have been a very unpleasant person, even a holy terror in the Garden of Eden, if he were not also a very holy man. As he was created, his will was good. Moreover, there would have been no point to God's delaying the gift of supernatural life, keeping Adam cooling his heels as he dawdled about the meaningless tasks of a purely natural life; Adam was created in sanctifying grace and, as he was destined to glory as the angels were, there was no reason why he should not have started off earning his reward immediately. In fact, this sanctifying grace and consequent total subjection to God were the foundation of the whole perfection of Adam's state.
With sanctifying grace, he had all the virtues, though, indeed, those that implied some imperfection never flowered into action until after he had sinned. How could he be penitent who had committed no sin; or what field was there for mercy in a place that knew no misery? The virtues that did bloom into acts produced acts that, considered in themselves, were much more worthy of merit than ours are; for the perfection of his nature removed all obstacles to grace and all possible imperfection in his works, whereas with us there is the constant pull of the sensible world, the difficulty of attention, the flabbiness of our will. Still, because our acts are sometimes so difficult to place, the very doing of them indicates a much greater willingness, even eagerness, than if they were produced with an ease that made close attention entirely unnecessary.
It might seem difficult to understand how a man as intellectually and morally perfect as Adam could have sinned if we did not know that the sublime perfection of the angels was not proof against sin, and if we could scrape up any sufficient cause of our own sins other than our own free will. The sin of Adam will be treated at length in the second volume of this work under its proper title of original sin. Here it is enough to notice that we are in no position to sneer at Adam. If we had been born in paradise we too would have been born in sanctifying grace, for that original justice of Adam's was a gift to the whole human species, it was not a personal thing for Adam alone; and grace was the foundation of original justice. We, too, would have had the fullness of virtue, as Adam had; and, like him, we could have lost it if we made up our minds to lose it. Heaven would not have been guaranteed, nor would hell have been an impossibility for us; such complete security comes only from the vision of God which is the end, not the beginning, of human life. Indeed, the odds are that some of us would have sinned even if Adam had never offended God; and our sin would have had the same tragic consequences for our children that Adam's had for his. We would have lost the extraordinary gifts for ourselves; of course we could not give to our children what we ourselves no longer possessed.
His physical nature: His passions
During their short stay in the Garden, Adam and Eve got on very well together. Of course they had human passions; they were human, after all, and passion is an integral part of human nature. That they were buoyant with hope, alight with desire, urged on by love was entirely a matter of their own free will, for these passions were under the complete control of reason. It must be admitted, though, that only some of the passions of the milder or concupiscible appetite -- love, desire, hope and joy -- had any place in Eden; the other passions -- anger, despair, hate, fear and all the rest -- presuppose evil and there was no evil in paradise. The battle between flesh and spirit, then, did not get started until the reign of peace that was a part of paradise had come to an end. There were no gluttons or drunkards in Eden, no one cowered in fear or boiled with anger, men were not beside themselves with passion, their intellects clouded, their lives swayed by the sensitive appetite. This was not the way men were started off on their earthly life by God.
Conservation of his life: Food, drink and vital actions
It is not certain whether Adam and Eve used forks; but it is certain that they took time out, now and then, for a bite to eat and a sup to drink. They did not have glorified bodies; in all its essential actions, their human nature was not different from ours. The natural consumption of energy involved in physical activity, the burning up of cells and tissues, demanded constant repair work by way of food and digestion. Moreover in the children, if there had been any, the necessity of growth would no doubt have produced the same prodigious appetites we see in children today.
The first couple might have been vegetarians for the little while they enjoyed this original perfection; on the other hand, Eve might have been an excellent cook and exceedingly proud of her skill. There is no way of outlawing steak from the menu of the Garden, for the use of animals for his own welfare is only a vindication of man's dominion over the animal world, not a proof of savagery. It might be argued that Eve would not have been condemned to the drudgery of cooking; but that is to overlook the fact that cooking is drudgery only to a blundering cook and to draw a purely imaginative, and false, picture of Eve languidly posed against a fitting background for all the endless hours of the long days. No woman can keep that sort of thing up all the time.
Impassibility
The natural consumption of energy was taken care of by ordinary food; but the gradual running down of the physical organism of man's body is not prevented by food, even by very good food, as we well know. In heaven, this natural mortality is provided against intrinsically when the soul communicates to the body not only what powers it has as a substantial form but also some of the properties it possesses as a spiritual substance. In the Garden of Eden, this natural mortality was temporally staved off by a special food, a food with special properties given it by God, the fruit of the tree of life. The eating of this food from time to time was to have kept man in his prime until such time as God took him to his eternal happiness in heaven; for the gateway to heaven from paradise was not death.
Adam and Eve did not have tougher skins, arms and legs that could not be cut off or lungs that could not become infected. The thorns on the rose bushes of paradise were just as sharp as they are everywhere else; and man's skin was just as tender. Adam and Eve were incapable of injury and sickness; but not because their bodies were somehow different from ours. Rather, this impassibility was an extrinsic gift, one that did not flow from the nature of man but came to him from the outside. In plain terms, man escaped injury and sickness by his own prudence and by the action of divine providence, just as many of us do today; only in that original state, this was the ordinary, the universal thing. In other words, man then had sense enough to keep his fingers away from thorns, to avoid the injurious things; moreover, divine providence assured him of not being taken unawares. It can be safely said that many a stranger in New York keeps divine providence a great deal busier than ever Adam did. Adam, of course, had the distinct advantage of his command over the animals; under such circumstances, it would not be much of a trick for him to maintain his seat on a horse or to cow a savage dog.
Immortality
Though they would be very nice things to have at the present moment, the impassibility and immortality of Adam are not to be compared with that which awaits us in heaven. Neither of these gifts totally outstripped the powers of nature. They are not to be considered as supernatural but as preternatural, that is, in the same class with such a gift as might be given to a farmer enabling him to take off after a chicken hawk by merely flapping his arms. Flying, you see, is not above all the powers of nature; it just does not belong to the nature of man.
His relation to other individuals--equality and inequality
Let us suppose for a moment that Adam had not sinned and, after all these centuries, we, as tourists, were to take a trip to the flourishing cities of these perfect men, would it be as dull an affair as standing for hours to watch a mass production gadget roll out of a factory? No, indeed; on the contrary, we would be astonished by the variety in evidence there. One person would be brighter than another, one would have a stronger will, one would be bigger, another more beautiful, of different coloring, different individual attractions, more pleasing personality, and so on. Life would certainly not be dull; particularly as the minimum of any of these things would still represent the perfection that excluded all evil, all defect. There would be no beauty parlors or plastic surgeons. A girl would not have perfect eyes and a nose that had best be forgotten. No man would be so fat as to be too fat, or so thin as to look scragged. For perfection of types, it would be a kind of super-Hollywood, with none of the bitter tragedies of disappointment lurking under the surface. Human beings would, indeed, be unequal: different in sex, different its body, different in virtue, different in intellectual gifts. But none would be deficient; all would enjoy that special equality that makes every man perfect and every man a sovereign being.