The Second Garden

76:2.1Less than two years af­ter Cain’s birth, Abel was born, the first child of Adam and Eve to be born in the sec­ond gar­den. When Abel grew up to the age of twelve years, he elected to be a herder; Cain had cho­sen to fol­low agri­cul­ture.

76:2.2Now, in those days it was cus­tom­ary to make of­fer­ings to the priest­hood of the things at hand. Herders would bring of their flocks, farm­ers of the fruits of the fields; and in ac­cor­dance with this cus­tom, Cain and Abel like­wise made pe­ri­odic of­fer­ings to the priests. The two boys had many times ar­gued about the rel­a­tive mer­its of their vo­ca­tions, and Abel was not slow to note that pref­er­ence was shown for his an­i­mal sac­ri­fices. In vain did Cain ap­peal to the tra­di­tions of the first Eden, to the for­mer pref­er­ence for the fruits of the fields. But this Abel would not al­low, and he taunted his older brother in his dis­com­fi­ture.

76:2.3In the days of the first Eden, Adam had in­deed sought to dis­cour­age the of­fer­ing of an­i­mal sac­ri­fice so that Cain had a jus­ti­fi­able prece­dent for his con­tentions. It was, how­ever, dif­fi­cult to or­ga­nize the re­li­gious life of the sec­ond Eden. Adam was bur­dened with a thou­sand and one de­tails as­so­ci­ated with the work of build­ing, de­fense, and agri­cul­ture. Be­ing much de­pressed spir­i­tu­ally, he in­trusted the or­ga­ni­za­tion of wor­ship and ed­u­ca­tion to those of Nod­ite ex­trac­tion who had served in these ca­pac­i­ties in the first gar­den; and in even so short a time the of­fi­ci­at­ing Nod­ite priests were re­vert­ing to the stan­dards and rul­ings of pre-Adamic times.

76:2.4The two boys never got along well, and this mat­ter of sac­ri­fices fur­ther con­tributed to the grow­ing ha­tred be­tween them. Abel knew he was the son of both Adam and Eve and never failed to im­press upon Cain that Adam was not his fa­ther. Cain was not pure vi­o­let as his fa­ther was of the Nod­ite race later ad­mixed with the blue and the red man and with the abo­rig­i­nal An­donic stock. And all of this, with Cain’s nat­u­ral bel­li­cose in­her­i­tance, caused him to nour­ish an ever-in­creas­ing ha­tred for his younger brother.

76:2.5The boys were re­spec­tively eigh­teen and twenty years of age when the ten­sion be­tween them was fi­nally re­solved, one day, when Abel’s taunts so in­fu­ri­ated his bel­li­cose brother that Cain turned upon him in wrath and slew him.

76:2.6The ob­ser­va­tion of Abel’s con­duct es­tab­lishes the value of en­vi­ron­ment and ed­u­ca­tion as fac­tors in char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment. Abel had an ideal in­her­i­tance, and hered­ity lies at the bot­tom of all char­ac­ter; but the in­flu­ence of an in­fe­rior en­vi­ron­ment vir­tu­ally neu­tral­ized this mag­nif­i­cent in­her­i­tance. Abel, es­pe­cially dur­ing his younger years, was greatly in­flu­enced by his un­fa­vor­able sur­round­ings. He would have be­come an en­tirely dif­fer­ent per­son had he lived to be twenty-five or thirty; his su­perb in­her­i­tance would then have shown it­self. While a good en­vi­ron­ment can­not con­tribute much to­ward re­ally over­com­ing the char­ac­ter hand­i­caps of a base hered­ity, a bad en­vi­ron­ment can very ef­fec­tively spoil an ex­cel­lent in­her­i­tance, at least dur­ing the younger years of life. Good so­cial en­vi­ron­ment and proper ed­u­ca­tion are in­dis­pens­able soil and at­mo­sphere for get­ting the most out of a good in­her­i­tance.

76:2.7The death of Abel be­came known to his par­ents when his dogs brought the flocks home with­out their mas­ter. To Adam and Eve, Cain was fast be­com­ing the grim re­minder of their folly, and they en­cour­aged him in his de­ci­sion to leave the gar­den.

76:2.8Cain’s life in Mes­o­po­ta­mia had not been ex­actly happy since he was in such a pe­cu­liar way sym­bolic of the de­fault. It was not that his as­so­ciates were un­kind to him, but he had not been un­aware of their sub­con­scious re­sent­ment of his pres­ence. But Cain knew that, since he bore no tribal mark, he would be killed by the first neigh­bor­ing tribes­men who might chance to meet him. Fear, and some re­morse, led him to re­pent. Cain had never been in­dwelt by an Ad­juster, had al­ways been de­fi­ant of the fam­ily dis­ci­pline and dis­dain­ful of his fa­ther’s re­li­gion. But he now went to Eve, his mother, and asked for spir­i­tual help and guid­ance, and when he hon­estly sought di­vine as­sis­tance, an Ad­juster in­dwelt him. And this Ad­juster, dwell­ing within and look­ing out, gave Cain a dis­tinct ad­van­tage of su­pe­ri­or­ity which classed him with the greatly feared tribe of Adam.

76:2.9And so Cain de­parted for the land of Nod, east of the sec­ond Eden. He be­came a great leader among one group of his fa­ther’s peo­ple and did, to a cer­tain de­gree, ful­fill the pre­dic­tions of Ser­a­p­ata­tia, for he did pro­mote peace be­tween this di­vi­sion of the Nod­ites and the Adamites through­out his life­time. Cain mar­ried Re­mona, his dis­tant cousin, and their first son, Enoch, be­came the head of the Elamite Nod­ites. And for hun­dreds of years the Elamites and the Adamites con­tin­ued to be at peace.