This ingenious theory of primitive man as a union of two human creatures is perhaps older than Plato and may not be original with him. At any rate the Biblical passage in Gen. i. 27 and Gen. ii 21-22 may also have been given the interpretation of man’s creation of Adam and Eve. The oldest texts read plainly: “And God created man in his image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them”; but it has been pointed out that the same primitive man is here spoken of, first in the singular as “him,” and then at the end of the verse in the plural, “them.” The idea that originally Adam comprised in himself the nature of Eve as well is suggested by the story that Eve was taken out of the side of Adam and was formed from one of his ribs.
Obviously the idea expressed here in this passage of Genesis is ultimately the same as that of the Greek poet Aristophanes, and from the standpoint of modern physiology neither man nor woman is an individual, but the combination of two, viz., the father and mother. Each one of them, man alone or woman alone, is but a one-sided half of human existence. Each, by itself alone, is doomed to die; both together are immortal.
The Genesis story of the creation of woman is portrayed in many of the artistic representations of the creation of Eve.
Suggestions made to explain the original story of the creation of man in the sense suggested by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium, may not be tenable but they are not altogether senseless.
We must consider that primitive legends have originated from curiosity with regard to some problem that has presented itself to man in the childhood of the race. In our present case we have to deal with the question why the ribs of man’s chest do not entirely enclose the body, but leave unprotected an opening in the middle, the so-called procardium, where they turn upward. The primitive answer to this problem was the story we have been discussing, and thence the notion seems implied that before Eve, the feminine portion of man, had been taken out of his side he must have been an androgynous being, and we will add that there is a scientific truth underlying this primitive idea.
Living substance is originally asexual, or rather bisexual,[32] and in its primitive state it is immortal. A moner does not experience what we call death; unless it is crushed or destroyed by poison, it lives on and grows. When it outgrows its proper size it divides into two parts. It does not die; nor does it beget a young moner; it divides. There are two new moners, but there is not a mother and a child; the two are coordinate. Both are mothers and both are children. Death is not the original lot of life. Death comes into the world by birth. Life in itself can be destroyed by physical violence or by chemical means, but if it is not thus destroyed it is unending; or, in other words, immortality is a fact.