ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews on John Locke's search for that something permanent, his recourse 'to the original' in his search and interpretation of what that original entailed. In Locke's vindication of The Reasonableness of Christianity he reports the criticism of his thesis on the basis that 'the corruption and degeneracy of human nature, with the true original of it the propagation of sin and mortality, is one of the great heads of Christian doctrine'. In theological writings Locke makes a distinction between paradise as context for living and the world beyond paradise in which all men other than the original couple were born. Had Locke been more interested in Adam as story he might have given greater moment to the loss of immortality as the consequence of Adam's act of disobedience, as so much of his theorising of human society hangs on the fact of man's vulnerability to death.
