WORK. Once, at the dawn of creation, in the Golden Age, when earth and sky were conjoined (or when there was only sky), when only children, or the first human pair, inhabited the world, there was no "work." Only God, or the gods, worked their divine eternal play, the uncompelled sport of inexhaustible creativity. Only the primordial smith, the primal maker, seeded or molded the earth as archetypal sower or first craftsman. The fruits of the earth were available to all.

The world range of the myth indicates the universality of the theme. In ancient narratives from the Vedic, Greek, and Judeo-Christian traditions, from Africa, from North and South America, the subsequent fall from this paradisiacal state is widely associated on the one hand with some false move or a human choice based on some petty, selfish desire and on the other with the plunge into the condition...