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The idea of a fallen world is, of course, not exclusively biblical or Christian. Hesiod’sprogressive cycles of degeneration in Works and Days operate upon much the samebasis (and Don Juan does allude to Hesiod’s scheme in the reference to “A day ofgold from out an age of iron”, 3.36.283), as does the cosmology of Idealism, whichsubordinates the manifest imperfection of the ‘real’ to transcendent perfection of theIdeal.IdealismIdealism is essentially the belief in a world of ideas. Particularly in Platonic Idealism,this tends to revolve around archetypal ideas being the ‘real’ version of their imperfectmanifestations in the sensible world. This can connect with Christian lapsarianconcepts: in Christianity, the world after the Fall is the flawed version of anoriginally-perfect Creation; in Idealism, the world around us is composed of theflawed versions of perfect archetypes. As Frederick Copleston notes of FriedrichSchelling’s views,The Fall consists in the emergence of a dim image of an image, resembling theshadow which accompanies the body. All things have their eternal idealessence in the Idea or divine ideas. Hence the centre and true reality of anyfinite thing is in the divine Idea, and the essence of the finite thing may thus besaid to be infinite rather than finite. Considered, however, precisely as a finitething, it is the image of an image (that is, an image of the ideal essence whichis itself a reflection of the absolute). And its true existence as a distinct finitething is an alienation from its true centre, a negation of infinity.[…]Creation is thus a Fall in the sense that it is a centrifugal movement. Theabsolute identity becomes differentiated or splintered from the normal level,though not in itself. 233233 Frederick Copleston, SJ, A History of Philosophy, 8 vols (London: Search Press, 1963), VII, 127,129, on Schelling’s Philosophy and Religion (1804), the ideas being very similar to Plato’s CaveAllegory.150