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Icon - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

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first demonstrated when Japhet meets on the mountainside the gloating spirits whoreproach him for surviving the destruction <strong>of</strong> his own kind. In the process, theyvalidate both group unity and collective xenophobia:Who would outlive their kind,Except the base and blind?MineHateth thineAs <strong>of</strong> a different order in the sphere (1.3.144-8).In their xenophobia, the spirits are just as bigoted as the humans, and it is in the light<strong>of</strong> such pervasive racism that condemnation <strong>of</strong> the human-angel exogamy must beviewed. Japhet, who has a very evident ulterior motive, says to Anah,unions like to these,Between a mortal and an immortal, cannotBe happy or be hallowed. (1.3.369-71).In a moment <strong>of</strong> rare coincidence <strong>of</strong> opinion between father and son, Noah also objectsto such relationships:Woe, woe, woe to such communion!Has not God made a barrier between earthAnd heaven, and limited each, kind to kind? (1.3.474-6).<strong>The</strong> reference to the residents <strong>of</strong> earth and heaven being limited “kind to kind” isreminiscent, first, <strong>of</strong> Genesis 7:14 describing the inhabitants <strong>of</strong> the Ark, being thefamily <strong>of</strong> Noah and the animals in their pairs:every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creepingthing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind,every bird <strong>of</strong> every sort.342

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