When this kind of second human being was made by God for man’s assistance, that female was forthwith named woman; still happy, still worthy of paradise, still virgin. "She shall be called," said (Adam), "Woman." And accordingly you have the name,—I say, not already common to a virgin, but—proper (to her; a name) which from the beginning was allotted to a virgin. But some ingeniously will have it that it was said of the future, "She shall be called woman," as if she were destined to be so when she had resigned her virginity; since he added withal: "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and be conglutinated to his own woman; and the two shall be one flesh." Let them therefore among whom that subtlety obtains show us first, if she were surnamed woman with a future reference, what name she meantime received. For without a name expressive of her present quality she cannot have been. But what kind of (hypothesis) is it that one who, with an eye to the future, was called by a definite name, at the present time should have nothing for a surname? On all animals Adam imposed names; and on none on the ground of future condition, but on the ground of the present purpose which each particular nature served; called (as each nature was) by that to which from the beginning it showed a propensity. What, then, was she at that time called? Why, as often as she is named in the Scripture, she has the appellation woman before she was wedded, and never virgin while she was a virgin.