Book 1 · Section 52

(52) Why Adam called his wife Life, and affirmed to her, "Thou art the mother of all living?" (#Ge 3:20). In the first place, Adam gave to the first created woman that familiar name of Life, inasmuch as she was destined to be the fountain of all the generations which should ever arise upon the earth after their time. In the second place, he called her by this name because she did not derive the existence of her substance out of the earth, but out of a living creature, namely, out of one part of the man, that is to say, out of his rib, which was formed into a woman, and on that account she was called "life," because she was first made out of a living creature, and because the first beings who were endowed with reason were to be generated from her. Nevertheless, it is possible that this may have been a metaphorical expression; for is not the outward sense, which is a figurative emblem of the woman, called with peculiar propriety "life?" because it is by the possession of these senses that the living being is above all other means distinguished from that which is not alive, as it is by that that the imaginations and impulses of the soul are set in motion, for the senses are the causes of each; and, in real truth the outward sense is the mother of all living creatures, for as there could be no generation without a mother, so also there could be no living creature without sense.