Recall that we are interested in Gumb's (evil Freemasons') allegorical act of (more precisely, bungling attempt at) creation. From Augustine's Confessions, Book 11, chapter 5:
"But how didst thou make the heaven and the earth, and what was the tool of such a mighty work as thine? For it was not like a human worker fashioning body from body, according to the fancy of his mind, able somehow or other to impose on it a form which the mind perceived in itself by its inner eye (yet how should even he be able to do this, if thou hadst not made that mind?). He imposes the form on something already existing and having some sort of being, such as clay, or stone or wood or gold or such like (and where would these things come from if thou hadst not furnished them?). For thou madest his body for the artisan, and thou madest the mind which directs the limbs; thou madest the matter from which he makes anything; thou didst create the capacity by which he understands his art and sees within his mind what he may do with the things before him; thou gavest him his bodily sense by which, as if he had an interpreter, he may communicate from mind to matter what he proposes to do and report back to his mind what has been done, that the mind may consult with the Truth which presideth over it as to whether what is done is well done."
In accordance with the above passage, Gumb, in his attempted act of creation, is unlike God: Gumb is fashioning body from body, and he is working with something already existing (the women's skins). Therefore, going by Augustine, Gumb is not creating.
Above left: Gumb's bungling attempt at creation is depicted in this scene in which he is sewing a piece of a woman's skin. Above right: Gumb believes that if he collects and stitches together patches of skin from various women's bodies, and then wears a skin 'suit' composed by this method, he will effectively have the body of a woman; thus, going by Augustine in the above, Gumb is "a human worker fashioning body from body."
The Confessions of Saint Augustine (Outler)
