Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/213

 is something wholly different from the prohibition to eat of a certain tree. What God wills or does not will must represent His true eternal nature. Such a prohibition is further thought of as having been imposed only on a single individual, and man justly rebels against being punished for guilt that is not his own—he will only answer for what he has done himself.

On the other hand, in the story, regarded as a whole, there is a deep philosophical meaning. It is Adam, or man in general, who appears in this narrative. What is here related concerns the nature of man himself, and it is not a formal childish command which God lays on him, for the tree of which Adam is not to eat is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and thus the idea of a tree with an outward definite form disappears. Man eats of it, and he attains to the knowledge of good and evil. The difficulty, however, is that it is said God forbade man to reach this knowledge, for it is just this knowledge which constitutes the character of Spirit. Spirit is Spirit only through consciousness, and it is just in this knowledge that consciousness in its highest form is found. How, then, could this prohibition have been given? Cognition, knowledge, represents this two-sided dangerous gift. Spirit is free, and to this freedom good as well as evil is referred, and it thus contains the power of arbitrary choice to do what is evil. This is the negative side attaching to the affirmative side of freedom referred to. Man, it is said, was in a state of innocence; this is, in fact, the condition of the natural consciousness, but it must be done away with as soon as the consciousness of Spirit actually appears. That represents eternal history, and the nature of man. He is at first natural and innocent, and incapable, consequently, of having moral acts attributed to him. In the child there is no freedom, and yet it belongs to the essential character of man that he should once more reach innocence. What is his final destiny is here represented as his primitive