Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/66

 of a divine command, which might have had any kind of content. Here, however, it is just the knowledge referred to which essentially constitutes the command. It is upon this that the rise of consciousness depends, but it is at the same time to be thought of as a standpoint at which consciousness cannot rest, but which is to be absorbed in something higher, for consciousness must not remain at that point at which Being-for-self is in a state of disunion. The serpent further says that Man by the act of eating would become equal to God, and by speaking thus he made an appeal to Man’s pride. God says to Himself, Adam is become as one of us. The serpent had thus not lied, for God confirms what it said. A great deal of trouble has been taken with the explanation of this passage, and some have gone the length of explaining it as irony. The truer explanation, however, is that the Adam referred to is to be understood as representing the second Adam, namely, Christ. Knowledge is the principle of spiritual life, but it is also, as was remarked, the principle of the healing of the injury caused by disunion. It is in fact this principle of knowledge which supplies also the principle of man’s divineness, a principle which by a process of self-adjustment or elimination of difference must reach a condition of reconciliation or truth; or, in other words, it involves the promise and certainty of attaining once more the state in which Man is the image of God. We find such a prophecy expressed pictorially in what God says to the serpent, “I will put enmity, &c.” Since the serpent represents the principle of knowledge as something existing independently outside of Adam, it is clearly perfectly logical that Man, as representing concrete knowledge, should have in himself the other side of the truth, that of conversion and reflection, and that this other side should bruise the head of the serpent as representing the opposite side.

This is what the first man is represented as having