Europe and elsewhere

Long ago I was in the bushes near the Tree of Knowledge when the Man and the Woman came there and had a conversation. I was present, now, when they came again after all these years. They were as before--mere boy and girl--trim, rounded, slender, flexible, snow images lightly flushed with the pink of the skies, innocently unconscious of their nakedness, lovely to look upon, beautiful beyond words.

I listened again. Again as in that former time they puzzled over those words, Good, Evil, Death, and tried to reason out their meaning; but, of course, they were not able to do it. Adam said:

“Come, maybe we can find Satan. He might know these things.”

Then I came forth, still gazing upon Eve and admiring, and said to her:

“You have not seen me before, sweet creature, but I have seen you. I have seen all the animals, but in beauty none of them equals you. Your hair, your eyes, your face, your flesh tints, your form, the tapering grace of your white limbs--all are beautiful, adorable, perfect.”

It gave her pleasure, and she looked herself over, putting out a foot and a hand and admiring them; then she naïvely said:

“It is a joy to be so beautiful. And Adam--he is the same.”

She turned him about, this way and that, to show him off, with such guileless pride in her blue eyes, and he--he took it all as just matter of course, and was innocently happy in it, and said, “When I have flowers on my head it is better still.”

Eve said, “It is true--you shall see,” and she flitted hither and thither like a butterfly and plucked flowers, and in a moment laced their stems together in a glowing wreath and set it upon his head; then tiptoed and gave it a pat here and there with her nimble fingers, with each pat enhancing its grace and shape, none knows how, nor why it should so result, but in it there is a law somewhere, though the delicate art and mystery of it is her secret alone, and not learnable by another; and when at last it was to her mind she clapped her hands for pleasure, then reached up and kissed him--as pretty a sight, taken altogether, as in my experience I have seen.

Presently, to the matter in hand. The meaning of those words--would I tell her?

Certainly none could be more willing, but how was I to do it? I could think of no way to make her understand, and I said so. I said:

“I will try, but it is hardly of use. For instance--what is pain?”

“Pain? I do not know.”

“Certainly. How should you? Pain is not of your world; pain is impossible to you; you have never experienced a physical pain. Reduce that to a formula, a principle, and what have we?”

“What have we?”

“This: Things which are outside of our orbit--our own particular world--things which by our constitution and equipment we are unable to see, or feel, or otherwise experience--cannot be made comprehensible to us in words. There you have the whole thing in a nutshell. It is a principle, it is axiomatic, it is a law. Now do you understand?”

The gentle creature looked dazed, and for all result she was delivered of this vacant remark:

“What is axiomatic?”

She had missed the point. Necessarily she would. Yet her effort was success for me, for it was a vivid confirmation of the truth of what I had been saying. Axiomatic was for the present a thing outside of the world of her experience, therefore it had no meaning for her. I ignored her question and continued:

“What is fear?”

“Fear? I do not know.”

“Naturally. Why should you? You have not felt it, you cannot feel it, it does not belong in your world. With a hundred thousand words I should not be able to make you understand what fear is. How then am I to explain death to you? You have never seen it, it is foreign to your world, it is impossible to make the word mean anything to you, so far as I can see. In a way, it is a sleep----”

“Oh, I know what that is!”

“But it is a sleep only in a way, as I said. It is more than a sleep.”

“Sleep is pleasant, sleep is lovely!”

“But death is a long sleep--very long.”

“Oh, all the lovelier! Therefore I think nothing could be better than death.”

I said to myself, “Poor child, some day you may know what a pathetic truth you have spoken; some day you may say, out of a broken heart, ‘Come to me, O Death the compassionate! steep me in the merciful oblivion, O refuge of the sorrowful, friend of the forsaken and the desolate!’” Then I said aloud, “But this sleep is eternal.”

The word went over her head. Necessarily it would.

“Eternal. What is eternal?”

“Ah, that also is outside of your world, as yet. There is no way to make you understand it.”

It was a hopeless case. Words referring to things outside of her experience were a foreign language to her, and meaningless. She was like a little baby whose mother says to it, “Don’t put your finger in the candle flame; it will burn you.” Burn--it is a foreign word to the baby, and will have no terrors for it until experience shall have revealed its meaning. It is not worth while for mamma to make the remark, the baby will goo-goo cheerfully, and put its finger in the pretty flame--once. After these private reflections I said again that I did not think there was any way to make her understand the meaning of the word eternal. She was silent awhile, turning these deep matters over in the unworn machinery of her mind; then she gave up the puzzle and shifted her ground, saying:

“Well, there are those other words. What is good, and what is evil?”

“It is another difficulty. They, again, are outside of your world; they have place in the moral kingdom only. You have no morals.”

“What are morals?”

“A system of law which distinguishes between right and wrong, good morals and bad. These things do not exist for you. I cannot make it clear; you would not understand.”

“But try.”

“Well, obedience to constituted authority is a moral law. Suppose Adam should forbid you to put your child in the river and leave it there overnight--would you put the child there?”

She answered with a darling simplicity and guilelessness:

“Why, yes, if I wanted to.”

“There, it is just as I said--you would not know any better; you have no idea of duty, command, obedience; they have no meaning for you. In your present estate you are in no possible way responsible for anything you do or say or think. It is impossible for you to do wrong, for you have no more notion of right and wrong than the other animals have. You and they can do only right; whatever you and they do is right and innocent. It is a divine estate, the loftiest and purest attainable in heaven and in earth. It is the angel gift. The angels are wholly pure and sinless, for they do not know right from wrong, and all the acts of such are blameless. No one can do wrong without knowing how to distinguish between right and wrong.”

“Is it an advantage to know?”

“Most certainly not! That knowledge would remove all that is divine, all that is angelic, from the angels, and immeasurably degrade them.”

“Are there any persons that know right from wrong?”

“Not in--well, not in heaven.”

“What gives that knowledge?”

“The Moral Sense.”

“What is that?”

“Well--no matter. Be thankful that you lack it.”

“Why?”

“Because it is a degradation, a disaster. Without it one cannot do wrong; with it, one can. Therefore it has but one office, only one--to teach how to do wrong. It can teach no other thing--no other thing whatever. It is the creator of wrong; wrong cannot exist until the Moral Sense brings it into being.”

“How can one acquire the Moral Sense?”

“By eating of the fruit of the Tree, here. But why do you wish to know? Would you like to have the Moral Sense?”

She turned wistfully to Adam:

“Would you like to have it?”

He showed no particular interest, and only said:

“I am indifferent. I have not understood any of this talk, but if you like we will eat it, for I cannot see that there is any objection to it.”

Poor ignorant things, the command of refrain had meant nothing to them, they were but children, and could not understand untried things and verbal abstractions which stood for matters outside of their little world and their narrow experience. Eve reached for an apple!--oh, farewell, Eden and your sinless joys, come poverty and pain, hunger and cold and heartbreak, bereavement, tears and shame, envy, strife, malice and dishonor, age, weariness, remorse; then desperation and the prayer for the release of death, indifferent that the gates of hell yawn beyond it!

She tasted--the fruit fell from her hand.

It was pitiful. She was like one who wakens slow and confusedly out of a sleep. She gazed half vacantly at me, then at Adam, holding her curtaining fleece of golden hair back with her hand; then her wandering glance fell upon her naked person. The red blood mounted to her cheek, and she sprang behind a bush and stood there crying, and saying:

“Oh, my modesty is lost to me--my unoffending form is become a shame to me!” She moaned and muttered in her pain, and dropped her head, saying, “I am degraded--I have fallen, oh, so low, and I shall never rise again.”

Adam’s eyes were fixed upon her in a dreamy amazement, for he could not understand what had happened, it being outside his world as yet, and her words having no meaning for one void of the Moral Sense. And now his wonder grew: for, unknown to Eve, her hundred years rose upon her, and faded the heaven of her eyes and the tints of her young flesh, and touched her hair with gray, and traced faint sprays of wrinkles about her mouth and eyes, and shrunk her form, and dulled the satin luster of her skin.

All this the fair boy saw: then loyally and bravely he took the apple and tasted it, saying nothing.

The change came upon him also. Then he gathered boughs for both and clothed their nakedness, and they turned and went their way, hand in hand and bent with age, and so passed from sight.