“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: