the moment when it is born
into the world. Humanity took a new departure; but a departure which for
the moment was signalized as a LOSS--the loss of its former harmony and
self-adjustment. And the cause or accompaniment of this change was the
growth of Self-consciousness. Into the general consciousness of the
tribe (in relation to its environment) which in fact had constituted
the mentality of the animals and of man up to this stage, there now was
intruded another kind of consciousness, a consciousness centering round
each little individual self and concerned almost entirely with the
interests of the latter. Here was evidently a threat to the continuance
of the former happy conditions. It was like the appearance of
innumerable little ulcers in a human body--a menace which if continued
would inevitably lead to the break-up of the body. It meant loss of
tribal harmony and nature-adjustment. It meant instead of unity a myriad
conflicting centres; it meant alienation from the spirit of the tribe,
the separation of man from man, discord, recrimination, and the fatal
unfolding of the sense of sin. The process symbolized itself in the
legend of the Fall. Man ate of the Tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. Sometimes people wonder why knowledge of any kind--and especially
the knowledge of good and evil--should have brought a curse. But the
reason is obvious. Into, the placid and harmonious life of the animal
and human tribes fulfilling their days in obedience to the slow
evolutions and age-long mandates of nature, Self-consciousness broke
with its inconvenient and impossible query: "How do these arrangements
suit ME? Are they good for me, are they evil for me? I want to know. I
WILL KNOW!" Evidently knowledge (such knowledge as we understand by
the word) only began, and could only begin, by queries relating to the
little local self. There was no other way for it to begin. Knowledge and
self-consciousness were born, as twins, together. Knowledge therefore
meant Sin (1); for self-consciousness meant sin (and it means sin
to-day). Sin is Separation. That is probably (though disputed) the
etymology of the word--that which sunders. (2) The essence of sin is
one's separation from the whole (the tribe or the god) of which one is
a part. And knowledge--which separates subject from object, and in its
inception is necessarily occupied with the 'good and evil' of the little
local self, is the great engine of this separation. (Mark! I say