the Lord; it departs from his spiritual wisdom of which it has lost the inward evidence; it tries to confirm, by sensuous evidence and natural science, that which is above the realm of sense and science; consequently it learns to deny that, the evidence of which it has lost the capacity to weigh or understand.
Now, as the tree of life was the Lord who is love, perceived as the life principle of the soul, and as a consequence, spiritual wisdom in its broadest sense intuitively perceived, the tree of knowledge was self and the consequent self-derived intelligence perceived as the all in all of life, and sensuous evidence and natural science the arbiter of spiritual things. Is it strange that the Lord should commend the one and forbid the other? The one in his eyes was life, the other death. The one was purity, the other passion. The one was love, the other lust. The one was wisdom, the other insanity. The one was humility, the other pride. The one grasped all humanity in its loving arms, the other centered the entire universe in self. The one shot its branches ever upward to heaven, the other sent its roots down deep into hell. That was why the eating of all the trees of the garden was commended, save only this.
The reason why it is called the tree of knowledge of good and evil, is because in eating of
