nothing
AGAINST this association of Self-consciousness with 'Sin' (so-called)
and 'Knowledge' (so-called). The growth of all three together is an
absolutely necessary part of human evolution, and to rail against it
would be absurd. But we may as well open our eyes and see the fact
straight instead of blinking it.) The culmination of the process and the
fulfilment of the 'curse' we may watch to-day in the towering expansion
of the self-conscious individualized Intellect--science as the handmaid
of human Greed devastating the habitable world and destroying its
unworthy civilization. And the process must go on--necessarily must
go on--until Self-consciousness, ceasing its vain quest (vain in both
senses) for the separate domination of life, surrenders itself back
again into the arms of the Mother-consciousness from which it originally
sprang--surrenders itself back, not to be merged in nonentity, but to be
affiliated in loving dependence on and harmony with the cosmic life.

(1) Compare also other myths, like Cupid and Psyche, Lohengrin
etc., in which a fatal curiosity leads to tragedy.

(2) German Sunde, sin, and sonder, separated; Dutch zonde, sin;
Latin sons, guilty. Not unlikely that the German root Suhn, expiation,
is connected; Suhn-bock, a scape-goat.

All this I have dealt with in far more detail in Civilization: its
Cause and Cure, and in The Art of Creation; but I have only repeated the
outline of it as above, because some such outline is necessary for the
proper ordering and understanding of the points which follow.

We are not concerned now with the ultimate effects of the 'Fall' of Man
or with the present-day fulfilment of the Eden-curse. What we want to
understand is how the 'Fall' into self-consciousness led to that great
panorama of Ritual and Religion which we have very briefly described
and summarized in the preceding chapters of this book. We want for the
present to fix our attention on the COMMENCEMENT of that process by
which man lapsed away from his living community with Nature and his
fellows into the desert of discord and toil, while the angels of the
flaming sword closed the gates of Paradise behind him.

It is evident I think that in that 'golden' stage when man was simply
the crown and perfection of the animals--and it is hardly possible
to refuse the belief in such a stage--he possessed in reality all the
essentials of Religion. (1) It is not necessary to sentimentalize over
him; he wa