ing and subverting good, and therefore, of necessity, an evil act. Let us say, then, that this act was really performed—that man thereby realized his own personality: and what do we record in such a statement but the fact of man's first "disobedience" and his Fall?
The realization of the first man's personality being thus identical with his fall, and his fall being brought about by a free act,—an act not out of, but against God; let us now ask how man stands in relation to the great problem, the working out of which we are superintending—Human Liberty. Has the Fall brought along with it the complete realization of his freedom? By no means. He has certainly realized his own personality by becoming conscious of good. He has thus opposed himself to good, and performed an act which he was not forced or predetermined by his Maker to perform. He has thus taken one step towards the attainment of Liberty: one step, and that is all. The paradisiacal man has evolved one epoch in the development of human consciousness; and has thus carried us on one stage in the practical solution of the problem we are speaking of. Being born good and perfect, he has developed the antagonism of consciousness against goodness and perfection; and thus he has emancipated the human race from the causality of goodness and perfection.
But this antagonism against good, though it freed the human race from the causality of holiness, laid it at the same time under the subjection of a new and far bitterer causality—the causality of sin. For the consciousness of good, or, in other words, an act of antagonism against good, is itself but another name for sin or evil: and thus evil is evolved out of the very act in which man becomes conscious of good. And this is the causality under which we, the children of Adam, find ourselves placed. As he was born the child of goodness and of God, so are we, through his act, born children of sin and of the devil.
Therefore the evolution of the second epoch in the practical development of consciousness devolves upon us—the fallen children of humanity. Just as the paradisiacal man advanced us one stage towards liberty, by developing in a free act the antagonism of consciousness against the good under which he was born; so is it incumbent upon us to complete the process by developing the practical antagonism of consciousness against the evil of our natural condition. As Adam, in the first epoch of consciousness, worked himself out of good into evil by a free act, so have we, who live in the second epoch of consciousness, to work ourselves back out of evil into good by another act of the same kind; repeating precisely the same process which he went through, only repeating it in an inverted order. He, being born under the causality of good, transferred himself over by a free act (the antagonism of consciousness against good) to the causality of evil, and thus proved that he was not forced to the performance of good. We, on the other hand, who are born under the causality of evil, have to transfer ourselves back by another free act (the antagonism of consciousness against evil), into the old causality of good; and thus prove that we are not forced to the commission of evil. Adam broke up the first causality—the causality of good; and emancipated our humanity therefrom, in making it thus violate the natural laws and conditions of its birth. But in doing so he laid it under a second and dire causality—the causality of sin; and this is the causality under which we are born. Whenever, therefore, we too have trampled on the laws and conditions of our natural selves; have striven, by an act of resistance against evil, to return into the bosom of good, to replace ourselves under the old causality of holiness, to take up such a position that the influences of Christianity may be enabled to tell upon our hearts; in short, have violated our causality just as Adam violated his; then may the problem of human liberty be said to be practically resolved, for there are no conceivable kinds of causality except those of evil and of good—and both of these shall have then been broken through in the historical development of our species.
And here, let it be observed, that although, in putting forth this act of resistance against evil, we return under the old causality of good, and thus make ourselves obedient to its influences, yet the relation in which we stand towards that causality is very different from the relation in which
