What is the knowledge of good and evil? The commentators say it
is the faculty of moral distinction,--conscience, in fact. They
assume accordingly that man was in Paradise morally indifferent,
in a state which allowed of no self-conscious action and could not
be called either good or evil. A state like this not being an
ideal one, some of them consider that man gained more than he lost
by the fall, while others admit that it could not be the divine
intention to keep him always at this stage of childish
irresponsibility, and that this cannot be the view of the narrator
either.
But it is plain that the narrator is not speaking of a relative
prohibition of knowledge, but an absolute one: he means that it
is only for God, and that when man stretches out his hand towards
it he is transcending his limits and seeking to be as God. On the
other side he cannot of course mean to say that conscience is a
doubtful blessing, and its possession to be deplored, or that it is
a thing that God in fact refuses to men and reserves to Himself
alone. The knowledge spoken of cannot be moral knowledge. What
could the assertion mean that God would have no one but Himself
know the difference between good and evil, and would deny to man
this knowledge? One would think that conscience is a thing
belonging specifically to man and not to God.
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