cases, a body more or less diseased and decrepit, incapable of
doing all the work which he feels that he himself could do, or
expressing all the emotions which he himself longs to express; a
dull brain and dull senses, which cramp the eager infinity within
him; as--so Goethe once said with pity--the horse's single hoof
cramps the fine intelligence and generosity of his nature, and
forbids him even to grasp an object, like the more stupid cat, and
baser monkey. And man has a self, too, within, from which he
longs too often to escape, as from a household ghost; who pulls
out, at unfortunately rude and unwelcome hours, the ledger of
memory. And so when the tempter--be he who he may--says to him,
"Take this, and you will 'feel better.' Take this, and you shall
be as gods, knowing good and evil:" then, if the temptation was,
as the old story says, too much for man while healthy and
unfallen, what must it be for his unhealthy and fallen children?

In vain we say to man:


'Tis life, not death, for which you pant;
'Tis life, whereof your nerves are scant;
More life, and fuller, that you want.


And your tree of knowledge is not the tree of life: it is in
every case, the tree of death; of decrepitude, madness, misery.
He prefers the voice of the tempter: "Thou shalt not surely die."
Nay, he will say at last: "Better be as gods awhile, and die:
than be the crawling, insufficient thing I am; and live."