“‘Ignorance never yet produced anything but—’ began the other.
“‘But Sin,’ Plucritus put in, so quietly that but for the intense silence it would have been lost even on those who sat beside him.
“Then all eyes were turned to him.
“I am ignorant, he said, looking at Michael. ‘I would hear more.’
“Thus asked, Michael unfolded his project.
“‘I hold with Vestasian,’ he declared, ‘that man’s life should be as happy as our own. But I would give him that wisdom which Vestasian would take away. I would give him the power to obtain the knowledge of good and evil, by patient striving to raise himself from the inanimate laws of nature to the pure rays that have their central light in us. That surely would be our greatest recompense to Nature, to quicken into spirit what has been raised from earth and dust and material substance.’
“This was the wisest and the greatest plan—or seemed to be—to let mankind learn by effort and endeavour to reach with purity the Highest—to withhold nothing from man, yet to grant nothing till he had found it.
“Then asked Plucritus:—
“‘And in this striving after wisdom, which side must the choice fall?’
“‘It may fall either—he is given a free will.’