II
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONSCIENCE
Q. 2. What, then, may be meant by the Fall of man?
A. At a certain stage of development man became conscious of a difference between right and wrong, so that thereafter, when his actions fell below a normal standard of conduct, he felt ashamed and sinful. He thus lost his animal innocency, and entered on a long period of human effort and failure; nevertheless, the consciousness of degradation marked a rise in the scale of existence.
CLAUSE II
This clause has been inserted because of the historic, though often mistaken, notions accreted round a legend of Fall and of a Paradise lost; and it is of interest to detect the germ of truth which these ancient ideas contain. It may be regarded as really an appendage of, or introductory to, the next clause.
The sense of guilt and shame is to some extent displayed by a dog; but it appears to be due to domestication, and to be a secondary result of human influence. In any case, it is certainly only the higher animals that thus exhibit the germ of conscience, and the sense of shame and remorse: a sense which is most real and genuine when it is independent of externally inflicted and of expected punishment. Wild animals appear to have no such feeling, they glory in what we may picturesquely speak of as their “misdeeds,” and in running the gauntlet of danger to achieve them; and though often cruel, they are free from sin. Some savages—our own Norse forefathers among others—must on their freebooting expeditions have been in similar case. So were some of the Homeric heroes. It would be only the highest and most thoughtful among them that could rise to the sense of guilt and degradation. Only those who have risen are liable to fall. The summit of manhood is attained when evil is consciously overcome. The period before it was recognised as such has been called the golden age; but the condition of unconsciousness of evil, though joyous, is manifestly inferior to the state ultimately attainable, when paradise is regained through struggle and victory.
Mere innocency, the freedom from sin by reason only of lack of perception, is not the highest state; it has been thought ideal from the point of view of inspiration and poetry, but it is a condition in which advance is necessarily limited. Sooner or later fuller knowledge and consciousness must arrive; and then ensues a long period of discipline and distress, until first a Leader and ultimately the race find their way out, through temptation and difficulty, once more to freedom and joy.
A perception that the possibility of backsliding is a necessary ingredient in the making of man, and the consequent discernment of a soul of goodness in things evil, constitute a large part of the teaching of Browning: