469. Anyone today possessed of any inward wisdom can perceive or guess that the descriptions of Adam and his wife have some spiritual meaning, though what this is no one up to now has known, since the spiritual sense of the Word has only been revealed at the present time. Surely anyone can see even from a distance that Jehovah would not have put two trees in a garden, one of them to be a stumbling-block, unless this represented something spiritually. The idea that they were both cursed for eating from a tree, and this curse is attached to every person from their time, so that the whole human race was condemned for one man's fault, and one that involved no evil of carnal lust or injustice of the heart - can this be squared with Divine justice? In particular, why did Jehovah not deter Adam from eating, seeing that He was there to see it, and why did He not cast the serpent down into the underworld before it persuaded them?
[2] But, my friend, God did not do this, because by doing so He would have taken away man's free will; and it is this which makes man a man and not an animal. Once this is known, it is perfectly plain that the two trees, one leading to life and the other to death, represent man's free will in spiritual matters. Moreover, hereditary evil is not from this source, but from the parents, who pass on to their children a tendency to that evil which beset them themselves. The truth of this is clearly to be seen by anyone who studies the behaviour, minds and faces of the children, or even of whole families, descended from one father. Yet it depends upon each member of the family whether he wants to embrace or withdraw from his inheritance, since everyone is left to make his own choice. The particular meaning of the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil may be seen fully expounded in the experience described in 48 above.