Note 1 — Chapter XXIII · The Curse on Knowledge.

During the Shakespere tercentenary festival at Stratford-on-Avon, the Bishop of St. Andrews declared that there is not a word in the Bible warranting homage to Intellect, and such a boast beside the grave of the most intellectual of Englishmen is in itself a survival illustrating the tremendous curse hurled by jealous Jehovah on man’s first effort to obtain knowledge. That same Serpent of knowledge has passed very far, and his curse has many times been repeated. In the Accadian poem of the fatal Seven, as we have seen, it is said, ‘In watching was their office;’ and the Assyrian version says, ‘Unto heaven that which was not seen they raised.’ On the Babylonian cylinders is inscribed the curse of the god of Intelligence (Hea) upon man—‘Wisdom and knowledge hostilely may they injure him.’1 The same Serpent twined round the staff of Æsculapius and whispered those secrets which made the gods jealous, so that Jove killed the learned Physician with a flash of lightning. Its teeth were sown when Cadmus imported the alphabet into Greece; and when these alphabetical dragon’s-teeth had turned to type, the ancient curse was renewed in legends which connected Fust with the Devil.