469. At this day anyone who is inwardly wise is able to see or divine that what is written of Adam and his wife involves spiritual things, which no one has heretofore known, because the spiritual sense of the Word has not been disclosed until now. Who cannot readily see that Jehovah could not have planted two trees in the garden, and one of them for a stumbling-block, except for the sake of some spiritual representation? Again, does it square with Divine justice that because they both ate of that tree they were accursed, and that this curse clings to every man that comes after them, thus that the whole human race was damned for the fault of one man, in which there was no evil arising from lust of the flesh or iniquity of heart? Why did not Jehovah in the first place restrain man from eating of the tree, since He was present and saw the consequences? And why did He not hurl the serpent into Hades before he had persuaded them? But, my friend, God did not do this, because He would thus have deprived man of his freedom of choice, from which man is man, and not a beast. When this is known it is very evident that by these two trees, one of life and the other of death, man's freedom of choice in spiritual things is represented. Moreover, inherited evil is not from that source, but from parents, by whom an inclination to the evil in which they themselves have been is transmitted to their children. The truth of this is clearly seen by anyone who carefully studies the manners, dispositions, and faces of the children, and even of the households that have descended from one father. Nevertheless, it depends on each one in a family whether he will accede to or withdraw from inherited evil, since everyone is left to his own choice. But the particular significance of the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has been fully explained in the Memorable Relation recorded above (n. 48), which see.