20. The Royal Art in a New Form

What did Cain, on the other hand, offer? He sacrificed what he had obtained by his own labour, what he had won from the fruits of the earth by tilling the soil. What he sacrificed needed human skill, knowledge and wisdom: that which demands comprehension of what one has done, which is based in a spiritual sense on the freedom of man to decide things for himself. That has to be paid for with guilt, by killing, first of all, the living things which had been,given by Nature or by Divine Powers, just as Cain killed Abel.