Book IX, 163-178 (p.187-188)

“O foul descent! that I who erst contended With gods to sit the highest, am now constrained Into a beast, and mixed with bestial slime, This essence to incarnate and imbrute, That to the higheth of deity aspired; But what will not ambition and revenge Descend to? Who aspires must down as low As high he soared, obnoxious first or last To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet, Bitter ere long back on itself recoils; Let it; I reck not, so light well aimed, Since higher I fall short, on him who next Provokes my envy, this new favorite Of Heav’n, this man of clay, son of despite, Whom us the more to spite his Maker raised Spite then with spite is best repaid.”

Beguiled by Satan, eating from the Tree of Knowledge, “Internal man” internally falls (IX, 710). But his is not the only fall contained in Paradise Lost. Preparing to seduce Eve, Satan’s speech reveals that the fall is both one from grace and in natural order, driven by desire and spurned by revenge. The descent from God to man to beast proposes one of fallen man’s eternal struggles: whether he is nothing more than baseless animal. The struggle allows man to wonder if his true nature is a reasoning man or emotionally charged brute. The fall of man and the fall of Satan should be considered connected.

Milton allows language to fore-shape Satan’s descent into beast. Here, Milton marks Satan’s speech with hissing ‘s’ fricatives that will be echoed by “But up and enter now into full bliss” as he is punished by the Son of God and transformed into serpent-beast (X, 303). Satan remarks that he is “now constrained/Into a beast” as though he is imprisoned again in a brutish shell like that of hell itself. “Mixed with bestial slime” Satan describes himself adulterated as though poisoned with a brutish nature that compels him to seek an evil-bent revenge. “Constrained,” Satan comments on his own free will — perhaps, driven by the beast within he is limited to find satisfaction in the “dark destruction” of others (II, 464).

When Satan asks, “But what will not ambition and revenge/Descend to?” Milton proposes that Paradise Lost follows in the course of epic poetry, the revenge drama — although, here it might be considered the first and archetype of all revenge stories to follow. We see in Satan’s assembly of his fallen angel troops, manufacture of cannons, and battle against the angels of heaven the same coordination of revenge which Hotspur attempts in Henry IV, Part I. Both try to restore the order of the past — for Hotspur, by toppling King Henry, the true monarch and for Satan a restoration of him as sovereign in heaven. But, Satan shows a consideration that Hotspur does not — Satan realizes that in order to win revenge, he must also sacrifice. He must, almost, attack from beneath and even beneath himself — “Who aspires must down as low/As high he soared, obnoxious first or last/To basest things.” Satan sees how revenge, taking sole possession of one’s life, can push all other thoughts away, leaving but potent base desire to fuel one’s aims. Thoughts of revenge “at first though sweet,” an allusion to the sweetness of the apple he perverts Eve to eat, seems impossible to escape.

If hell is a prison, then one must consider if Eden is likewise a cell. Consequently, when Adam and Eve are led out of Paradise is this an escape that doubles on Satan’s escape from hell? Then, if having free will allows man to fall, which God himself claims unavoidable, is that will itself a prison? Man is free to fall, but it seems he is destined to fall. If evil can only be recognized by its distinction from good or good from its distinction from evil, then it seems that man cannot be good without falling. Man cannot use his free will to make decisions of the world if he does not know both good and evil or possess both attributes of man and beast. Satan’s speech reveals that he has the aspects reason and the brutish emotion that propels revenge, but he is already fallen.

Fallen, Satan reveals the sin of envy, jealousy and shame that Adam and Eve will soon encounter eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Satan says, “on him who next/Provokes my envy, this new favorite/Of Heav’n, this man of clay” as though envy is aligned with the bestial side of his nature. When Adam and Eve fall, they may lose immortality, they may have to labor in fields for food, they must clothe themselves to protect themselves from the new cold seasons as the earth itself shifts on its axis, but they gain another side to their self. They gain the ability to sin. Or perhaps, they gain the knowledge of sin which then it use their free will can govern.

Eating from the Tree of Knowledge endows Adam and Eve with more than mortality; in Michael’s account of their progeny and history to come, they gain the comfort of knowledge that their lives will in turn produce good, but with hardships to overcome. Convinced of God’s sovereignty and man’s devotion due, complete with both a bestial emotion and a human reason, Adam and Eve are prepared to apply their free will to the perpetuation of mankind on earth but not without the notion that one day the beast within will seek again revenge on God for allowing them to fall.