Angels numberless, thy daily train?" (IX. 538-548)
Satan focuses on what Eve is missing rather than on what she has, implanting the idea of envy in her even as he projects the notion of envy onto God. The temptation, therefore, is toward overreaching one's authentic nature, and when this nature is thereby corrupted, the result is the loss of paradise. In their zeal to reach parity with forces greater than themselves by means of the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve in fact encounter knowledge that such forces not only exist but are themselves inviolable.
The tension between ultimate forces that emerges in Book IX in Satan's seduction of Eve is consistent with the rest of Paradise Lost. In the early part of the poem, when Satan and the other ma
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