“Thirteen Ways of Looking at Sin in ‘Paradise Lost’” - Dr. Benedict Whalen
Benedict Whalen (Hillsdale College) concluded our retreat on Paradise Lost with this lecture on the nature of sin in Paradise Lost. Refusing to offer any single, definitive treatment of sin, Milton offers a vignette of perspectives and so prepares the reader to beware sin under a variety of forms.
If you’d like to attend an academic retreat with the Valor Institute, please see our calendar of events.
The Valor Institute for Studies in Person and Community exists to promote an adequate philosophical anthropology and capacious understanding of the human person flourishing in authentic community.
Transcript
All right, I've given this talk the facetious title "13 Ways of Looking at Original Sin in Paradise Lost," alluding to Wallace Stevens' "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." We're not actually going to look at original sin in 13 different ways here. In the spirit of Christian temperance, I'll confine myself to, I think, a mere six or perhaps seven ways of looking at original sin. However, my reference to Stevens' poem is not entirely comical either. If you recall, Stevens' lyric is a short poem consisting of thirteen small numbered sections, each of which mentions a blackbird. One of the richnesses of the poem is in how it forces the reader to stop and change the way he is looking at, imagining, or thinking about a blackbird.
Let me give you the first two sections as an example, or reminder, of the way the poem operates. This is the selection:
Among twenty snowy mountains, the only moving thing was the eye of the blackbird.
I was of three minds, like a tree, in which there are three blackbirds.
In the first section, we get some fairly straightforward description. There are twenty snowy mountains. There is only one moving thing. It is the eye of the blackbird. This section conveys a sense of profound stillness. It also presents us with a set of contrasts: white snow, black bird; large mountain, small bird; vast stillness, minute movement. Description and contrast are the essence of section one. The tone is impersonal, unemotional, distant.
Perhaps after that first section, the attentive reader feels comfortable. "Aha," he says, "I know what our poet is doing. I will keep my eye open for contrasts, for antithetical elements in description, perhaps for binary sets or pairs." Then we move into the second section: "I was of three minds, like a tree, in which there are three blackbirds." Here, instead of impersonal description, the section's very first word is "I." The speaker intrudes upon the reader, makes himself known. We are now no longer reading terms of objective, declarative description, but instead terms of subjective, interior, analogical thought. "I was of three minds, like a tree, in which there are three blackbirds." Notice that this sentence is a simile, the speaker finding a likeness between his interior intellectual state and a tree in which there are three blackbirds. He conveys something of his interiority through a strange, but can I also say arresting, comparison.
On its own, this section presents all sorts of questions to us. Does his being of three minds have to do with his thoughts, with his desires, with his will? If three blackbirds are fairly similar things, three particulars of the same species, is the speaker saying that his being of three minds does, or does not, constitute seriously different thoughts or desires? We could go on all day. But notice that our questions compound when we try to read section two in conversation with, or in light of, or in sequence with section one. What do these have to do with each other? Why the objective impersonal followed by the subjective analogical? Are we learning something about a blackbird? What does a blackbird mean in this poem? Etc., etc., etc.
At this point, I feel fairly confident that at least some of you are wondering, "Wait, I thought this was going to be a talk on Paradise Lost. We're five minutes in, and he's only on the second section of Stevens' '13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.' It's going to be a long afternoon." Well, that may be true regardless of whether I turn to Paradise Lost. But my discussion of "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" does help me in establishing what I intend to explore in this lecture, which are the extraordinarily various ways in which Milton presents sin, and specifically original sin, in Paradise Lost.
As we will see, Milton's work leads us to think about sin in a variety of different ways, forcing our attention to dwell on different aspects of sin. The consequence is that Milton's reader, like Wallace Stevens' reader, is forced to take up a very complex conception of the poet's subject, one that resists simplification or reduction. In doing so, Milton charitably leads his reader to understand the gravity and horror of original sin, and of all sin, and encourages the reader to cultivate a lowly wisdom that treats others with patience and charity.
But let's get more particular. What are some of the various ways of looking at original sin? Let's begin with where Milton did. He states right away that he is going to sing of "man's first disobedience." And disobedience is certainly one way of understanding original sin. There is a rule given—a law, or a command, an injunction—which is not followed. A rightful authority is not obeyed in some way. How does this first disobedience come about? What is its nature? Why would man disobey? How does he do so? These are questions Milton will work toward answering.
But right away, Milton stresses the seriousness of his subject. Man's first disobedience, quote, "brought Death into the World, and all our woe." The subject is tragical, evil, the source of all our suffering. Indeed, it is so serious a problem that it requires, quote, "one greater man" to restore us. It requires a savior. So our subject, original sin, is a very serious and tragically inflected one.
After this proem, however, it is interesting to note that Milton begins his story by first turning to Satan. Now, those familiar with the Christian tradition might say that such a turn is natural enough. But I think it is significant that, in telling the story of man's first disobedience, Milton immediately turns to tell the story of a different, disobedient, sinning character. That is, there was sin before man's first disobedience. And so we are going to have to think carefully about the similarities and differences in types of sin—man's sin and Satan's.
In thinking about this aspect of Milton's presentation of original sin, several important questions arise. For instance, we might wonder: in Milton's narrative, if Satan had not fallen, would Adam and Eve have fallen? If Satan had not fallen, would Adam and Eve have fallen? The immediate answer to the question is that it is an absurd one to ask, in Milton's terms. After all, in Book Seven, after hearing of the Son's defeat of Satan, Adam asks Raphael, quote, "What cause moved the Creator, in his holy rest through all eternity, so late to build in chaos?" That is, why did God recently make the earth, and Adam and Eve? This is what Adam asks right after he has heard of the Son's defeat of Satan from Raphael. Raphael answers Adam, saying that the Father turned to the Son in heaven, happy that Satan was defeated, but resolving to repair the lost population of angels.
The Father declares—and this is selection number two, from Book Seven. The sense is this: lest Satan be happy in what he has done already to heaven, to have dispeopled heaven. But this is the Father:
But lest his heart exalt him in the harm already done, to have dispeopled heaven, my damage fondly deemed, I can repair that detriment, if such it be to lose self-lost, and in a moment will create another world, out of one man a race of men innumerable, there to dwell, not here; till, by degrees of merit raised, they open to themselves at length the way up hither, under long obedience tried; and earth be changed to heaven, and heaven to earth, one kingdom, joy and union without end.
So Adam and Eve and earth were created to replace the lost heavenly population. As William Empson notes, man was made, quote, "to spite the devils." Creation is a divine reaction consequent to Satan's rebellion. So, to return to our question: if Satan had not fallen, would Adam and Eve have fallen? The answer is that Adam and Eve would not even have existed if Satan had not fallen. So human original sin, just as human existence, does depend upon Satan's prior sin. Man's first disobedience is necessarily downstream from Satan's.
With this established, other questions about original sin present themselves. If human original sin is necessarily subsequent to Satan's fall, does it share the character of Satan's fall? Is man's first disobedience the same in essence or character as Satan's? Here we start to see original sin in another light. In Raphael's telling, we can pinpoint the beginning of Satan's rebellion and sin. In Book Five, after the Father declares to heaven, quote, "This day I have begot whom I declare my only Son, and on this holy hill him have anointed, whom ye now behold at my right hand; your head I him appoint," Satan responds with envy and pride and disobedience.
Raphael tells us—and this is selection three, which we looked at yesterday:
Not so waked Satan—so call him now, his former name is heard no more in heaven. He of the first, if not the first archangel, great in power, in favor and preeminence, yet fraught with envy against the Son of God, that day honored by his great Father, and proclaimed Messiah King anointed, could not bear, through pride, that sight, and thought himself impaired. Deep malice thence conceiving, and disdain, soon as midnight brought on the dusky hour friendliest to sleep and silence, he resolved with all his legions to dislodge, and leave unworshipped, unobeyed, the throne supreme, contemptuous.
Satan's pride cannot bear the elevation of the Son, and this leads to malice and disobedience. Does human original sin have this same character? Well, we will see in just a moment, it does have some aspects of Satan's sin. But Paradise Lost insists on one very important distinction. As the Father declares in Book Three, when he is foretelling man's fall—and this is selection four:
I formed them free, and free they must remain, till they enthrall themselves; I else must change their nature, and revoke the high decree unchangeable, eternal, which ordained their freedom: they themselves ordained their fall. The first sort by their own suggestion fell, self-tempted, self-depraved; man falls, deceived by the other first: man therefore shall find grace, the other none. In mercy and justice both, through heaven and earth, so shall my glory excel; but mercy, first and last, shall brightest shine.
The first sort, as we understood and talked about yesterday—the first sort, the devils, the fallen angels—by their own suggestion fell, self-tempted, self-depraved. The Father insists that humans were made free, not predestined to fall, and with sufficient will to choose not to fall. This, for Milton, is another important detail about original sin: it didn't have to happen. But at the same time, it was not the same as Satan's sin, because he was self-tempted, whereas Adam and Eve fall deceived. That word should give us pause. If Adam and Eve are deceived, how culpable are they really for the fall?
This question is related to another often asked by scholars. If Adam and Eve were capable of falling, were they not in some sense already fallen? Say that again. If Adam and Eve are capable of falling, are they not already in some sense fallen? More and more questions like this pile up. Why doesn't the Father guard them better? Is Satan correct when he hears Adam and Eve discussing the prohibition of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and describes this as, quote, a "fair foundation" for their being drawn into sin?
Satan muses—this is selection five:
All is not theirs, it seems: one fatal tree there stands, of knowledge called, forbidden them to taste. Knowledge forbidden? Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord envy them that? Can it be sin to know? Can it be death? And do they only stand by ignorance? Is that their happy state, the proof of their obedience and their faith? O fair foundation laid whereon to build their ruin! Hence I will excite their minds with more desire to know, and to reject envious commands, invented with design to keep them low, whom knowledge might exalt equal with gods.
Is Satan correct here? Or we could ask: does the poem encourage us to adopt this view, that the Father has created a fair foundation for man's destruction, for his fall? To try to dig into these questions more, let's look at when Adam and Eve actually sin. Here we will get another way of understanding original sin.
First, Satan's temptation of Eve has a certain compelling power. In the body of the serpent, he approaches her and flatters her, saying she does not have sufficient admirers of her beauty. When he finishes, Milton writes—and this is selection six:
So glozed the Tempter, and his proem tuned; into the heart of Eve his words made way, though at the voice much marveling; at length, not unamazed, she thus in answer spake: "What may this mean? Language of man pronounced by tongue of brute, and human sense expressed?"
You might notice there, it's his "proem." Satan's temptation of Eve is poetry, it's a poem—his "proem tuned." She goes on to ask, quote, "How cam'st thou speakable of mute?" That is, how did you get the power of speech? He responds that he ate the fruit of, quote, "a goodly tree."
Critics have long noted that this is one of the significant ways in which Milton changes the fall from the Genesis story. As John Leonard puts it, quote: "The biblical serpent offers no explanation for its power to speak, and Eve in Genesis responds without surprise, as if no explanation were necessary. Numerous biblical commentators had chided Eve for her equanimity. How could she be so stupid as not to suspect a speaking, a talking snake? Some of Milton's contemporaries, such as Thomas Browne, conjectured that Eve, being newly created, might not know that beasts cannot talk. Milton, though, gives more credit both to Eve's intelligence and Satan's cunning. Milton's Eve is astonished to hear a snake talk. But Satan turns her surprise to his advantage by claiming that the apple has given him this power. None of this is in Genesis."
Against the Renaissance biblical commentaries, Milton presents an intelligent Eve circumvented by a cunning Satan. It's an important addition on Milton's part. The proof that the serpent speaks truly about the apple is in the very fact that he can speak and is not dead. This is intellectually compelling to Eve. It's good evidence.
When the serpent goes on to praise the tree and encourages Eve to think she deserves the elevation it will provide, Milton writes—this is selection seven:
His words, replete with guile, into her heart too easy entrance won. Fixed on the fruit she gazed, which to behold might tempt alone; and in her ears the sound yet rung of his persuasive words, impregned with reason, to her seeming, and with truth. Meanwhile the hour of noon drew on, and waked an eager appetite, raised by the smell so savory of that fruit, which with desire, inclinable now grown to touch or taste, solicited her longing eye; yet first, pausing a while, thus to herself she mused.
Every one of Eve's senses is mentioned here: sight, hearing, touch, scent, and taste. It is a total sensory temptation, and there is some compelling evidence before her that what the serpent says is true. Now, I am not arguing that we excuse Eve. I don't think the poem encourages us to excuse her here. She has been warned by Raphael; she should not have departed from Adam; she still has no real reason to disobey the Father. However, I do think that Milton constructs this temptation in a way that encourages us to look at her sympathetically. It is a total temptation: body and intellect are both appealed to. As readers who can understand the suffering of intellectual and bodily temptation, it is natural enough for us to be drawn to some degree of sympathy for Eve.
Indeed, one Milton scholar is so sympathetic to Eve that he thinks she didn't really have a chance. A. J. A. Waldock writes, quote: "Eve naturally is bewildered. It is asking altogether too much of her to expect her to sort out and classify the fallacies in such a speech while she is listening to it. She has no more chance of thinking out what the tempter is saying than most of us have of detecting the flaws in what a bond salesman is telling us, while he is telling us." This leads to John Leonard's wry comment about Waldock's argument: Waldock here comes close to arguing that Eve fell because she was innocent. This is a compelling comment, and gets to one of the difficulties of the text, somewhat echoing Satan's own question: Do they only stand by ignorance? And if so, how easy to trick them into a fall.
To offer only one other example of sympathy with Eve: the Miltonist John Peter argues that Eve has good intentions when she takes the fruit. He argues that she eats the fruit because she wants to be the best wife she can possibly be for Adam. After she eats the apple, she states that she hopes it will, quote, "add what wants in female sex, the more to draw his love, and render me more equal, and perhaps—a thing not undesirable." Peter reads this statement as a sincere expression, especially in light of Adam's previous conversation with Raphael, during which it had been made so clear that she was the lesser intellect. Peter writes, quote: "If she were to eat the serpent's fruit, would not her own mental powers suffer an equivalent expansion? And if that happened, would not her conversations with Adam be even more satisfying than they already are? The chance has offered her, apparently, to be a better and more companionable wife than she has been so far—to replace Raphael himself, whose conversation had so enthralled her husband."
If this expression of sympathy for Eve is perhaps too trusting of Eve's sincerity in those lines immediately after eating the fruit, it nevertheless serves as a fine example of the ways in which we can be moved to pity, sympathize with, or sometimes even excuse or defend Eve at this moment.
Eve was tempted by Satan. Adam was tempted by Eve. And Eve's temptation of Adam is totalizing in another sense. Eve's extraordinary beauty, which we were discussing yesterday, is repeatedly emphasized in Paradise Lost. And Adam neatly sums up her power over him when speaking with Raphael. This is selection eight, which we looked at:
For well I understand in the prime end of nature her the inferior, in the mind and inward faculties, which most excel; in outward also her resembling less his image who made both, and less expressing the character of that dominion given o'er other creatures. Yet when I approach her loveliness, so absolute she seems, and in herself complete, so well to know her own, that what she wills to do or say seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best. All higher knowledge in her presence falls degraded; wisdom in discourse with her loses, discountenanced, and like folly shows; authority and reason on her wait, as one intended first, not after made occasionally; and, to consummate all, greatness of mind and nobleness their seat build in her loveliest, and create an awe about her, as a guard angelic placed.
Raphael sternly rebukes Adam after he says this, but his argument—an appeal to Adam's intellect—does not seem likely to be successful, since Adam has just said all higher knowledge in her presence falls degraded. Given this description, when Eve approaches Adam with the fruit, we can expect that he would be sorely tempted. How sorely? Let's look at one other passage.
When Satan is approaching Eve in the next book, Book Nine, Milton writes—and this is selection number nine:
Such pleasure took the serpent to behold this flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve thus early, thus alone. Her heavenly form angelic, but more soft and feminine, her graceful innocence, her every air of gesture or least action, overawed his malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved his fierceness of the fierce intent it brought. That space the Evil One abstracted stood from his own evil, and for the time remained stupidly good, of enmity disarmed, of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge. But the hot hell that always in him burns, though in mid heaven, soon ended his delight, and tortures him now more.
This is extraordinary. How beautiful is Eve? She is so beautiful it overawes the malice of Satan himself. The language is violent: she is so beautiful, it rapes Satan of his intent. That's the metaphor here—"with rapine sweet bereaved his fierceness." She is so beautiful it rapes Satan of his intent. It abstracts him from his own evil. It makes Satan stupidly good. If, without even trying, without making an appeal, without even having seen or addressed Satan, Eve is so beautiful as to make Satan himself good, then how exactly is Adam supposed to stand up to her? How is Raphael's stern warning going to be sufficient?
Here, then, readers may indeed pity Adam, or feel sympathetic to his plight. And many readers and scholars of Paradise Lost have found Adam to be not only sympathetic, but even noble—or, to quote one scholar, "magnificent"—in his decision to die with Eve. C. S. Lewis famously characterized Adam's sin thus, quote: "Adam fell by uxoriousness. We are not shown the formation of his decision as we are shown the formation of Eve's. Before he speaks to her, halfway through his inward monologue, we find the decision already made—'With thee, certain my resolution is to die.' His sin is, of course, intended to be a less ignoble sin than hers. Its half-nobility is perhaps emphasized by the fact that he does not argue about it." Lewis remains critical of Adam.
But many other scholars see in Adam a personal sacrifice for the sake of the woman he loves, and argue that that is good in Adam. For example, the eighteenth-century playwright and essayist Joseph Addison remarked, quote: "Though Adam involves the whole species in misery, his crime proceeds from a weakness which every man is inclined to pardon and commiserate, as it seems rather the frailty of human nature than of the person who offended. Everyone is apt to excuse a fault which he himself might have fallen into." It was the excess of love for Eve that ruined Adam and his posterity. And several twentieth-century critics have argued that in choosing to die with Eve, Adam is making the correct moral choice, and that he is Christ-like in choosing to suffer death for his beloved. Adam is willfully, intentionally sacrificing himself out of love for Eve. C. S. Lewis makes a strong counterpoint: that Adam's death is not efficacious for Eve. It doesn't save or redeem her.
These are serious debates, and they underscore the fact that many readers find Adam at least somewhat sympathetic when he is defying God's command and choosing to eat the fruit. This possible sympathy for Adam and Eve as they give in to temptation and commit man's first disobedience is yet another way of looking at original sin in Paradise Lost. But it raises new problems as well. If we are sympathetic to Adam and Eve during their sin, isn't Milton failing in his efforts to justify the ways of God to man? Doesn't this seem especially dangerous to admit when discussing a poem in which the Father is often felt to be distant and defensive, whereas Satan is sometimes attractive or admirable? C. S. Lewis himself admits, quote, "it remains of course true that Satan is the best drawn of Milton's characters."
As the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley famously argued in his 1821 A Defence of Poetry—and permit me a longer quotation here, as Shelley is so wonderfully bold in this statement. This is selection number ten:
Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the character of Satan as expressed in Paradise Lost. It is a mistake to suppose that he could ever have been intended for the popular personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy—these things are evil; and, although venial in a slave, are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; although redeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one subdued, are marked by all that dishonors his conquest in the victor.
Do you understand what he's saying there? He's attributing implacable hate, patient cunning, and sleepless refinement of device to inflict extremest anguish on the enemy—Shelley's saying those are all attributes of the Father. That's the Father, who has implacable hatred for Satan, patient cunning, and refinement of device to inflict the extremest anguish on Satan.
Milton's Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments. Milton has so far violated the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be a violation) as to have alleged no superiority of moral virtue to his God over his Devil. And this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the supremacy of Milton's genius.
And Shelley just loves Milton. Even if we don't go as far as Shelley, he emphasizes a response to Paradise Lost that many readers have felt: Satan comes off as heroic, and the Father as impersonal, cold, vindictive. What are we to make of this poem if we consider this view of Satan and the Father in conjunction with the possibility of being sympathetic to Adam and Eve even at the moment of their first disobedience?
The way Stanley Fish famously answered this question presents yet another way of looking at original sin. In his influential study Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, Stanley Fish argues that the true subject of Milton's epic is actually the reader. It's us. We are the true subject of Milton's epic. Fish states that as the reader finds himself admiring Satan, disliking the Father, and sympathizing with Adam and Eve in their sin, the reader is forced to confront his own fallenness. As Fish writes, quote: "Paradise Lost is a poem about how its readers came to be the way they are. Its method is not so much a teaching as an entangling: to provoke in its readers wayward, fallen responses, which are then corrected by one of the several authoritative voices—the narrator, God, Raphael, Michael, the Son. In this way, the reader is brought to a better understanding of his sinful nature and is encouraged to participate in his own reformation."
In another place, Stanley Fish describes the way Milton deals with his reader as, quote, Milton's "grand program of reader harassment." I like that. Milton is harassing you. He's entangling you as a reader into these faulty judgments about things so that you realize your own fallenness. The reader is necessarily already fallen, and can only reason and read and judge while suffering the effects of original sin. In this view, the reader confronts his own sinfulness and gains a new and broader understanding of the fall and original sin.
Here again, we do not have to accept all of Fish's argument, but we can readily agree that in the poem's difficulty, in its sustained focus upon original sin, in its emphasis upon the fact that Adam and Eve's children will all be punished with suffering the effects of original sin—indeed, in the long final two-books narration of biblical history and the bracing vision there of all the evils that flow from original sin—in all of this, we can readily agree that any serious Christian reader will be led to consider his own fallenness to some degree, his own inheritance in man's first disobedience.
Where does this line of thought leave us? Let's sum up a bit. Some of the different ways of looking at original sin in Paradise Lost are these. That it is, first of all, utterly serious and tragical, and requires the sacrifice of a savior. Next, that it is secondary to, subsequent to, and depends upon Satan's sin. At the same time, it differs from Satan's sin in this important respect: it was tempted rather than self-tempted, self-depraved. The form the temptation of original sin takes is total. For Eve, it involves all of her senses and her intellect confronting a very good bit of evidence to support the tempter's argument. And for Adam, it involves confronting Eve, a pinnacle of God's creation so powerful that her beauty can suspend even Satan's evil and leave him stupidly good. The power of those temptations, combined with the bad setup of the garden and its woefully inadequate defenses, leads many readers to feel sympathy for Adam and Eve, and for some readers even lightens or eliminates their guilt for original sin. That many readers feel sympathy for Adam and Eve while admiring Satan and disliking the Father—this, along with the long narrative of sinful earthly history that concludes Paradise Lost, leads many readers to meditate on their own fallenness, the fallenness of all humans, perhaps even to think of the fallenness of the poet, who is telling us about the effects of man's first disobedience.
Where do all these different ways of looking at original sin leave us? I'd like to propose one sort of answer to that question as a way of closing. I think that it challenges—profoundly challenges—the reader to search the text for answers, and to doubt his judgment, doubt his ability to think through things, doubt his ability to fully understand something as grave and far-reaching in its effects as original sin. The reader learns, like the reader of Wallace Stevens' "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," that there is no one sufficient way of looking at original sin in Paradise Lost. Instead, the total effect of the poem becomes a series of what the Milton scholar William Empson calls, quote, "moral confusions." These confusions, bafflements, forced changes of perspective are part of the poem's great triumph, for it encourages specifically the thing that Raphael tried to teach Adam: to be, quote, "lowly wise."
At the end of Book Twelve, Michael enlarges upon what this wisdom is. After Adam acknowledges the Son as, quote, "my Redeemer ever blessed," Michael responds with that which Milton hopes to inspire in his reader. This is selection eleven:
This having learned, thou hast attained the sum of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the stars thou knew'st by name, and all the ethereal powers, all secrets of the deep, all nature's works, or works of God in heaven, air, earth, or sea, and all the riches of this world enjoy'dst, and all the rule, one empire. Only add deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith, add virtue, patience, temperance; add love, by name to come called charity, the soul of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath to leave this Paradise, but shalt possess a Paradise within thee, happier far.
This, finally, is what Milton tries to teach the reader.
Thank you.