"This man, once 'simple and loving,' has sinned from almost inconceivable
pride, which has alienated him from God and man. The Unpardonable Sin might
be said to lie in the search for the Unpardonable Sin: Ethan Brand has sought
to become even as the gods, knowing alike of good and evil, and he is punished
for his presumption. He has 'lost his hold of the magnetic chain of humanity.'
His intellect has come 'to stand on a star-lit eminence, whither the philosophers
of the earth…might vainly strive to clamber after him'; but his heart has
correspondingly atrophied. It has 'ceased to partake of the universal throb.'
Through pride Brand has gained knowledge without love and has desecrated the
human spirit by cold and prying intellectual analysis" (44). (courtesy of
University of Oklahoma Press)
