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Let that be enough for you.
CAIN. Murder is not death. You know what I mean. Those whom I slay would
die if I spared them. If I am not slain, yet I shall die. Who put this
upon me? I say, who invented death?
ADAM. Be reasonable, boy. Could you bear to live for ever? You think you
could, because you know that you will never have to make your thought
good. But I have known what it is to sit and brood under the terror of
eternity, of immortality. Think of it, man: to have no escape! to be
Adam, Adam, Adam through more days than there are grains of sand by the
two rivers, and then be as far from the end as ever! I, who have so much
in me that I hate and long to cast off! Be thankful to your parents, who
enabled you to hand on your burden to new and better men, and won for
you an eternal rest; for it was we who invented death.
CAIN [_rising_] You did well: I, too, do not want to live for ever. But
if you invented death, why do you blame me, who am a minister of death?
ADAM. I do not blame you. Go in peace. Leave me to my digging, and your
mother to her spinning.


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