The Basic Sin Behind All Particular Sins

[The first sin of Adam] has been described by Saint Augustine as the result of pride, of the movement whereby a creature (that is, an essentially dependent being whose principal of existence lies not in itself but in another) tries to set up on its own, to exist for itself. Such a sin requires no complex social conditions, no extended experience, no great intellectual development. From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the center [of all things] is opened to it. This sin is committed daily by young children and ignorant peasants as well as by sophisticated persons, by solitaires no less than by those who live in society: it is the fall in every individual life, the basic sin behind all particular sins. At this very moment you and I are either committing it, or about to commit it, or repenting it. We try, when we wake to lay the new day down at God's feet; before we're finished shaving it becomes our day, and God's share in it is felt as a tribute which we must pay out of 'our own' pocket, a deduction from the time which ought, we feel, to be 'our own'.