That free will was demonstrated in the placing of temptation before man with the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree which would give him a knowledge of good and evil, with the disturbing moral conflict to which that awareness would give rise.

Latourette is reading the Genesis “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” narrative as a theological illustration of human moral agency. The prohibition (“do not eat”) and the presence of temptation function, in this view, as the conditions under which free will becomes meaningful: obedience or disobedience must be genuinely possible. The “knowledge” gained is not mere information but an awakened moral consciousness that introduces inner conflict—an awareness of competing goods, desires, and duties. The sentence also implies a theodicy-adjacent claim: the risk of moral failure is bound up with the gift of freedom, and the ensuing struggle is a consequence of that awakened moral awareness.