ence, talents and
beauty; sordid Avarice or Covetousness is excessive love of riches;
loathsome Lust is the third, and loves carnal pleasures without regard
for the law; fiery Anger, a counterpart of pride, is love rejected but
seeking blindly to remedy the loss; bestial Gluttony worships the
stomach; green-eyed Envy is hate for wealth and happiness denied;
finally Sloth loves bodily ease and comfort to excess. The infamous
brood! These parents of all iniquity are called the seven capital sins.
They assume the leadership of evil in the world and are the seven arms
of Satan.

As it becomes their dignity, these vices never walk alone or go
unattended, and that is the desperate feature of their malice. Each has
a cortege of passions, a whole train of inferior minions, that
accompany or follow. Once entrance gained and a free hand given, there
is no telling the result. Once seated and secure, the passion seeks to
satisfy itself; that is its business. Certain means are required to
this end, and these means can be procured only by sinning. Obstacles
often stand in the way and new sins furnish steps to vault over, or
implements to batter them down. Intricate and difficult conditions
frequently arise as the result of self-indulgence, out of which there
is no exit but by fresh sins. Hence the long train of crimes led by one
capital sin towards the goal of its satisfaction, and hence the havoc
wrought by its untrammeled working in a human soul.

This may seem exaggerated to some; others it may mislead as to the true
nature of the capital sins, unless it be dearly put forth in what their
malice consists. Capital sins are not, in the first place, in
themselves, sins; they are vices, passions, inclinations or tendencies
to sin, and we know that a vice is not necessarily sinful. Our first
parents bequeathed to us as an inheritance these germs of misery and
sin. We are all in a greater or lesser degree prone to excess and to
desire unlawful pleasures. Yet, for all that, we do not of necessity
sin. We sin when we yield to these tendencies and do what they suggest.
The simple proneness to evil, devoid of all wilful yielding is
therefore not wrong. Why? Because we cannot help it; that is a good and
sufficient reason.

These passions may lie dormant in our nature without soliciting to
evil; they may, at any moment, awake to action with or without
provocation. The sight of an enemy or the thought of a wrong may stir
up anger; pride may