ned? The idea involved in this picture
supposes an end, a goal. There is none. We
can any one of us safely assent to that; for as
far as human observation, reason, thought, intellect,
or instinct can reach towards grasping
the mystery of life, all data obtained show that
the path is endless and that eternity cannot be
blinked and converted by the idling soul into
a million years.

In man, taken individually or as a whole,
there clearly exists a double constitution. I am
speaking roughly now, being well aware that
the various schools of philosophy cut him up
and subdivide him according to their several
theories. What I mean is this: that two great
tides of emotion sweep through his nature, two
great forces guide his life; the one makes him
an animal, and the other makes him a god. No
brute of the earth is so brutal as the man who
subjects his godly power to his animal power.
This is a matter of course, because the whole
force of the double nature is then used in one
direction. The animal pure and simple obeys
his instincts only and desires no more than to
gratify his love of pleasure; he pays but little
regard to the existence of other beings except
in so far as they offer him pleasure or pain; he
knows nothing of the abstract love of cruelty or
of any of those vicious tendencies of the human
being which have in themselves their own
gratification. Thus the man who becomes a
beast has a million times the grasp of life over
the natural beast, and that which in the pure
animal is sufficiently innocent enjoyment, uninterrupted
by an arbitrary moral standard, becomes
in him vice, because it is gratified on
principle. Moreover he turns all the divine
powers of his being into this channel, and degrades
his soul by making it the slave of his
senses. The god, deformed and disguised,
waits on the animal and feeds it.

Consider then whether it is not possible to
change the situation. The man himself is king
of the country in which this strange spectacle
is seen. He allows the beast to usurp the place
of the god because for the moment the beast
pleases his capricious royal fancy the most. This
cannot last always; why let it last any longer?
So long as the animal rules there will be the
keenest sufferings in consequence of change,
of the vibration between pleasure and pain,
of the desire for prolonged and pleasant
physical life. And the god in his capacity of
servant adds a thousand-fold to all this, by
making phys