ical life so much more filled with
keenness of pleasure,--rare, voluptuous,
aesthetic pleasure,--and by intensity of pain
so passionate that one knows not where it
ends and where pleasure commences. So
long as the god serves, so long the life of
the animal will be enriched and increasingly
valuable. But let the king resolve to change
the face of his court and forcibly evict the animal
from the chair of state, restoring the god
to the place of divinity.

Ah, the profound peace that falls upon the
palace! All is indeed changed. No longer is
there the fever of personal longings or desires,
no longer is there any rebellion or distress, no
longer any hunger for pleasure or dread of
pain. It is like a great calm descending on a
stormy ocean; it is like the soft rain of summer
falling on parched ground; it is like the
deep pool found amidst the weary, thirsty
labyrinths of the unfriendly forest.

But there is much more than this. Not only
is man more than an animal because there is
the god in him, but he is more than a god because
there is the animal in him.

Once force the animal into his rightful
place, that of the inferior, and you find yourself
in possession of a great force hitherto unsuspected
and unknown. The god as servant
adds a thousand-fold to the pleasures of the
animal; the animal as servant adds a thousand-fold
to the powers of the god. And it is upon
the union, the right relation of these two forces
in himself, that man stands as a strong king,
and is enabled to raise his hand and lift the
bar of the Golden Gate. When these forces
are unfitly related, then the king is but a
crowned voluptuary, without power, and whose
dignity does but mock him; for the animals,
undivine, at least know peace and are not torn
by vice and despair.

That is the whole secret. That is what
makes man strong, powerful, able to grasp
heaven and earth in his hands. Do not fancy
it is easily done. Do not be deluded into the
idea that the religious or the virtuous man does
it! Not so. They do no more than fix a standard,
a routine, a law, by which they hold the
animal in check. The god is compelled to
serve him in a certain way, and does so, pleasing
him with the beliefs and cherished fantasies
of the religious, with the lofty sense of personal
pride which makes the joy of the virtuous.
These special and canonized vices are
things too low and base to be possible to the
pure animal, whose only inspirer is Nature herself