e of the nature of the desire, etc. We have been taught
that these thoughts were "bad" without being told _why_, and we have
feared them and thought them the promptings of an impure nature, or a
depraved mind, etc. This is all wrong. These things are not "bad" of
themselves--they came to us honestly--they are our heritage from the
past. They belong to the animal part of our nature, and were necessary to
the animal in his stage of development. We have the whole menagerie
within us, but that does not mean that we should turn the beasts loose
upon ourselves or others. It was necessary for the animal to be fierce,
full of fight, passionate, regardless of the rights of others, etc., but
we have outgrown that stage of development, and it is ignoble for us to
return to it, or to allow it to master us.

This lesson is not intended as a discourse upon Ethics or morals. We do
not intend going into a discussion of the details of "Right and Wrong,"
for we have touched upon that phase of the subject in other works. But we
feel justified in calling your attention to the fact that the human mind
intuitively recognizes the "Rightness" of the living up to that which
comes to us from the highest parts of the mind--the highest product of
our unfoldment. And it likewise intuitively recognizes the "Wrongness" of
the falling back into that which belongs to the lower stages of our
mentality--to the animal part of us, that is our heritage from the past
and that which has gone before.

While we may be puzzled about many details of morals and ethics and may
not be able to "explain" why we consider certain things right or wrong,
we still intuitively feel that the highest "Right" of which we are
capable is the acting out of that which is coming to us from the highest
pole of our mental being, and that the lowest "Wrong" consists in doing
that which carries us back to the life of the lower animals, in so far as
mentality is concerned. Not because there is anything absolutely "Wrong"
in the mental processes and consequent of the animals in themselves--they
are all right and perfectly natural in the animals--but we intuitively
recognize that for us to fall back to the animal stage is a "going
backward" in the scale of evolution. We intuitively shrink at an
exhibition of brutality and animality on the part of a man or woman. We
may not know just why, but a little reflection will show us that it is a
sinking in the evolutionary scale, against which the