he soul has sinned--for sin is little, if anything, but a
spirit allowing itself to return to the fascinations of the animal
conditions out of which it has been evolved, and from which it ought to
have escaped forever. The animal entail is the chief hindrance to the
aspiring spirit. The animal lives by his senses. He is content when they
are satisfied. It can hardly be said that animals are ever happy.
Happiness is a state higher than contentment. Paul said he had learned
in whatsoever state he was to be content, but even he never said that in
all states he had learned to be happy. Animals are contented when their
senses are gratified and they are savage when their senses are
clamorous. Lions and bears are dangerous when they are hungry, and cruel
when other desires are obstructed.

Whatever the theory of evolution, from the beginning of its upward
movement, the nearest, most potent, and most dangerous hindrance to the
soul is this entail of animalism, which it can never escape but which it
must some time conquer. The spirit and the body seem to be in endless
antagonism, and yet the body itself will become the fair servant of the
soul when once the question of its supremacy has been determined. The
tendency to revert to animalism has been vividly depicted by the poets,
and the clamorous and insistent nature of the passions portrayed by the
artists.

The liquor in the enchanted cup of Comus may be called "the wine of the
senses." Its effect is thus described by Milton. Comus offers

... "To every weary traveler
His orient liquor in a crystal glass,
To quench the drought of Phoebus; which, as they taste
(For most do taste through fond, intemperate thirst)
Soon as the potion works, their human countenance,
The express resemblance of the gods, is changed
Into some brutish form of wolf or bear,
Or ounce or tiger, hog or bearded goat."

A famous passage from Ovid's "Metamorphoses"[4] represents Actaeon as
changed into a stag; but, if I read the fable aright, the glimpse of
Diana in her bath, while not an intelligent choice, was more than a mere
accident--it was the uprising of innate sensuality; for even the Greek
gods were supposed to have had senses.

[Footnote 4: Addison's translation, Book III, pages 188-198.]

"Actaeon was the first of all his race,
Who grieved his grandsire in his borrowed face;
Condemned by stern Diana to bemoan
The branching horns and vis