Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold eBook

Mabel Collins
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 133 pages of information about Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold.

Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold eBook

Mabel Collins
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 133 pages of information about Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold.
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 physical 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.

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Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.