Ah, that is the old question, which our Lord answered long ago, and said, “Be not anxious what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal you shall be clothed.  For after all these things do the heathen seek, and your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.  But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”  A few, very few, people have taken that advice.  But they have been just the salt of the earth, which has kept mankind from decaying.

But what has that to do with it?

See.  You are a living thing, you say.  Are you a plant?

No.

Are you an animal?

I do not know.  Yes.  I suppose I am.  I eat, and drink, and sleep, just as dogs and cats do.

Yes.  There is no denying that.  No one knew that better than St. Paul when he told men that they had a flesh; that is, a body, and an animal’s nature in them.  But St. Paul told them—­of course he was not the first to say so, for all the wise heathens have known that—­that there was something more in us, which he called a spirit.  Some call it now the moral sentiment, some one thing, some another, but we will keep to the old word:  we shall not find a better.

Yes, I know that I have a spirit, a soul.

Better to say that you are a spirit.  But what does St. Paul say?  That our spirit is to conquer our flesh, and keep it down.  That the man in us, in short, which is made in the likeness of God, is to conquer the animal in us, which is made in the likeness of the dog and the cat, and sometimes (I fear) in the likeness of the ape or the pig.  You would not wish to be like a cat, much less like an ape or a pig?

Of course not.

Then do not copy them, by competing and struggling for existence against other people.

What do you mean?

Did you never watch the pigs feeding?

Yes, and how they grudge and quarrel, and shove each other’s noses out of the trough, and even bite each other because they are so jealous which shall get most.

That is it.  And how the biggest pig drives the others away, and would starve them while he got fat, if the man did not drive him off in his turn.

Oh, yes; I know.

Then no wiser than those pigs are worldly men who compete, and grudge, and struggle with each other, which shall get most money, most fame, most power over their fellow-men.  They will tell you, my child, that that is the true philosophy, and the true wisdom; that competition is the natural law of society, and the source of wealth and prosperity.  Do not you listen to them.  That is the wisdom of this world, which the flesh teaches the animals; and those who follow it, like the animals, will perish.  Such men are not even as wise as Sweep the retriever.

Not as wise as Sweep?

Not they.  Sweep will not take away Victor’s bone, though he is ten times as big as Victor, and could kill him in a moment; and when he catches a rabbit, does he eat it himself?