CHAPTER XI.  LUST.

Pride resides principally in the mind, and thence sways over the entire man; avarice proceeds from the heart and affections; lust has its seat in the flesh.  By pride man prevaricating imitates the angel of whose nature he partakes; avarice is proper to man as being a composite of angelic and animal natures; lust is characteristic of the brute pure and simple.  This trinity of concupiscence is in direct opposition to the Trinity of God—­to the Father, whose authority pride would destroy; to the Son, whose voluntary stripping of the divinity and the poverty of whose life avarice scorns and contemns to the Holy Ghost, to whom lust is opposed as the flesh is opposed to the spirit.  This is the mighty trio that takes possession of the whole being of man, controls his superior and inferior appetites, and wars on the whole being on God.  And lust is the most ignoble of the three.

Strictly speaking, it is not here question of the commandments.  They prescribe or forbid acts of sin—­thoughts, words or deeds; lust is a passion, a vice or inclination, a concupiscence.  It is not an act.  It does not become a sin while it remains in this state of pure inclination.  It is inbred in our nature as children of Adam.  Lust is an appetite like any other appetite, conformable to our human nature, and can be satisfied lawfully within the order established by God and nature.  But it is vitiated by the corruption of fallen flesh.  This vitiated appetite craves for unlawful and forbidden satisfactions and pleasures, such as are not in keeping with the plans of the Creator.  Thus the vitiated appetite becomes inordinate.  At one and the same time, it becomes inordinate and sinful, the passion being gratified unduly by a positive act of sin.

This depraved inclination, as everyone knows, may be in us, without being of us, that is, without any guilt being imputed to us.  This occurs in the event of a violent assault of passion, in which our will has no part, and which consequently does not materialize, exteriorly or interiorly, in a human act forbidden by the laws of morality.  Nor is there a transgression, even when gratified, if reason and faith control the inclination and direct it along the lines laid down by the divine and natural laws.  Outside of this, all manners, shapes and forms of lust are grievous sins, for the law admits no levity of matter.  No further investigation, at the present time, into the essence of this vice is necessary.

There is an abominable theory familiar to, and held by the dissolute, who, not content with spreading the contagion of their souls, aim at poisoning the very wells of morality.  They reason somewhat after this fashion:  Human nature is everywhere the same.  He knows others who best knows himself.  A mere glance at themselves reveals the fact that they are chained fast to earth by their vile appetites, and that to break these chains is a task too heavy