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.