16. Chapter XVI: That Excessive Care Of Worldly Welfare May Impair
That Welfare
There is a closer tie than is commonly supposed between the
improvement of the soul and the amelioration of what belongs to
the body. Man may leave these two things apart, and consider
each of them alternately; but he cannot sever them entirely
without at last losing sight of one and of the other. The beasts
have the same senses as ourselves, and very nearly the same
appetites. We have no sensual passions which are not common to
our race and theirs, and which are not to be found, at least in
the germ, in a dog as well as in a man. Whence is it then that
the animals can only provide for their first and lowest wants,
whereas we can infinitely vary and endlessly increase our
enjoyments?
We are superior to the beasts in this, that we use our souls
to find out those material benefits to which they are only led by
instinct. In man, the angel teaches the brute the art of
contenting its desires. It is because man is capable of rising
above the things of the body, and of contemning life itself, of
which the beasts have not the least notion, that he can multiply
these same things of the body to a degree which inferior races
are equally unable to conceive. Whatever elevates, enlarges, and
expands the soul, renders it more capable of succeeding in those
very undertakings which concern it not. Whatever, on the other
hand, enervates or lowers it, weakens it for all purposes, the
chiefest, as well as the least, and threatens to render it almost
equally impotent for the one and for the other. Hence the soul
must remain great and strong, though it were only to devote its
strength and greatness from time to time to the service of the
body. If men were ever to content themselves with material
objects, it is probable that they would lose by degrees the art
of producing them; and they would enjoy them in the end, like the
brutes, without discernment and without improvement.