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let a novel occasion arise, let someone attack a person who is dear as life itself, let it be a time of danger or a great threatening calamity, and we can be as fierce as a savage animal. And who that aspires after holy things has not faced a tendency within him which is as incongruous with and hostile to these holy desires as hate is hostile to love?
 
It is needless to dwell upon this contrast. Every man knows what it is to possess the two natures. Every honest person admits their conflict. Many a refined individual is weighed down with grief because the animal or devil is present, when only the angel is desired. Nearly every- one is mystified by these persistent obsessions of the lower nature. And countless souls have cried out in despair, as the conflict has continued from year to year, "How long, O Lord, how long?"
 
The majority of men and women give more or less complete expression to one mood or the other when it arises, and their doctrines are such attempts at harmony between the moods as their incongruous character permits. If the lower nature, or at least some fleshly or pathological condition, is largely dominant in a philosophic mind, the pessimistic mood is likely to colour the philosophy. If the higher nature is more frequently triumphant we may have an optimist. Thus our human doctrines are frequently mere reports of the discolourations of our moods.