Excerpt from The Bane and the Antidote: And Other Sermons Into a perfect insect, we have a monster indeed. We may fancy the strange and distressing conflict which ensues within that violated organism, - the clash of irreconcilable impulses and instincts in a creature compounded of, say, butterfly and spider; a passion for the sunshine and a love of darkness, a longing for roses and a thirst for blood, demanding inconsistent satisfaction; the creature perplexed within itself, afraid of itself, devouring itself. Yet this painful creation Of the vivisector expresses more closely than we like to think the apostle's conception of human nature when first it becomes conscious of itself. Looking upon the sky above us, we are de lighted with the serenity, harmony, and splendour of the stars; studying the world about us, nothing is more impressive than the fitness, orderliness, and beauty which everywhere prevail; but look ing within our own breast, we find a chaos and an anarchy teeming with tragic elements. The loftiest and the lowest, the purest and the most abominable, the largest and the meanest, idealism and brutality, divinity and diabolism, struggle for supremacy, and there is no truce to the strife which makes existence a curse. Spider and fly subtly blending in one cruel organism is a pale metaphor of the heart torn by painful antagonisms. The race in every generation has recognised this ambiguousness of human nature, and has felt that whatever the ex ternal difficulties with which it has had to contend they have been positively immaterial when compared with the crushing burden Of its own consciousness. While all are conscious of this humiliating duality within the personal life, the apostle distinctly teaches. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.