76 EVOLUTION dT LIFE. 



women, instead of being the companions, are 

 the slaves of the men ; rapine is no crime, where 

 honesty is no virtue; killing is no murder, 

 where personal revenge is allowed ; and nei- 

 ther adultery nor fornication constitutes a crime, 

 where promiscuous and incestuous intercourse 

 is tolerated. Among them, intemperance is 

 preferred to sobriety ,^-ignorance mistaken for 

 knowledge, the passions and appetites of 

 youth preferred to the wisdom and virtue of 

 age. This state of degeneracy and of corrup- 

 tion may be considered the condition of man, 

 when he allows himself to follow the pursuits 

 alone, to which he is impelled by the force of 

 sensual inclination. ST. PAUL, in his letter to 

 the Romans, tells them, that it was by this 

 condition that they were degraded and debased; 

 that they were impelled to act by the force of 

 passion without reason ; ^that they had the 

 propensities, and followed the pursuits of the 

 brute, without his instinct ; that they led, in 

 fact, a life of sense without reason. The apos- 

 tle: also tells them, that there was a law in their 

 members, which warred against the law of 

 their minds ; that the good that they did, they 

 would not, but the evil which they would not, 

 that they did. A condition, such as this, is not 

 the condition for which man was designed ; it 

 proves what he may, not what he ought to be- 

 come ; it proves, that the more he indulges his 



