9tl: DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 



IL I come now to man. " Man," says Pascal, " is 

 neither angel nor brute;" but he is a sort of strange 

 mixture — if I were not speaking of God's work, I would 

 say, an odd mixture of brute and angel. In his lower 

 nature I perceive tlic instincts of the brute. That 

 conservative-destructive force which agitates the whole 

 animal kingdom is to be perceived in the veins of man, 

 and even in those regions of the soul which the scholas- 

 tic philosophy has so well described, in which tlie " con- 

 cupiscible appetite" and the ^'irascible appetite" are 

 sustained each by the other, and are sometimes fused 

 into one. Man, it is true, has received the gift of rea- 

 son, to control, repress, direct his passions. But see 

 how, bordering on one side on the passions of the brute, 

 he borders, on the other side, on the pride of the angel. 

 Cast out upon the earth, the fallen angel has come upon 

 the cradle of mankind and flooded it with his venom. 

 Thenceforth perverted, that reason which should have 

 governed everything for good ends has governed every- 

 thing for evil. Entering into alliance wàth gusty pas- 

 sions and with material forces, it has developed war to 

 proportions which otherwise it would. never have at- 

 tained. 



Man is pre-eminently the warrior of creation — as the 

 Scripture calls him, '•' a mighty hunter before the Lord." 

 The same Scripture likens his whole life on the earth to 

 a warfare. 



Fightings within himself! The brute and the angel 

 wage within us tliat conflict of which every man is 

 conscious, in which we escape the bondage of the senses 

 only to fall an easy prey to pride. Fightings in the 

 family ! Husband divided against wife, and father 

 against child, and a man's foes they of his own house- 

 hold. Cain leading his brother Abel into the field, and 



