ON HUMAN NATURE AND ITS CAPACITIES FOR VIRTUE. 89 



as in the Lucretius of Tennyson, " the brute brain within 

 the man's," whose aroused activity troubled the material- 

 ist poet and thinker. There are still resident, even 

 within the best, the two natures, each striving for 

 mastery, of which Faust complains; one clinging with 

 clumsy tendrils 



To all the fleshly joys the coarse earth yields ; 



and one that would rise to the contemplation of truth 

 and beauty, and ever aspires to the infinite and the 

 unknown. There is in every man that warfare between 

 the flesh and the spirit, in which the latter is often 

 brought into bondage, as deplored by St. Paul ; and this 

 degrading dualism and antagonism must remain a per- 

 manent fact in human nature, however much the latter 

 be developed. It is true that evolution philosophers 

 promise a diminished antagonism in the future ; and 

 Herbert Spencer in particular here as elsewhere an 

 optimist for the far future relying on the general 

 physiological truth of the increase of all organs in pro- 

 portion to their use, promises a great lessening of the 

 discord between soul and sense by the relatively greater 

 exercise of the brain, the organs of thought, than of 

 those related to the senses and appetites, not to speak 

 of the ever-continuing action of natural selection in 

 picking out, for preferment and for the perpetuation of 

 the species, those individuals with the highest-developed 

 brains. But besides that this alleviation of the strife 

 between the lower and higher natures is only to come at 

 a very distant date, as all evolutionary improvements ; 

 and moreover, so long as man is subject to hunger and 

 desire, must always have its limits, and can never be 

 very complete ; we do not find that there is much con- 

 solation in these assurances for our generation or for the 



