Whatever the theory of evolution, from the beginning of its upward movement, the nearest, most potent, and most dangerous hindrance to the soul is this entail of animalism, which it can never escape but which it must some time conquer.  The spirit and the body seem to be in endless antagonism, and yet the body itself will become the fair servant of the soul when once the question of its supremacy has been determined.  The tendency to revert to animalism has been vividly depicted by the poets, and the clamorous and insistent nature of the passions portrayed by the artists.

The liquor in the enchanted cup of Comus may be called “the wine of the senses.”  Its effect is thus described by Milton.  Comus offers

           ...  “To every weary traveler
    His orient liquor in a crystal glass,
    To quench the drought of Phoebus; which, as they taste
    (For most do taste through fond, intemperate thirst)
    Soon as the potion works, their human countenance,
    The express resemblance of the gods, is changed
    Into some brutish form of wolf or bear,
    Or ounce or tiger, hog or bearded goat.”

A famous passage from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses"[4] represents Actaeon as changed into a stag; but, if I read the fable aright, the glimpse of Diana in her bath, while not an intelligent choice, was more than a mere accident—­it was the uprising of innate sensuality; for even the Greek gods were supposed to have had senses.

[Footnote 4:  Addison’s translation, Book III, pages 188-198.]

    “Actaeon was the first of all his race,
    Who grieved his grandsire in his borrowed face;
    Condemned by stern Diana to bemoan
    The branching horns and visage not his own;
    To shun his once-loved dogs, to bound away
    And from their huntsman to become their prey;
    And yet consider why the change was wrought;
    You’ll find it his misfortune, not his fault;
    Or, if a fault it was the fault of chance;
    For how can guilt proceed from ignorance?”

The story of Circe is the common story of those who have yielded to the flesh.  The companions of Ulysses visited the palace of Circe, were allured by her charms, and the result is read in these words: 

    “Before the spacious front, a herd we find
    Of beasts, the fiercest of the savage kind. 
    Our trembling steps with blandishments they meet
    And fawn, unlike their species, at our feet.”

The strong words of Milton are none too strong: 

    “Their human countenance
    The express resemblance of the gods, is changed
    Into some brutish form.”

A common subject with artists has been the temptations of the saints.  They have fled from luxury, and what they supposed to be moral peril, but have found no solitude to which they could go and leave their bodies behind.  In the silences faces have appeared to them full of alluring entreaty, and more than one anchorite has found to his sorrow that he carried within himself the cause of his danger.