as they are. They are free to dislike them--but not at the same time
to be moralists. Their feeling leads them to ignore the obligation
which should rest on all teachers, "to discover the best that man
can do, not to set impossibilities before him and tell him that if
he does not perform them he is damned."

Man is moldable; very; and it is desirable that he should aspire.
But he is apt to be hasty about accepting any and all general ideals
without figuring out whether they are suitable for simian use.

One result of his habit of swallowing whole most of the ideals
that occur to him, is that he has swallowed a number that strongly
conflict. Any ideal whatever strains our digestions if it is hard
to assimilate: but when two at once act on us in different ways, it
is unbearable. In such a case, the poets will prefer the ideal
that's idealest: the hard-headed instinctively choose the one adapted
to simians.

Whenever this is argued, extremists spring up on each side. One
extremist will say that being mere simians we cannot transcend much,
and will seem to think that having limitations we should preserve
them forever. The other will declare that we are not merely simians,
never were just plain animals; or, if we were, souls were somehow
smuggled in to us, since which time we have been different. We have
all been perfect at heart since that date, equipped with beautiful
spirits, which only a strange perverse obstinacy leads us to soil.

What this obstinacy is, is the problem that confronts theologians.
They won't think of it as simian-ness; they call it original sin.
They regard it as the voice of some devil, and say good men should