6. The result of the above reasoning, if result it has, should be to
explain and justify the Stoic rule, _naturae convenienter vivere_, to
live according to nature. But some one will say: "That is the very
ideal of wickedness: all good in man comes of overcoming nature, and
doing violence to natural cravings: live according to nature, and you
will go straight to the devil." I answer: "Live _according to a part
of your nature_, and that the baser and lower, though also the more
impetuous and clamorous part, and you will certainly go where you say:
but live _up to the whole of your nature_, as explained in the last
paragraph, and you will be a man indeed, and will reach the goal of
human happiness." But again it may be objected, that our very reason,
to which the rest of our nature is naturally subordinate, frequently
prompts us to do amiss. The objection is a just one, in so far as it
goes upon a repudiation of the old Platonic position, that all moral
evil comes of the body, wherein the soul is imprisoned, and of the
desires which the body fastens upon the soul. Were that so, all sins
would be sins of sensuality. But there are spiritual sins, not
prompted by any lust or weakness of the body, as pride and mutiny,
self-opinionatedness, rejection of Divine revelation. The objection
turns on sins such as these. The answer is, that spiritual sins do not
arise from any exigency of reason, but from a deficiency of reason;
not from that faculty calling upon us, as we are reasonable men, to
take a certain course, in accordance with a just and full view of the
facts of the case, but from reason failing to look facts fully in the
face, and considering only some of them to the neglect of others, the
consideration of which would alter the decision. Thus a certain proud
creature mentioned in Scripture thought of the magnificence of the
throne above the stars of God, on the mountain of the covenant, on the
sides of the north: he did not think how such a pre-eminence would