But, says St. Augustine, if he tries to live according to himself, he
falls into misery, because he was meant to live according to God. So
he puts himself into a lie, into a false and wrong state; and because
he has cut himself off from God he falls below what a man should be;
and puts on more and more of the likeness of the beast, and is more
and more the slave of his own lusts, and passions, and fancies, as
the dumb animals are. And, as St. Paul says, the animal man, the
carnal man, understands not the things of God. And we need no one to
tell us that this is the state of nature which we bring into the
world with us. We feel it; from our very childhood, from the
earliest time we can recollect, have we not had the longing to do
what we liked? to please ourselves, to pride ourselves on ourselves,
to set up our own wills against our parents, against what we learnt
out of the Bible? Ay, has not this wilful will of ours been so
strong, that often we would long after a thing, we would determine to
have it, only because we were forbidden to have it; we might not care
about the thing when we had it, but we would have our own way just
because it was our own way. In short, like Adam, we would be as
gods, knowing good and evil, and choosing for ourselves what we
should call good and what we shall call evil.
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