240. But fuimus Troes! The time was when we were men; now, alas, how we are fallen! how are we daily continuing to fall! The dignity of the soul we have degraded to the dust. We have set menials over her as her lords and masters. We have abandoned ourselves to the tyranny of the body, the blood, the world, or externally inciting causes; for we are under the arbitrary control of pleasures and desires, by which we are hurried away to ends which are often contrary to the more universal, and to Him who is of all ends the most universal. In the whole world, therefore, there is nothing more imperfect than man in such a state; as may be seen by comparing him with brutes; for animals, when excited by external causes, are incapable of acting except in a manner suitable to the nature according to which they have been organized. Whilst man frequently both intends to act, and also does act, in a manner little suitable to his organization, and this, by the aid of a perverted reason.
Opposites mutually correspond to each other. One may be measured by the other: depth by height; ill fortune by good fortune; hatred by love; grief by joy; disappointment by hope and ambition; slavery by liberty; imperfection by perfection. This imperfection we must in our present state measure by the degree in which we abuse the remaining faculties with which we were endowed for perfecting our nature, or the faculties of reason, will, and liberty.
