Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/84

78 more to self-consciousness or the selfhood; and then the sensual principle—the serpent—began to assume control of the mind and to become a conspicuous figure in this Garden.

Sensuousness I have defined as the disposition to limit one's life to the small area of existence which comes within the purview of the natural senses. The principle is broad in its scope, but it invests life with the merely natural, and rejects, as a thing undesirable or unknowable, the supernatural. If we are Christians, under the influence of this principle we are apt to be very weak or very indifferent ones. If we seem to be earnest in our faith, that faith is based upon what we conceive to be a correct historical record of the coming of Christ, and of the miraculous evidence by which his character was proven. If, however, we are hurried by its advice, or under the impetus of its insinuations, away from Christianity, it forbids us to recognize God because natural sense has never seen Him; or to believe in another life, because natural law has been unable to prove it; or even to acknowiedge the existence of the soul, because no dissecting knife has ever succeeded in reaching its seat. It is a harsh term, perhaps, to apply to so eminent a scientist as Tyndall, yet he is a strong type of the sensuous man, when he asserts in substance: I do not deny God, for I know nothing about Him; yet I do