Page:The astral world, higher occult powers; (IA astralworldhighe00tiff).pdf/45

 perfect. The true impulse is one that promotes individual happiness and contentment.

When the infant, in consequence of this impulse, feels the sense of hunger calling for food, and such food as its infantile nature requires, it cries; but the supply of that demand is only necessary to cause it to cease its crying. This is because the child is free from those lusts which attach to persons advanced in years. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." The child does not lust after things that shall gratify or tickle its palate; it only seeks for those things which it needs; and when they are supplied, it ceases calling for more. But with the advance of age it learns of lustful parents, or by being acted upon by lustful influences, to seek gratification through lust, while in its original unperverted state it knows no impulses but those which are natural, and, consequently, it obeys the true and divine law.

Without stopping to inquire into the origin of lust, I may say that it originates in man's ignorance, necessarily. If you recollect the figure in the parable of the Garden of Eden, you remember that the sin committed by Eve was eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That is where we all eat. But I do not propose to dwell upon the nature and origin of this lust in man, but merely to speak of it as being that which characterizes him in his lowest sphere of being. It brings him into antagonism with his neighbor and God. It is that which begets in him so much crime, and which brings ruin upon the world. That is lust which leads him to seek after self-gratification irrespective of any need, while the true impulse