He failed; for the task was too _small_ for him--a common tale among men of genius. You have been unsuccessful in trivial things? There is always a remedy left: to essay the great. How often has Man become impotent simply because there was no task heroic enough to demand greatness of him! 81 _Dangers of the Spiritual_ If you are _swept off your feet_ by a strongly sensuous book, it is probably a sign that you have become too highly spiritualized. For a sensualist would simply have enjoyed it, while feeling, perhaps, a little bored and dissatisfied. It was only a religious anchorite who could have lost his _soul_ to Anatole France's Thaïs. For the salvation of Man it is more than ever imperative that a reconciliation should be effected between the spirit and the senses. Until it is, the highest men--the most spiritual--will be in the very greatest peril, and will almost inevitably be wrecked or frustrated. It is for the good of the _soul_ that this reconciliation must now be sought. 82 _Again_ From the diabolization of the senses innumerable evils have flowed; physical and mental disease, disgust with the world, cruelty towards everything natural. But, worst of all, it has made sensuality a greater _danger_ than it was ever before. In the anchorite, seeking to live entirely in the spirit, and ignoring or chastising the body, sensuality was driven into the very soul, and there was magnified a hundredfold. To the thinker avoiding the senses as much as possible--for he had been taught to distrust them--sensuality, in the moments when he was brought face to face with it, had acquired a unique seductiveness, and had become a problem and a danger. If he yielded, it was perilous in a degree unknown to the average sensual man; if he resisted, a good half of his spiritual energy was wasted in keeping the senses at bay. In either case, the thinker suffered. So that now it is the spirit that has become the champion of the senses, but for the good of the spirit. 83 _God and Animal_