In the great kingdom of living nature, man is the only animal that seeks to poison or destroy his own instincts, to turn topsy-turvy the laws of his being, and to make himself as unlike, as possible, that which he was obviously designed to be. No satisfactory solution of this extraordinary propensity has been given, short of a reference to that-- "first disobedience and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world and all our wo, With loss of E
