Excerpt from The American Mind in Action The instincts which the Puritan set himself most determinedly to repress were the most potent instincts Of ordinary healthy life. They were the sex instinct and those responses to the instinct of self-assertion that show in the form of anger, envy, emulation, pride, ambition, and so forth. Above all, to the Puritan as to Paul, sex was sin. Now, Paul declares, the works of the Flesh are manifest, which are these: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of which I tell you that they which do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God. And Observe that these sins are not sins of action alone; half of them are sins of thought. The instincts were not merely to be prevented from impelling to sinful action; they were to be stopped from getting into the conscious mind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.

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