Louis Lavelle on Our Dual Nature

 Louis Lavelle, The Dilemma of Narcissus, tr. Gairdner, Allen and  Unwin, 1973, p. 165:

The centaur, the sphinx, and the siren express the idea that man emerges out of an animal, and that he never sheds his hoofs, his claws, his scales. Man is a mixture; his dual nature is what makes him man; it is the essence of his vocation and destiny. It is folly to imagine him a god or reduce him to an animal; he is more like a satyr with two natures, and it would be hard to say whether his deepest desire is to raise the animal within him to the contemplation of the divine light, or to bring the god down into his animal body, and make him feel every impulse coursing through his flesh.

I would only add that it is man's spiritual nature that allows him to make such errors as to think that he is -- nothing but an animal.