Our Mishna on Amud Aleph rules that even if an ox will become forewarned, that is, established as one who tends to gore its own kind, it is not established as dangerous to other species. Likewise, if it is established to gore humans, it is not automatically established to gore animals.

Based on this, Yismach Moshe (Vayeshev) raises an aggadic contradiction. The Gemara Shabbos (151a) teaches:

An animal does not overpower a person until he appears to it as an animal, as it is stated: “But man does not abide in honor, he is like the beasts that perish” (Psalms 49:13). However, animals do not attack people who are human in their spiritual character." 

Yismach Moshe asks, if this teaching is true, why is an animal who is established to gore humans not established to gore animals ? After all, based on the Gemara above, the true reason for the attack is that the person behaves and manifests as an animal, so to the animal it’s all the same, this human and any random beast. Yismach Moshe answers based on an Akeida (Gate 15), that the animal part of each human can manifest as different animals, e.g. some might be brave as a lion, or wiley as a fox, predatory as vulture, etc. Thus, true a person may be an animal, but since he is not a specific animal, as we have learned in the Mishna, this does not create a bona fide pattern of goring.

The idea that humans have an animal aspect is probably not unlike some aborigines who believe they have a spirit animal that guides them. In the human experience, different mystical ideas try to convey or express deeper truths of human nature. As it states in Koheles (3:19), “The superiority of Man over beast is nothing, for all is nothingness.” Within each person is an animal, and it is an essential part of our nature that can inform and guide us, allowing for intuition and creativity, as it comprises our raw instincts and desires. (Carl Jung understood the unconscious as an animal instinct and intuitive aspect of human nature.) However, we are more than animals. Mental health involves the proper balance between all our parts so nothing is overly repressed and denied, nor out of control and disinhibited. 

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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