Copyright, 1901, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, N. Y. and London.
The Supremacy of Man
“Look on this metal,” said he, pointing to some of the leaden ornaments of the balcony, “and think what is the worth of human judgment. Who would give the pearl or the diamond, the silver or the gold, for this discolored dross? Yet here is the king of metals—the king of earth; for it can create, subdue, and rule all that earth produces of power. Within this dross are treasures hidden, more than earth could buy—truth, knowledge, and freedom. It can give the dead a new life and the living a new immortality. It can sink the haughtiest usurper that ever sinned against man into the lowest scorn. It can raise the humblest son of obscurity into preeminence, and even without breaking in upon the seclusion that he loves, set him forth to every future age crowned with involuntary glory. It can flash light upon the darkest corners of the earth—light never to be extinguished. It can civilize the barbarian; it can pour perpetual increase of happiness, strength, and liberty round the civilized. It can make feet for itself that walk through the dungeon walls; wings that the uttermost limits of the world can not weary; eyes to which the darkest concealments of evil are naked as the day; intellect that darts through the universe and solves the mightiest secrets of nature and of mind! But in it, too, is a fearful power of ruin.”
He gazed on me with a glance that seemed to shoot fire.
“Holding the keys of opulence and empire,” he continued, “it can raise men and nations to the most dazzling height—but it can stain, delude, and madden them until they become a worse than pestilence to human nature.”
While he spoke, his form assumed a grandeur commensurate with his lofty topics; the power of his voice awoke with the awaking power of his mind. My faculties succumbed under his presence, and I could only exclaim:
“More of those wonders; give me more of those noble evidences of the supremacy of man!”
“Man!” said my strange enlightener; “look upon him as he is, and what more helpless thing moves under the canopy of heaven? The prey of folly, the creature of accident, the sport of nature, the surge whirls him where it will; the wind scorns his bidding; the storm crushes him; the lightning smites him. But look upon man when knowledge has touched him with her scepter.”
The circlet on his brow seemed to quiver and sparkle with inward luster; the golden serpent that clasped his robe seemed to writhe and revolve. I felt like one under fascination. A strange sense of danger thrilled through me, yet mixed with a dreamy and luxurious sense of enjoyment. The air seemed heavy with fragrance, and I sat listening in powerless homage to a lip molded by beauty and disdain.