A combination and a form, indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal
To give the world assurance of a man.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him, that nature might stand up
And say to all the world "This was a man!"—Shakspeare.
hat a piece of worke is a man? How Noble in Reason? how infinite in faculty? in forme and mouing how expresse and admirable? in Action how like an Angel? in apprehension how like a God? the beauty of the world, the Paragon of Animals?" This is the exalted panegyric of the greatest mind so far vouchsafed to our race—this, then, was Shakspeare's ideal of a true man. Says Emerson: "O rich and various man! thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and the night, and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry of the city of God; in thy heart the power of love and the realms of right and wrong." "Man was sent into the world to be a growing and exhaustless force," says Chapin; "the world was spread out around him to be seized and conquered. Realms of infinite truth burst open above him, inviting him to to tread those shining coasts along which Newton dropped his plummet, and Herschel sailed,
A COLUMBUS OF THE SKIES."
"Man," says Carlyle, "has reflected his two-fold nature in history. 'He is of earth,' but his thoughts are with the stars. Mean and petty his wants and his desires; yet they serve a soul exalted with grand, glorious aims, with immortal longings, with thoughts which sweep the heavens and 'wander through eternity.' A pigmy standing on the outward crust of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there finds rest." Then turning to the combined effects of individual lives, the same great writer says: "History is a reflex of this double life. Every epoch has two aspects—one calm, broad and solemn—looking towards eternity; the other agitated, petty, vehement, and confused looking towards time." "Man," says Sir William Hamilton, one of the greatest of true philosophers, "is not an organism: he is an intelligence, served by organs." Says Whately: "The heavens do indeed 'declare the glory of God,' and the human body is 'fearfully and wonderfully made;' but man, considered, not merely as an organized being, but as a rational agent, and as a member of society, is perhaps the most wonderfully contrived, and to us the most interesting, specimen of divine wisdom that we have any knowledge of."
MAN'S FAULTS.
So much in compliment of mankind. Now this same marvelous creature, man, has a critical spirit. He is endued with a quality of progression. The motive power in this progression is dissatisfaction. Let us listen to the sages when they drop eulogy and become out of conceit with themselves.
"MAN IS IMPROVABLE,"
says Horace Mann. "Some think he is only a machine, and that the only difference between a man and a mill is, that one is carried by blood and the other by water." Says Pascal: "What a chimera is man! what a singular phenomenon! what a chaos! what a scene of contrariety! A judge of all things yet a feeble worm; the shrine of truth, yet a mass of doubt and uncertainty; at once the glory and the scorn of the universe. If he boasts, I lower him; if he lowers himself I raise him; either way I contradict him, till he learns he is a monstrous, incomprehensible mystery." "Make yourself an honest man," says Carlyle sarcastically, "and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world." This remark sprang, probably, from a reading of
WHATELEY'S COMPARISON