We might say that man is an intelligent and moral being; but this would give a very imperfect idea of his nature. Franklin says that man is one that can make tools! This is to reproduce a portion of the first proposition, while depreciating it. Aristotle calls man the “wise being,” ζωον πολιτικον. Linnæus, in his “System of Nature,” after having applied to man the epithet of wise (homo sapiens) writes after this generic title these profound words: Nosce te ipsum. The French naturalist and philosopher, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, says, “The plant lives, the animal lives and feels, man lives, feels, and thinks”—a sentiment which Voltaire had already expressed. “The Eternal Maker,” says the philosopher of Ferney, “has given to man organisation, sentiment, and intelligence; to the animals sentiment, and what we call instinct; to vegetables organisation alone. His power then acts continually upon these three kingdoms.” It is probably the animal which is here depreciated. The animal on many occasions undoubtedly thinks, reasons, deliberates with itself, and acts in virtue of a decision maturely weighed; it is not then reduced to mere sensation.
To define exactly the human being, we believe that it is necessary to characterise the nature and extent of his intelligence. In certain cases the intelligence of the animal approaches nearly to that of man, but the latter is endowed with a certain faculty which belongs to him exclusively; in creating him, God has added an entirely new step in the ascending scale of animated beings. This faculty, peculiar to the human race, is abstraction. We will say, then, that man is an intelligent being, gifted with the faculty of comprehending the abstract.
It is by this faculty that man is raised to a pre-eminent degree of material and moral power. By it he has subdued the earth to his empire, and by it also his mind rises to the most sublime contemplations. Thanks to this faculty, man has conceived the ideal, and realised poesy. He has conceived the infinite, and created mathematics. Such is the distinction which separates the human race so widely from the animals—which makes him a creation apart and absolutely new upon the globe. A being capable of comprehending the ideal and the infinite, of creating poetry and algebra, such is man! To invent and understand this formula—
(a + b)2 = a2 + 2ab + b2,
or the algebraic idea of negative quantities, this belongs to man. It is the greatest privilege of the human being to express and comprehend thoughts like the following:
J’étais seul près des flots, par une nuit d’étoiles,
Pas un nuage aux cieux, sur les mers pas de voiles,
Mes yeux plongeaient plus loin que le monde réel,
Et les vents et les mers, et toute la nature
Semblaient interroger dans un confus murmure,
Les flots des mers, les feux du ciel.
Et les étoiles d’or, légions infinies,
À voix haute, à voix basse, avec mille harmonies
Disaient, en inclinant leur couronne de feu;
Et les flots bleus, que rien ne gouverne et n’arrête:
Disaient, en recourbant l’écume de leur crête:
“C’est le Seigneur, le Seigneur Dieu!”*
Victor Hugo, les Orientales.
* Alone with the waves, on a starry night,
My thoughts far away in the infinite;
On the sea not a sail, not a cloud in the sky,
And the wind and the waves with sweet lullaby
Seem to question in murmurs of mystery,
The fires of heaven, the waves of the sea.