The Endowments of Man Considered in Their Relations with His Final End

ON THE NATURE OF MAN.

“What is man that thou shouldst magnify him? or why shouldst thou set thy heart upon him?” — JOB vii. 17.

THE world repeats the saying of the poet, that the proper study of mankind is man; but whilst the men of the world commend this study as of chief importance, they pronounce their own condemnation. For what man of the world cares to know himself? And how can anyone know man who is ignorant of himself? The knowledge of his earthly frame is not the knowledge of man; nor the natural history that marks the external diversities of the various branches of the human family; nor the science of his mental faculties and their operations; nor those other sciences that investigate by parts the several elements that enter into his composition. When these sciences are pursued with loyalty to the facts, and the mind of the investigator is free from imaginative theories, they confirm the essential unity of the human race, notwithstanding accidental differences that only mark the diversities within the species. But those partial studies of the components of human nature will not teach us the profounder things that belong to our humanity; on the contrary, from the mind absorbed in the study of the external man, the internal man is but too apt to escape, so that what constitutes the dignity of man is lost from view.