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