VIII. MAN has many advantages and privileges over all other creatures.
Not only can he, like other animals, perceive through his senses all the
surrounding objects, but he can compare with one another the perceptions
received, associate them together, separate them, and form new ideas. He
can know for what purposes things exist, investigate their causes and
effects, discern between good and evil, between just and unjust; he
alone can communicate his thoughts to others; he alone can speak.
IX. Everything produced by an intelligent Author must be intended for
some purpose--must have a _destination_. Man, the noblest creature on
earth, must also have a destination. We shall arrive at a clear
knowledge of that destination, when we shall have considered the powers
and capabilities possessed by him; for the means with which nature has
endowed him, for the development of his activity, evidently point out
the goal which that activity is designed to attain.
X. Now, the capabilities that we discover in man are the
following:--Besides a body constructed with wonderful skill, but weak,
corruptible, mortal, man has within himself a vivifying principle, which
substantiates in him the knowledge of things with the aid of the senses,
renews in him perceptions once received, unites them, separates them,
and forms out of them new ideas. This thinking principle is certainly
different from the body, of which no part is apt to think, and is what
we call the _soul_; the act itself of thinking proceeds from a faculty
of the soul which we call _intellect_.
XI. But the soul can also judge, conclude from causes to effects,
distinguish between good and evil, between just and unjust, conceive an
idea of things never perceived through the senses; it can recognise the
supreme Author of the universe, it can adore God. This faculty of the
soul is called _reason_; intellect and reason are the principal or
superior faculties of the human soul.
XII. Reason points out good as a thing desirable, and evil as a thing to
be avoided; yet man feels within himself a desire or impulse towards all
that is pleasurable to the senses, although reason may represent it to
him as an evil. And, on the other hand, he is conscious of his perfect
freedom of choosing good, however disagreeable to the senses, and of
abhorring evil, however tempting it may appear; he has, then, the
faculty of directing his action to one or other of these two courses;
his soul is endowed with _free-will_.
XIII. A being endowed with intellect, reason, and free-will cannot be
composed of parts, because the operations proceeding from such faculties
presuppose a comparison of various relations with each other, and a
deduction of consequences from their principles; and these operations
require such a unity and simplicity in their subject as are absolutely
incompatible with the nature of matter, composed, as it is, of parts.
The human soul is therefore a simple being, a _spirit_, and, as such,
indestructible, _immortal_.
XIV. Man, then, unites in himself two natures, belongs to two classes of
beings very different from one another, is a citizen of two worlds. In
his body he is linked to the material world, undergoes all the
vicissitudes of matter, is subject to the incentives of the senses, and
is impelled to gratify the wants and cravings of physical enjoyment. As
regards his soul, he enters into the sphere of intelligences, he feels
himself attracted by the ideas of the beautiful, of the true, of the
just; he participates in the condition of the spiritual beings, aspires
to the immense, to the infinite; and is susceptible of an
ever-increasing perfectibility, finding within himself the power of
abhorring moral evil, viz., vice, and of cleaving to moral good, viz.,
virtue.
XV. Man has, therefore, within himself a germ of discord between the two
principles of which he is constituted, a contrast between the exigencies
of the body and those of the soul--between the appetites of the senses
and the dictates of reason; and as this latter alone is competent to
form a judgment on what he ought or ought not to do, it follows that
reason alone should be consulted and obeyed in determining upon every
action.
XVI. Now, by freely and spontaneously resolving to conform all the
actions of his life to the dictates of reason, which commands him to be
wise in his self-government, upright with others, and pious towards the
supreme Author, man will have worthily corresponded to the end for which
he was created--he will have fulfilled his _destination_; for it is
clearly the destination of man to make the best possible use of the
sublime faculties with which his soul is endowed; and the best possible
use he does make when he subordinates his inferior to his superior
tendencies, the cravings of the body to those of the soul; in a word,
when he obeys the dictates of reason.
XVII. When man obeys the dictates of reason, an internal voice in his
heart tells him that he has done right; he feels satisfied with himself,
and is penetrated with a sense of true joy. When, on the contrary, he
consciously infringes the laws of reason, he is not only deprived of
that internal approbation, but an inextinguishable voice rises
reproachful within his heart; he is no longer satisfied with himself,
but feels uneasiness and perturbation. That internal voice, which judges
man's actions, and generates happiness or sorrow, is what is called
_Conscience_.
XVIII. But the human soul, when it concentrates itself within, has also
the faculty of feeling the sense of its own individuality, and
perceiving that the state in which it is is its own. By virtue of this
sense, which we may call feeling, the soul is led always to desire its
own welfare, its own happiness; thence springs love or hatred,
inclination or aversion towards an object, as this object seems apt to
occasion pleasure or pain. But man, sooner or later, discovers that a
true and permanent pleasure cannot be obtained through any of the
physical enjoyments on earth, which he may not always be able to
procure, or, when procured, leave after them weariness and disgust. He,
consequently, cannot place in them his true happiness; and his internal
sense tells him that there are other enjoyments of a purely spiritual
nature, which alone can satisfy the highest aspirations of his soul. The
exercise of his moral duties--which, through his freedom of action, lies
always within his power, and by which alone he can tranquillise his
conscience and fully delight in self-contentment--is that which offers
to his soul true and permanent enjoyment; that alone is worth desiring.