148 THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MAN 



of man's present actual attainments ; in his possibilities 

 he has a larger faith than that of the disbeliever in 

 evolution. In intelligence and thought, in will power 

 and freedom of choice, in one word, in all that makes 

 up character and personality, man is immeasurably 

 superior to the animal. These powers raise him to a 

 new plane of being, give him an indefinitely higher 

 and broader life, and his appearance marks a new era. 

 He alone is a moral, responsible being, to a certain ex- 

 tent the former of his own destiny and recorder of his 

 doom, if he fails. This gives to all his actions a pecul- 

 iar stamp of a dignity only his. What he is and is to 

 be we must attempt to trace in another lecture. But 

 to one or two characteristic results of his progress we 

 must call attention here. 



The principal subject of man's study is not so much 

 the things which surround him as his relation to them 

 and theirs to each other. His environment has become 

 really one, not so much one of tangible and visible ob- 

 jects as of invisible relations. And these will demand 

 endless investigation. The more he studies them the 

 more wonderful do they become. The vein broadens 

 and grows indefinitely richer the deeper he searches 

 into it. We find thus the purpose of the intellect ; it 

 is to study environment. 



And now a little about motives. The animal begins 

 with appetite, and some animals and men never get 

 any farther. And yet how easily this appetite for food 

 is satiated ! We all remember our experiences as chil- 

 dren around the Thanksgiving or Christmas table. 

 What a disappointment it was to us to find how soon 

 our appetite had forsaken us, and that we had lost the 

 power of enjoying the delicacies which we had most 



