358 COSMOS. 



riant depths :>f thought, we have been unwilling wholly ta 

 disregard the bond which so closely links together the physical 

 TfOrld with the sphere of intellect and of the feelings by de- 

 priving this general picture of nature of those brighter lights 

 and tints which may be borrowed from considerations, however 

 slightly indicated, of the relations existing between races and 

 languages. 



While we maintain the unity of the human species, we at 

 the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior 

 and inferior races of men.* There are nations more sus- 

 ceptible of cultivation, more highly civilized, more ennobled 

 by mental cultivation than others, but none in themselves no- 

 bler than others. All are in like degree designed for freedom ; 

 a freedom which, in the ruder conditions of society, belongs 

 only to the individual, but which, in social states enjoying po- 

 litical institutions, appertains as a right to the whole body 

 of the community. " If we would indicate an idea which, 

 throughout the whole course of history, has ever more and 

 more widely extended its empire, or which, more than any 

 other, testifies to the much-contested and still more decidedly 

 misunderstood perfectibility of the whole human race, it is 

 that of establishing our common humanity of striving to re- 

 move the barriers which prejudice and limited views of every 

 kind have erected among men, and to treat all mankind, with- 

 out reference to religion, nation, or color, as one fraternity, one 

 great community, fitted for the attainment of one object, the 

 unrestrained development of the physical powers. This is the 

 ultimate and highest aim of society, identical with the direc- 

 tion implanted by nature in the mind of man toward the in- 

 definite extension of his existence. He regards the earth in 

 all its limits, and the heavens as far as his eye can scan their 

 bright and starry depths, as inwardly his own, given to him 

 as the objects of his contemplation, and as a field for the de- 

 velopment of his energies. Even the child longs to pass the 

 hills or the seas which inclose his narrow home ; yet, when 

 his eager steps have borne him beyond those limits, he pines, 

 like the plant, for his native soil ; and it is by tkis touching 

 and beautiful attribute of man this longing for that which 

 is unknown, and this fond remembrance of that which is lost 

 that he is spared from an exclusive attachment to the pres- 



* The very cheerless, and, in recent times, too often discussed doc- 

 trine of the unequal rights of men to freedom, and of slavery as an in- 

 Btitution in conformity with nature, is unhappily found most systematic 

 ally developed in Aristotle's Politico, i., 3, 5, 6. 



