Introductory. 19 



past history and the future prospects of the race, if 

 we are to depend upon science alone to reveal them, 

 must always be like the bridge in Mirza's vision 

 that had dark clouds resting upon either end. 

 More and more of the span of the bridge may come 

 into view to those who gaze upon it from the hill 

 of science, but the abutments that mark the begin- 

 ning of the human race, and its remotest future, 

 will be in clouds and darkness still. 



But there is a central question that relates to 

 the present. What is man? If this question 

 could be fairly answered, his origin and destiny 

 would be in a measure deducible from the answer ; 

 or if it should throw no clearer light upon the past, 

 it would reveal the goal towards which man must 

 move, or the road along which his future course 

 must lie in pressing towards that goal. 



Amid all the din and clamor of science, which 

 claims to give both the light and guidance which 

 man needs as well as every other means of human 

 progress, we wish to know what the HUMAN is, — 

 what it has in common with the world below it, — 

 what it has in its own right as its peculiar posses- 

 sion, — what there is in man to be ruled, — what 

 there is in him having power to rule. 



Again then we come to the task of analyzing 

 human nature regardless of the sneers of those prac- 

 tical philosophers who talk of '' the folly and heavy 

 guessing of Metaphysics," grouping, as they gener- 

 ally do for their convenience, under this much 

 abused term, all those studies that relate to the 

 higher nature of man. 



If we would improve man, we must know what 



