SUidy of Man, 293 



his higher nature, through the wrongs of his fellow 

 men and his own wrong-doing against himself. 

 With all our boasted reforms and advance in gov- 

 ernment, education and religion, the degradation 

 and suffering that fill the dark places of the earth 

 are the inheritance of man, and not of the lower 

 animals. And this degradation comes from ignor- 

 ing or transgressing the law of man's being, — by 

 giving loose rein to the animal appetites and In- 

 stincts, or by attempting to repress them without 

 reason. We must come to a more thorough study 

 of man. This study must take no secondary place 

 in our systems of education, not even in the '' NEW 

 EDUCATION." We have been forgetting that the 

 highest knowledge for man is a knowledge of his 

 own powers, and of his relations to the whole uni- 

 verse and to God ; we have taught, at least by prac- 

 tice, that the highest knowledge is found in the 

 study of Natural Science, in its practical applica- 

 tions, and in the laws of trade. We have often 

 dignified mere aggregated facts, of local value, with 

 the name of science, and have thought more of con- 

 trolling steam-engines than of controlling the pow- 

 ers of men or of teaching men the necessity of con- 

 trolling themselves, and the methods of doing the 

 work. We have sent them out to study the world, 

 but have failed to show them how they are linked 

 to it, and how they ought to rise above its power 

 by, first of all, obeying its demands. It is only 

 through a knowledge of physical laws and of his 

 own nature, in all its planes, especially in that plane 

 of instinctive impulses where activities arise and 



