Human Physiology. 403 



% r ery partial enjoyment even of the most fortunate conditions of 

 personal and social life, when he sees around him multitudes 

 suffering from ignorance, poverty, disease, vice, and crime. 

 The race must be redeemed before even the most fortunate 

 individual can be quite happy in this world at least; or there 

 must be perfect faith and trust in the Divine goodness, which 

 is the foretaste of that perfect knowledge which belongs to a 

 higher stage of existence. 



Man is a social being. He is miserable in solitude. When 

 man and woman are mated they are not long content. Other 

 instincts, wants, or passions, demand gratification. They need 

 parents to love and reverence, children to nourish and rear, 

 friends to help them enjoy their comforts and pleasures. They 

 need, in a word, society; and we know how imperfectly this 

 great want is satisfied in the world around us. 



All our faculties are social. Our intellect demands conversa- 

 tion, appreciation, admiration. Reading and writing, or corre- 

 spondence, are partial substitutes, but what we enjoy much 

 more is the animation of the living voice, the fire of the eye, 

 the quick explanatory movements of the features, all the charm 

 of refined and intelligent companionship. 



Our mirth is social; our wit is wasted if we speak it not; our 

 poetry must have hearers and readers; we make pictures and 

 statues that they may be seen and enjoyed; our ambition, 

 hope, pride, love of approbation, all refer to others are social 

 passions all. Our benevolence finds its objects in the world 

 around us; our conscience, or sense of justice and right, regards 

 our relations to our fellow-men. In these relations is all our 

 true life, all our real happiness, and love to God finds its prac- 

 tical manifestation in love to our fellow-men. Chiefly and best, 

 we love Him in nature and in man. Reason and Religion are 

 here in perfect harmony. 



But how, it will be asked, can we have a perfect society 

 when men, of whom it must be composed, are so bad? Un- 



