THE POSITION OF MAN IN THE SCALE OF BEING. 273 



psychical element, but we have also seeu that, by the same 

 agency, the purpose of the animal in creation is secured. 



d. We have also seen that man's capability of existing 

 over the entire globe, and the peculiar and extended agency 

 which he exerts in modifying and perfecting certain of its 

 arrangements, and taking advantage of others for his own 

 welfare, are due, not to the agency of his psychical or instinc- 

 tive element alone, but essentially to his rational conscious- 

 ness, which again is merely the manifestation of his spiritual 

 principle. 



e. But we have, moreover, seen that the animal invariably 

 acts up to the laws of its specific constitution ; whereas man 

 has a free choice in his actions. The extent, therefore, to 

 which the agency of man is exerted towards the welfare of his 

 own economy, the prosecution of his proper function on this 

 globe, and for his education for a future life, is dependent on 

 the use which he makes of his faculties in the discrimination 

 of truth and error, right and wrong, and on the application of 

 this discriminating power to the control of his actions. All 

 errors, therefore, committed in the exercise of this discrimi- 

 nating faculty, and all actions induced by such errors, and, a 

 fortiori, all actions performed contrary to a correct determina- 

 tion, are necessarily contrary to the constitution of the human 

 economy; and must, therefore, be essentially detrimental to it. 



13. From what has now been stated, it follows that the 

 welfare of the entire human constitution, of the organic, as 

 well as of the spiritual economy of man, is conditioned by the 

 proper action of the spiritual element itself ; and, consequently, 

 that we are to look to this higher principle in his constitution 

 for an explanation of all those circumstances which have co- 

 operated in producing the numerous modifications of his 

 typical form, and in the recurrence of the many vicissitudes of 

 his history, which are so distinctive of his race. 



14 In considering the human constitution from the point 



