o 



28 ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE 



liis instincts, certain essential conditions of his economy, 

 nevertheless the general conditions of his wellbeing, under 

 the ever-varying circumstances in which he is placed, are — 

 irrespective of revealed truth — only indirectly provided for 

 him, through his self-conscious intelligence. His instincts, 

 in common with his corporeal frame, constitute an organism, 

 and so far the human constitution is similar to that of the 

 lower animal ; but the organism in man is merely the instru- 

 ment of his self-conscious intelligence, and it is this circum- 

 stance which entails upon him the comprehensiveness of the 

 conditions of his welfare. He commences life less amply 

 provided with instinctive securities than the lower animal. 

 He must acquire the use even of his organs of sense, and of 

 his limbs, by a self-conscious process of experiment. The 

 knowledge of external objects, which is gradually accumu- 

 lated, and the control over them which is acquired by the 

 individual during his life, and by the species collectively, is 

 the gradual result of a continuous struggle between his con- 

 scious principle and that material nature by which it is sur- 

 rounded and penetrated ; and for this continuous effort his 

 organism is the instrument. In like manner, the clue perform- 

 ance of all his duties, personal and social — his duties to his 

 Maker, his duties to his fellow-men — is, from the very consti- 

 tution of his conscious intelligence, a life-long struggle between 

 truth and error, fulfilment and non-fulfilment. These collective 

 peculiarities of the self-conscious principle, as contrasted with 

 the instinctive manifestations of the organism, constitute the 

 proper personality of man, as distinguished from the mere 

 individuality of the lower animal. 



Such are the comprehensive conditions of the welfare of 

 the human economy. Their extent depends upon the endow- 

 ments of the human conscious principle. Now, as the most 

 remarkable of these endowments are the capacity of discrimi- 

 nating, and the liberty of choice between truth and error — 



