ON MAN AND HIS DEVELOPMENT. 57 



recommended by the old philosophers. He had fallen 

 from an originally holy and god-like estate, theology 

 assured him. His nature, once innocent, was now in- 

 herently vile, and he could do no good thing of himself, 

 though infinite evil. In the other ear of man meta- 

 physics whispered a far more nattering tale in fact, 

 a wholly opposite theory of man, and one much more 

 soothing to his pride and encouraging to his hopes. 

 His nature was innately grand and god-like, and shaded 

 off on all sides without dividing boundary to the infinite. 

 At the bottom of man's being lay his soul, of a character 

 and composition very different from the theological repre- 

 sentation of it. Far from being an essentially vicious 

 thing, it was an ethereal substance, " a thing majestical," 

 an indestructible diamond, that not the power of death 

 or fate, hardly even that of omnipotence itself, could 

 break. The soul, the ego, the inmost essence and core 

 of the man, w T as an imperial thing on the earth, as 

 demonstrated in its own free and uncaused will un- 

 caused by motive other than its own sovereign dictation ; 

 and it was an immortal existence hereafter. Or if the 

 soul was not of independent existence, as most of the 

 metaphysicians argued, it was, according to others, a 

 direct emanation of Deity, and to Him returned at death. 

 So argued the metaphysicians in opposition to the theo- 

 logians, asserting the innate rights and dignity of the 

 soul, and of our essential human nature* Then followed 

 poetry, at one time re-echoing the teaching of theology, 

 at another that of metaphysics, in both cases mingling 

 special fictions and fancies of her own, her Muse now 

 bewailing man's hapless fall and hopeless state, anon 

 chanting his lordly dignity and high future hopes. Thus 

 poetry continued till the beginning of our century, 

 Avhen, having drunk deep the prevailing scepticism and 



