74 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



what the real and greatest benefactors of their kind have 

 done the discoverers, inventors, philosophers, poets, law- 

 givers, and founders of religions, if not the warrior- 

 kings and conquerors. Neither Plato, nor Mahomet, nor 

 Columbus, nor Shakespeare, nor Newton, produced an 

 appreciable effect on the world through the transmission 

 of their peculiar qualities by heredity. They did not 

 thus distribute the germs of their genius at last through 

 their countrymen and mankind. The manner of their 

 action on men was different; but the result was more 

 speedy as well as more effectual. They delivered their 

 message, did their work, and the others found it directly 

 profitable and acceptable to them. They lifted up the 

 others nearer to their own sublime heights ; and by such 

 a process it has ever been that real progress has been 

 made by the species as a whole endeavouring to ex- 

 pand itself to the dimensions of these kingly spirits, who 

 have been its true educators, improvers, and benefactors. 



6. It is to be further observed that all these great 

 men have expanded human nature on those sides in 

 which we differ chiefly from the lower animals in our 

 capacities for invention, art, thought, morality, religion, 

 which constitute our properly human as distinct from 

 our merely animal nature. They have developed the 

 higher and mental side, comprehending the intellect, the 

 soul, the social and moral sentiments, as distinguished 

 from the self-regarding and sensual side of our nature, 

 the animal impulses and dispositions, which the brutes 

 possess as well as we. 



And yet these other sides, the self -regarding and the 

 sensual, can never be got rid of, as science unmistakably 

 reminds us. They can never be left wholly behind us, 

 as useless and troublesome incumbrances on our march 

 to perfection, while man remains on the earth. However 



