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The following Lectures were prepared for the Philosophical Institutionof Edinburgh, and were delivered, with the exception of a few passages,before audiences consisting of Members of that Institution on theevenings of 8th and 11th December in the present year.
Edinburgh, December 1885.
Ὥσπερ τελεωθὲν βέλτιστον τῶν ζῴων ἄνθρωπος οὕτω καὶ χωρισθὲν νόμουκαὶ δίκης χείριστον πάντων.—Aristotle.
History, whether founded on reliable record, or on monuments, or onthe scientific analysis of the great fossil tradition called language,knows nothing of the earliest beginnings. The seed of human society,like the seed of the vegetable growth, lies under ground in darkness,and its earliest processes are invisible to the outward eye.Speculations about the descent of the primeval man from a monkey, of theprimeval monkey from an ascidian, and of the primeval ascidian from aprotoplastic bubble, though they may act as a potent stimulus to thebiological research of the hour, certainly never can form thestarting-point of a profitable philosophy of history.
As revealed in history, man is an animal, not only generically differentfrom, but characteristically antagonistic to the brute. That which makeshim a man is precisely that which no brute possesses, or can by anyprocess of training be made to possess. The man can no more be developedout of the brute than the purple heather out of the granite rock whichit clothes. The relation of the one to the other is a relation of mereoutward attachment or dependency—like the relation which existsbetween the painter’s easel and the picture which is painted onit. The easel is essential to the picture, but it did not make thepicture, nor give even the smallest hint towards the making of it. Sothe monkey, as a basis, may be essential to the man without being in anyway participant of the divine indwelling λόγος which makes a man aman. The two are related only as all things are related, inasmuch asthey are all shot forth from the great fountain-head of all vitalforces, whom we justly call God.
The distinctive character of man as revealed in history is threefold.Man is an inventive animal, and he does not invent from a compulsion ofnature, as bees make cells or as swallows build nests. These are allprescribed operations which the animal must perform; but the inventivefaculty in man is free, in such a manner that the course of its actioncannot be foreseen or calculated. It revels in variety, and, above allthings, shuns that uniformity which is the servile province of bruteactivity. A man may live in a hole like a fox, but his proper humanityis shown by building a house and inventing a style of architecture. Aman can