The Dignity of Man

and orderless will, through man, develop into the most beautiful order, and that which is already harmonious will become ever more harmonious, according to laws not yet developed. Man will extend order into the shapeless mass, and a plan into universal chaos; through him will corruption form a new creation, and death call to another glorious life. Such is man, if we merely view him as an observing intelligence; how much greater if we think him as a practical, active faculty? Not only does he apply the necessary order to existing things. He gives them also that order which he selected voluntarily, wherever his footsteps led him. Nature awakens wherever his eyes are cast; she prepares herself to receive from him the new, brighter creation. Even his body is the most spiritualized that could be formed from the matter surrounding him. In his atmosphere the air becomes softer, the climate milder, and nature assumes a brighter smile from the expectation to be changed by him into a dwelling-place and a nurse of living beings. Man commands coarse matter to organize itself according to his ideal, and to furnish him the substance which he needs. What was formerly dead and cold arises at his command from the earth into the nourishing corn, the refreshing fruit, and the animating grape, and will arise into other things as soon as he shall command otherwise. In his sphere the animals become ennobled, cast aside under his intelligent eye their primitive wildness, and receive healthier nourishment from the hand of their master, which they repay by willing obedience.