The Destiny of Man

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Excerpt from The Destiny of Man: An Oration Delivered Before the Alumni of Lafayette College Preceding Commencement, in the First Presbyterian Church, Easton, Pa., On Tuesday Evening, July 26, 1853Whatever doubts some of the would-be wise have ventured in modern times respecting the unity in origin of the human race, it is undeniable that mankind is morally and historically one. The population of our globe is not a prodigious assem blage of individualities, related only by the loose aggregation of the sand heap. Society - the Human Racez - there must be some idea suggested by those sounds, and there must be some reality correspondent to their meaning. What do these words imply? Not merely that there are vast numbers of individual men, alike in physical structure and in mental con stitution, yet standing apart, each by himself. These words awaken the conception of a unity, in which all the parts are held together, forming one inseparable whole. They speak of multiplied, diversified and strong relations. Society finds not its counterpart in some crowded thoroughfare throughwhich men press, each holding on to his own way and busied with his own thoughts, scarce noticing the throng around him, except to avoid being jostled by them as they pass. Constrained by necessities of his inward nature to put him self in living connection with his fellows, man is subjected in consequence to new laws of life, to new conditions of activity. He no more moves or acts by himself or for himself alone than one of the planets of our solar system can wheel ou ward in its orbit unin¿uencing and unin¿uenced. And as well might the natural philosopher think to discover all that can be known of matter in the laws which govern a single body unacted upon from without, while neglecting those which regulate the motions, harmonies and perturbations of bodies acting on each other, as the student of man imagine that he can get to the bottom of his subject by the sole study of the isolated individual. Each man born into the world becomes a part of the' moving mass, and is what the social in¿uences to which he is exposed make him. Not that he loses his personality, his self-acting power, and becomes an impuissant thing, a mere creature of the forces which play upon him with no inherent life of his own. Society is not to be conceived of as a vast machine moved by a grand spring of its own, and individual men as the wheels which move only as they are propelled. The life of society is but the result ant of all the living forces found within its bosom. It has no existence separate from the individuals that compose it, any more than the gravitation of the universe exists independently of material bodies. Each man has a living soul, with an energy, intelligence and will, which are modified and acted on by social position and social in¿uences, but which are never lost.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.