Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Address Delivered on the Evening of December 4, 1838, Before the Young Men's Association for Mutual Improvement in Albany, as Introductory to Their Annual Course of Lectures
Man, in the constitution of his nature, stands related equally to the material and the immaterial world; and thus constitutes a sort of connecting link between the higher and the lower orders of existence. Above him are purely spiritual beings who act independently of bodily organs, and whose mode and sphere of action we very imperfectly comprehend. Below him is matter, in its various forms and combinations - matter combined with animal instinct matter combined with vegetable life; matter as you see it in the stones of the mountain and in the clods of the valley. Man is neither all matter nor all mind; but a wonderful compound of both. If, in consideration of one part of his nature, he is compelled to look down to the earth, and say unto Corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister, he is privileged, in view of another part of it, to look up to heaven, and say to the brightest angel that burns there, Thou art my brother.
But notwithstanding man is a complex being, it is the mind that gives him his chief importance.
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