The pleasure we derive from any department of knowledge is largely due to the glimpse which it gives us of our own nature. It is neither dimmed by time nor tarnished by repetition for man, both in respect of himself and of his species, is now, and evermore will be, the center of unsatisfied human curiosity. The saying of the poet that “The proper study of mankind is man,” and which has been the starting point of so many lectures, essays and speeches, holds its place, like all other great utterances, because it contains a great truth and a truth alike for every age and generation of men. The tendency to the universal, in such discussion, is altogether natural and all controlling: for when we consider what man, as a whole, is what he has been what he aspires to be, and what, by a wise and vigorous cultivation of his faculties, he may yet become, we see that it leads irresistably to this broad view of him as a subject of thought and inquiry.
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