“THE PRIMEVAL DIGNITY OF MAN.” 
AN 
ADDRESS 
INTRODUCTORY 
TO A COURSE OF LECTURES 
ON 
H l J M A N P H YSIOLOG Y, 
DELIVERED 
AT THE TOLAND MEDICAL COLLEGE, 
15 Y 
J. CAMPBELL SIIORB, M. I)., 
PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY. 
.n 11ST E 4rtli, ISO 7. 
S A N F R ANCISCO : 
K. F. STERETT, PRINTER, 533 OLAY STREET, BELOW MONTGOMERY. 
1 8(5 1 . “THE PRIMEVAL DIGNITY OF MAN.” 
AN 
ADDRESS 
INTRODUCTORY 
TO A COURSE OF LECTURES 
ON 
HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY, 
DELIVERED 
AT THE TOLAND MEDICAL COLLEGE, 
BY 
J. CAMPBELL SIIORB, M. D., 
PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY. 
JUNE 4rth, 1867. 
SAN FRANCISCO: 
B. F. STERETT, PRINTER, 633 CLAY STREET, BELOW MONTGOMERY. 
1 8 6 7. CORRESPONDENCE. 
Toland Medical Colllge, 
San Francisco, June 7th, 1867. 
J. Campbell Shoe,b M. D., 
Professor of Physiology in the Toland Medical College : 
Sir, 
We, the Senior Students of Medicine have been appointed by the Class to convey to 
you a slight testimony of the high admiration in which they hold the Introductory Lecture 
delivered by you at the beginning of the Fourth Session of the College. 
Furthermore, we are instructed to request a copy of your address for publication that 
its rare philosophical and literary merit may be preserved in print. 
Very Respectfully, 
J. W. STEELY, L. ROBINSON, 
A. A. O’NEILL, T. W. SHELTON, 
J. J. HACKETT. 
Messbs. J. W. Steely, L. Robinson, A. A. O’Neill, 1 
T. W. Shelton, J. J. Hackett, J 
San Fbancisco, June 8th, 1867. 
Committee. 
Gentlemen, 
I have just received your very kind note, asking for a copy of my Introductory Ad- 
dress for publication. It gives me great pleasure to comply with your request. The hasty 
manner in which this address was prepared, renders it full of imperfections, which you will 
kindly forget in consideration of the truth it was designed to defend. 
The Primeval Dignity of Man is a doctrine very dear to all of us, and the humblest 
effort, directed to its preservation, becomes noble in consequence. 
I am, Gentlemen, 
Very Respectfully, your ob’t servant, 
J. CAMPBELL 8HORB. ADDRESS. 
You, Gentlemen of the Medical class, and myself, are 
on the eve of commencing a journey together, one, that in 
a certain sense, may be truly styled the journey of life, its 
beginning is the cradle, and its end the grave ! 
It is right and proper that we who are to travel in com- 
pany should know each other well, and that the journey 
may be pleasant and profitable, we should, as friends com- 
mence it. We shall each and all of us, from time to time, 
as the way leads up rocky steeps or is covered by the dark- 
ness of night, need each other’s kind words of encouragement 
and helping hands. Foot-worn and weary we may fall on 
the roadside,—or depressed by the prospect which will be 
dismal at times, we may feel like turning back, and under 
these circumstances mutual friendship must be our inspira- 
tion ; by it we will be endowed with ambition to reach the 
goal at our journey’s end,—with it we can dispel the whispers 
of despair—we can take new hopes and march resolutely 
forward. 
On me devolves the grateful and pleasing duty of being 
your guide! For your sakes I wish, from my heart, that 
you were in abler and more experienced hands. The country 
through which we are to pass is not as familiar to me as I 
could wish, and yet I trust, that to those who in this session 
have commenced their medical studies, as we journey on, I 
can point out truths and beauties, lovely to know and see 
and most necessary to remember; and for those who will, at 
the close of the present course, receive their diplomas, I 
can at least refresh their memories, already laden with 
many valuable lessons taught them by my most worthy 
predecessor in the chair of Physiology. 4 
Until comparatively a recent period, the region which we 
are about to enter was a dark and unexplored country. 
From very ancient times, every now and then we find that 
some daring traveler, urged by his love for the mysterious 
or his devotion to a science which was still in its infancy; 
ventured into this unknown realm, and coming back related 
the marvelous things he saw there. The stories were—ex- 
cept from the fact that they were novel or interesting—en- 
tirely devoid of practical ability, little better than pure 
speculation. 
But in more modern times, a host of travelers, with a 
courage that could not be daunted, and an industry that is 
beyond all praise, have started in a systematic manner, to 
examine and explore—like the spies sent by Moses into the 
land of Canaan—this mysterious country. Their labors 
have been most successful, they have made vast additions to 
knowledge, they have conferred incalculable benefits upon 
the human family, and they have built for themselves monu- 
ments more lasting than brass. 
Those hard working travelers have not been confined to 
our country. Throughout the world, where civilization 
existed, and human life was dear; were found a number in- 
spired with the same feelings,—cheered by the same hopes— 
having in view the same glorious end, making most valuable 
contributions to the topography of this once unknown land. 
They have brought back treasures with them, rich building 
material, quarried in far off places, massive pillars of fact, 
and rare gems of knowledge. In truth—its corner stone— 
they laid the foundation of a gorgeous palace, and the struc- 
ture goes slowly but nobly up, not finished but grand in 
architectural design, broad and well founded like the moun- 
tain, rising with jeweled walls with columns of wondrous 
beauty and strength, with friezes and cornices of exquisite 
imagery, higher and higher, into the very zenith. 
And we are called upon to study this beautiful but still 
unfinished temple,—we are asked to bring our contributions 
to it. Like our predecessors, we must labor,—ignoble offer- ingN we must never bring. We must follow in their foot- 
steps, guided by the lamps which they have left burning, 
and which if man be true to the lessons of History, will 
burn eternally as the stars. 
We must not, however, suppose that we have merely to 
follow in the path which they pursued, for they have 
garnered all that was valuable there. They tell us, for they 
know full well the truth, that to the right and left of the 
way there are dim vast tracts in the distance of which 
nothing is known, and where careful, patient investigation 
will reap a most abundant harvest. It is into these hitherto 
unexplored portions we must strive to enter—there dilli- 
gently to labor—hoping, praying to discover what, to the 
present hour, has escaped the scrutiny of man; in the pos- 
session of which we can securely hope for that distinction 
here which has given immortality to our predecessors, and 
that reward hereafter which Abou Ben Adhem received, 
when erased from the number of those who loved their 
Creator, he asked his Angelic Visitor “ to write him down as 
one who loved his fellow man!” 
I bespeak for myself your friendship,—you have mine most 
sincerely, and so as friends we start to-day upon our journey 
of human life—the study of human physiology. This is a 
science which investigates the process and phenomena of 
the life of the healthy human body, and explains the laws 
which govern them. Human life is the object of our study, 
and I have deemed it a fitting introductory, for reasons 
which shall appear hereafter, to a course of lectures on this 
subject, to review the justice of the claims to thatposition 
which man holds is peculiarly his own in the scale of 
creation. 
That a science may be fully appreciated, it is necessary 
carfully to examine the matter of which it treats. It may 
be laid down as a general proposition that the nobility of 
any science can be most perfectly demonstrated by showing 
the nobility of the object to which it is directed. 
It seems so useless and trite in this age of the world, to 6 
use the much hackneyed expression, that the proper study 
of mankind is man, or to advance arguments to show the 
grandeur of that investigation which has as its object the 
fullest knowledge of human life, that we feel as if we ought 
to preface any remarks on the subject with an apology. 
But the truth is, that though theoretically we are all con- 
vinced of the importance of the subject, we practically very 
much ignore it, and there is great reason to doubt if any of 
us could fully and satisfactorily answer the question if it 
were put to us, “ What is man, and what has he done to be 
considered this marvel of God’s creation, this master piece 
of his Omnipotence ?” 
We must not lose sight of the fact that though the 
present age is one of invention, it is certainly one of innova- 
tion too. As far as progress is concerned, it is not necessary 
that these should be associated, for one does not perforec 
imply the other. It is by too exclusive a consideration of 
the advantages of invention, that the dangers of innovation 
are overlooked and forgotten. The spirit of Invention 
reaches its highest excellence in addition to the present, not 
subtraction from the past, and Innovation, when applied to 
the removal of error,—the age harmonizing with the scheme 
of reformation,—should in every way be encouraged; but 
when it invades the sanctuary in which are stored the col- 
lected results of the experience of ages, and lays its sacri- 
legeous hands upon knowledge it has taken centuries to ac- 
cumulate, the principles which mighty minds arrived at only 
in dying, it is not a blessing but a curse, which we are 
called upon to avert. 
In our day, this is unfortunately the species of innovation 
that is so rife. It is a deluge threatening to submerge the 
land, and we must build our ark as speedily as we may, and 
trust that the Deity, whose greatest work we propose to vin- 
dicate, will guide us safely through the dark and troubled 
waters. If the past were altogether wrong, and the modern 
mind, distraught for notoriety, is forever dinning such doc- 
trines in our ears, then the present, which is its legitimate 7 
outgrowth, must partake of its nature and be full of error 
too. The age is a fearfully conceited one. Conceited! Yes, 
and full of the blackest ingratitude. It would hide from 
view the weak and the tottering forms of its ancestors, 
whose honor, the lapse of time far from diminishing, only 
renders more brilliant, and whose efforts opened the way to 
all the wonderful achievements that throng the present cen- 
tury. 
The time was—the youngest of us all can still well remem- 
ber it—when we believed in the history of the origin of man 
as we found it written in the Bible. To doubt its represen- 
tations was like questioning the existence of the Being with 
whom it was so intimately associated. The story ran, and 
there is an air of truthful simplicity about it all, that in the 
beginning, Omnipotence created the heavens and the earth 
and all contained therein, and from the dust of the earth, he 
formed a creature after his own image and likeness—he 
breathed into it the breath of life and called it man. Ante- 
rior to the moment that the fiat of creation went forth, it 
was resolved to make man in the likeness of his Creator. 
Philosophically speaking, we all know that spirit has no con- 
figuration or dimension, but from a careful consideration of 
the Mosaic account we are led to infer that when Deity shall 
pronounce himself to our mortal eyes, no matter how pro- 
foundly spiritualized, it will be in the form and semblance of 
a glorified man. In this thought there is an infinity of inspi- 
ration—a sufficient explanation for all the wonderful achieve- 
ments of the human intellect—a mighty stimulus to the 
development of the sublime possibilities of this magnificent 
creation! What has the Present done or tried to do with 
this precious heritage of the Past—this belief in the nobility 
of man—this faith in the Bible history of his origin? It has 
declared, we shudder as we tell the truth, that the Bible is 
a fraud and its authors imposters—it has thrown aside and 
trampled under feet its burning messages of prophecy, its 
sublime lessons of morality and love, its poetry and its elo- 
quence ; it has torn man from his high position, ridiculed the likeness after which he was created, and declared him the 
descendant of a monkey born in the fiery atmosphere of tropi- 
cal suns, away down in the grey dawn of creation. 
Let us stop here a moment and look around us. We are 
sitting, Marius like, amid the wrecks and ruins of the past, 
and hearing the sad but eloquent pleadings coming up from 
by-gone ages for justice, succor and defence. Man, our idol, 
is assassinated, his throne is destroyed, his glory eclipsed and 
his sovereignty over ! There was beauty, if nothing else, in 
our time-honored belief in the nobility of man’s origin, but 
the theory that the vandalism of the present proposes as a 
substitute is the very incarnation of ugliness. In the blazing 
light of modern science many fanciful notions that thronged 
the past, have been consumed, and we hear without regret 
that Neptune has been forced to drop his trident with which 
he controled the passions of the ocean and the pulses of the 
tides, and that iEolus guarded in his island home by walls of 
brass and smooth, precipitous rocks, keeps the wild winds 
in subjection no longer, but we turn with instinctive horror 
from such elaborate improvement as would disarticulate man 
from his Creator and make his destiny, one in common with 
the brutes of the field which perish. 
Gentlemen, you have heard, no doubt, of the development 
theory, one of the beautiful Caliban offsprings of this glori- 
ous century. This is a theory as false as it is pernicious. 
We smile now contemptuously at the poor deluded alchem- 
ists, who withdrew themselves from the familiar haunts of 
men, and throughout the solemn stillness of the mediaeval 
night, searched with blazing eyeballs for that magic stone 
which from the baser metals could tempt the burnished gold, 
and yet we are called upon to treat with consideration and 
respect their unworthy counterparts in this enlightened age— 
those ill-famed fanatics who would publish their blasphemous 
lie to the world that they had discovered that wonderful 
thing which metamorphosed a homely baboon into a glori- 
ous man. 
Gold will remain gold, and silver will remain silver, until 9 
the Protecting Hand which put this globe in motion is with- 
drawn, and elements return to the chaos of vapor from which 
Omnipotence evolved them, for the metals were different 
from the beginning and so will remain to the end; the 
monkey will remain a monkey until the fiat of creation 
which sent the unhappy monster here is accomplished, and 
man will remain a man, with an immortal soul and transcend- 
ent destiny forever and forever, as long as lie survives whose 
birth-day is eternity! 
This is not mere idle declamation—the wild dream of a 
youthful and credulously enthusiastic mind. They are migh- 
ty truths, which each and every one of us can read, writ- 
ten in ineffaceable characters upon the everlasting hills, and 
on the rocks, upon whose broad bosoms they have slept for 
centuries. Geology puts a torch in our hands, and guided 
by its friendly ray we can go back to the dark periods of this 
world’s history, “in the dark backward and abysm of time,” 
when not even a living thing, animal or vegetable, was seen 
upon the earth. In the vaporous desolation and melancholy 
stillness of that geologic day we can commence our investi- 
gations. We breath with difficulty, for noxious gases fill 
our lungs, and our feet nearly blister as we stand upon the 
heated crust, almost too thin to hold us up. Reverentially 
we approach the rocks, which have remained in spite of all 
sublunary convulsion—pillars of cloud by day—and pillars 
of fire by night. We lay our hand upon them as Moses did his 
wand upon the rock of IToreb, and to thirsty souls a stream 
of knowledge comes forth in plentiful profusion. Gratefully 
we gaze upon the strange inscriptions witten upon the stony 
leaves of those divine volumes and feel that the mind of God 
conceived the alphabet and with it wrote that history, with- 
out which, in these frail days, man most surely would go 
astray. 
What do we see upon those stony tablets of the ages? 
First, the simplest forms of life timidly appearing, forms of 
vegetable life, of course, they preceded the animal for which 
they were to furnish food. Ages on ages roll by, the higher 10 
types of plant life have appeared, the coal period and its 
profuse vegetation are recorded, animals come in upon the 
stage, commencing with an insect—a microscopic speck, too 
small for the unassisted human eye to discover—and running 
through an endless variety of forms terminating in those 
deadly devouring monsters of the Mesozoic times, those 
huge beasts beneath whose ponderous tread the very pillars 
of the earth trembled. 
From the appearance of the fern, the alpha of life of any 
kind upon this planet, to the creation and duration of the 
Megatherium, a lapse of ages intervened which we can 
scarcely ever comprehend. In all this time, except in the 
Great Architect of the universe, can we discover any evi- 
dence of mind, any record of genius? We will answer this 
question presently. The earth, at length fitted by the per- 
fection of its animal and vegetable organisms for a new 
creation, awaits his advent patiently, and man, its master— 
warm from the laboratory of Almighty God—appears upon 
the scene and takes his part in the great drama of creation. 
Coeval with his appearance commence the evidences of mind. 
We look in vain for them before. Armed with the micro- 
scope to search the earth, and the telescope to scrutinize the 
Heavens, summoning to our aid all the chemist’s art and the 
power of the geologist, we fail to discover anything that 
proves the existence of intelligence before man’s arrival upon 
this planet. Man and Mind they came together here, and 
to this truth the stony tablets of the earth, inscribed by the 
finger of Omnipotence, give the most incontrovertible testi- 
mony. His coming was the sun which in a later geologic 
period heralded the dawn of an intellectual day, after dark- 
ness had long brooded on the face of the deep and the con- 
fines of the earth. 
If there were anything in the development theory except 
wilful blindness and stupidity, we should find in the periods 
just anterior to the advent of man some dim outline, some 
prophetic foreshadowings of the light which burst upon us 
simultaneous with his creation—we should find a dawn gradu- 11 
ally developing into a perfect day. But there is no such 
thing. It is midnight and all its dark concomitants on one 
hand,—on the other highest noon with all its glory and efful- 
gence, and between the two there is an infinite chasm which 
no human ingenuity can bridge over! 
When man first appeared upon this planet his mind was 
as grasping, his perceptions as clear, and his possibilities of 
progress as unlimited as we find them now. Science there 
was none, at best, but little for this is based upon long con- 
tinued and accumulated observation and can come to full 
maturity only in later times, but the record of the love of 
the beautiful, the sublime and the terrible, stands out in bold 
relief on the darkness of the earliest historic times. The 
achievements of pure mind, as evidenced in philosophy, 
poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture, as far back as 
one can go, have never been surpassed, probably never 
equalled. Few of the relics, that have come down to us.— 
mutilated though they be and covered with the dust of cen- 
turies, are faultless, or if they have defects, they are such as 
mortality can never hope to rectify. 
And so Man and Mind are coeval and inseparable, and it is 
safe to conclude that had it not entered into the purpose of 
Omnipotence to create man, the world, surviving a million of 
years, would never have been illuminated by a single solitary 
flash of intelligence. We might rest our cause here, for by 
facts which admit of no controversy, having shown the 
nobility of man’s origin by the gift of mind which he alone 
of all sublunary things possesses, it were an easy task to fol- 
low him through his brilliant conquests, and prophecy the 
triumphs which in coming ages, retaining all and improving 
upon the collected results of the experience of the past, he 
will undoubtedly accomplish. But we purpose to go a little 
further, the battle with the enemies of mankind has com- 
menced. Unprovoked by any act on our part, the war is 
carried on with a malignancy that knows no bounds, and 
through the smoke of battle we read upon the banners of 
the cruel foe their appalling purpose, “ No quarter.” Feel- 12 
ing, as we must, some anxiety still in reference to the final 
result of the struggle, we must humbly invoke the aid of 
Him, whose thunderbolt can shiver into sand the adamantine 
rocks, begging for victory and peace! 
One of the arguments paraded with great ceremony and 
show of learning against the doctrines we are proud to de- 
fend, is the development of the intelligence of man through 
myriads of ages, from the instinct which belongs to the 
brute creation. Instinct is indeed a very wonderful gift, 
and we are often struck with illustrations of its power, so 
closely allied to mind that it were difficult to determine 
where one ended and the other began. A careful conside- 
ration, however, of the habits of men and animals, will 
reveal the fact that in man, disconnected with that train 
of thought which characterizes reason, we find an amount 
of instinct too—equal to the highest degree of the principle 
witnessed in the brute creation. The immediate search of 
the new-born infant for the food which is to nourish it, and 
the mechanical means the little thing adopts for attaining it 
are illustratious of instinct as clear and unmistakable as 
any ever witnessed in connection with the brute. And so 
man has all the instinct of the lower animals, is as smart as 
any of them, the possession of mind taken out of the ques- 
tion entirely. 
But if the argument of the development from instinct 
holds, it is fair to go back a little further, and assert that 
this principle in the brute is an improvement of the same 
faculty found in a form more or less modified in certain 
plants. It seems a very bold announcement that there is an 
instinct in plants, yet botanists will tell us of many evi- 
dences of its existence there. We well remember reading 
a very remarkable instance of the kind in the habits of a 
plant known as the Valisneria Spiralis. 
This is an aquatic plant, having its home in tidal 
streams. It belongs to that class in which the male and 
female are distinct individuals. The male plant has a long 
spiral body, by whose elongation or shortening in the ebbing 13 
or the flowing of the tide, it is able to keep its flower 
adapted to the surface of the water. The female plant has 
a straight stem and much shorter. It grows near the shore 
in secluded places, where the water is shallow and still. 
They are thus differently formed and remotely situated, and 
it was long a question how union took place and increment 
perpetuated. But careful watching revealed the fact that 
when the male flower reached its full maturity, the spiral 
stem became withered, and the flower separated itself and 
gallantly sailed over the water in quest of his lady love. 
For a while, the fickle thing, driven by the tide or blown 
by the wind, leaves the presence of his mate indifferent to 
'"'her attractions. But suddenly his flight is checked, we see 
him obeying a new and mysterious influence, and though 
wind and tide oppose him, he seek and finds his mate 
and their nuptials are duly solemnized. What is this 
stupendous influence which, operating at a distance and in 
the face of wind and tide, gives the male flower a new and 
right direction ? We may call it what we please. It is in- 
stinct if anything, and we are powerfully tempted to look upon 
it almost as perfect an instance as any we can find in all the 
mammalia animals. We could multiply examples, but it 
were weak and useless to do so. One is as good as a 
thousand, and if its salutary teachings are disregarded, no 
argument we can advance would reach the hopeless, help- 
less, blindness and imbecility of our adversaries ! 
Before we leave the subject of instinct in animals, it 
would be wTell to observe how in their manifestations of this 
principle, we discover that the brutes themselves acknowl- 
edge the supremacy of man, and in many ways evince that 
they have a legendary notion of the fact that in the begin- 
ning, as we find it written, dominion was given to him over 
the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air, and over all the 
earth. It was a beautiful fancy in the poet, in that charm- 
ing description of his, of the scenery of the island upon 
which the poor heart-broken Mariner was cast, and in giving 
us an idea of its extreme distance and isolation from the 14 
haunts of men, he tells us the beasts and birds were so wild 
that they were tame and not afraid of man. In the Millen- 
ium, probably, such sights will be seen, and from the poets 
lips the story falls sweetly upon our ears ; but the Natural- 
ist who deals in truth and ignores fancy, gives us a very 
different account. He tells us that nowhere in the world, 
neither in the eternal snows of the Artie circle, or the 
burning plains of tropical countries, neither in the sea or on 
the land, is found a creature which the presence of man 
will not put to flight. Impelled by the instinct of self- 
preservation, the defense of their young, or the pangs of 
hunger, animals of various kinds attack man repeatedly; but 
outside of these conditions, they fly at his approach—the 
tigar to his jungle, and the polar bear to his ice-fields where 
man may never follow! How, except on the hypothesis of 
primeval superiority can this phenomenon be explained ? 
In structure man is a pigmy—in physical strength a child— 
and in courage a very craven, compared to many animals, 
and yet his presence awes them all. 
On the dull tablets of the brutish mind, are written 
characters which time nor change can ever obliterate; 
characters of endless serfdom to man, and they accept the 
condition and acknowledge it in a mute but forcible way 
throughout their lives. 
And now another sphere of enquiry opens up to our con- 
sideration. In the possession of the faculty of speech, and 
in speech itself, we find a wonderful support to our princi- 
ples and a crushing argument against the development 
theories of our scientific adversaries. Language being the 
instrument of the expression or communication of thought, 
can only be found associated with intelligent or intellectual 
beings, and, of course, man alone of all terrestial animals 
possesses it. If our theory that man and mind were coeval 
and instantaneous, be correct, we should find Language, or 
the evidence of its existence appearing simultaneous with 
man’s creation. And such undoubtedly is the truth. Before 
the strata of the earth, explored by the searching spirit of 15 
modern enquiry gives token of man’s presence here, not the 
slightest evidence of the use of a language can be discov- 
ered ; but after his appearance on the scene, records of 
speech multiply, as we might imagine in a charming and 
plentiful profusion. 
If those fabulous projenitors of the [human family, which 
were undergoing the delightful and scientific process of 
metamorphosis, had the faintest conception of a language 
they certainly failed to leave any record behind them of 
their possession. The dispersion of mankind from the 
theatre of his divine manufacture, and the gradual expan- 
sion of his intelligence necessitated written language as a 
means of communication and preservation of knowledge— 
where we can find any traces of man, let the period be ever 
so early, we discover that he left a history of his presence— 
the minutes of his labors written in rude symbols, it may 
be, yet easily deciphered and full of interest. Were we to 
ask our adversaries why their friend the gorillas and baboons 
neglected to do their proportion of development scribbling— 
we would probably be told they were so busy metamor- 
phosing they had no time to attend to anything else. 
We do not wish to cumber this lecture, already long 
drawn out, with elaborate arguments to prove that man’s 
appearance here wTas instantaneous. The arguments are 
readily found, and he who runs, may read them. It is 
certain that nothing like man heralded his advent or typified 
his semblance. In one moment he is nowhere on the planet, 
in the next we find him in all his wonderful perfection. 
Take too geologic periods closely allied in point of time— 
in one no evidence of man exists; in the other we see him 
matured in physical configuration, an adult in intelligence. 
Associated with the idea of intellect is the necessity of a 
language by which it can be expressed. We are struck with 
the wonderful mechanism of the human eye, a perfect aggre- 
gate of most perfect parts of solids and liquids, of transpa- 
rent and opaque tissues, of curtains, lenses, and screens, most 
exquisitely adjusted. Yet of what value or utility would it 16 
be if Cimmerian darkness enveloped the world and not a ray 
of light was permitted to enter ? And the human ear, would 
it not be a useless organ in a planet of perpetual silence, 
where no sound was allowed to disturb the deep sleep of the 
atmosphere? The necessity of a language grows out of 
the phenomenon of the existence of mind as irresistibly as 
light from the contemplation of the eye, or sound from the 
structure of the ear. Language implies the presence or asso- 
ciation of two or more. Had Omnipotence created but one 
man the necessity of a language would not be so apparent, 
but even here it is hardly supposable that the lone creature 
would live on and yet have no communication with his 
Creator. The first lessons in life just begun were addressed 
to the ear and not the eye, and this truth involves the sub- 
lime idea of our progenitors conversing face to face with the 
Deity. The first Man, as to whether his name was Adam or 
not, we are sublimely indifferent, having a mind and the 
means of expressing it, required the presence of another to 
whom he could communicate his thoughts,—and the fiat of 
creation, which made him, went forth again, and lo! upon his 
enraptured vision burst the form of woman, his companion 
and his friend! And as we gaze upon her beauty now, which 
has followed her like a shadow through thousands of years 
to the present hour, as we study the loveliness of her face 
and form, and catch the sweet light of her eyes and the ten- 
der music of her voice, do we not all feel like asking with 
the poet— 
“ What impious tongue, ye blushing saints, would dare 
To hint that aught but Heaven ever placed her here 1” 
Gentlemen, when we come to investigate this subject by 
the light of pure reason, or dropping reason, when we take 
the plain, unmistakable teachings of history, whether writ- 
ten by man or inscribed by Omnipotence upon the strata of 
the Earth, do we find the principles of our ancestral faith 
weakened or our admiration for development theories in- 
creased ? Do we not cling with tenderest feeling to one, 
and reject with supreme disgust the other? In a word, do 17 
we not find the Mosaic account, from day to day, adapting 
itself more perfectly to the march of science, and within our 
souls grows the dear conviction, that as truth after truth is 
added to our already existing store of knowledge, and prop- 
erly balanced intellect, with untiring energies, brings to light 
new records from the subterranean archives of this planet, 
the impious vagaries of our small philosophers will disappear 
“and like the baseless fabric of a vision leave not a rack be- 
hind.” 
The first question proposed in the commencement of this 
lecture: “ What is Man ?” at length is answered; imperfectly, 
I know, but fully enough to meet the requirements of men 
who desire to be useful and practical, instead of scientific, at 
the sacrifice of all the traditions of the past. 
The second question: “ What has Man done ?” is one so 
vast in its proportions that wTe are almost afraid to attempt 
its solution. Indeed, we cannot, in a lecture of this kind, 
do more than skim over the surface; a regularly connected 
account of man’s progress from the time he became a historic 
character to the present day wrould consume many volumes. 
When the dispersion of mankind took place from the neces- 
sity of his multiplication, written language became an indis- 
pensable element of progress, and to this we are indebted for 
all our notions respecting the wonderful endowments of man 
in the most remote ages. It has kept the history of his 
recorded thoughts and actions in undying remembrance. It 
keeps in view his arts, his poetry, his eloquence and philoso- 
phy, his astronomy and mathematics, his love, his filial piety 
and patriotism, his faith in a Deity and his blessed hope of 
immortality. 
The geologist, delving in the depths of the earth, associated 
with the vestiges of man’s earliest existence, occasionally 
picks up a queer old coin. Let us look at it a moment. 
What a mine of thought is opened by its appearance, and fan- 
cies “Thick as leaves in Vallambrosa” fill our field of vision. 
This old coin has rare historic value, and if we will only 
listen, it will talk to us. It will tell us, in the day it was 18 
manufactured, there were well founded laws respecting the 
rights of property, there were modes of exchange and stand- 
ards of value, and governments by which they were estab- 
lished, regulated and kept in force; it tells us in those 
ancient days, miners prospected for metals, and occasionally 
struck the veins; that there were assaying establishments 
and mints from which it, with a thousand comrades, came 
forth the public usage. It paints the perfection of drawing 
and sculpture which preceded its appearance; it tells of the 
maturity of a language and its expression in writing, and the 
clear perceptions of the principles of arithmetic. And in 
our last gaze upon its ancient, venerable face, we behold its 
fear of oblivion and its desire to be remembered in coming 
ages. 
In those misty days which, so far as we are concerned, are 
certainly pre-historic times, man did what he has repeated, 
with gradually improving intelligence, down to this century. 
He founded empires which grew to be mighty, reached the 
zenith of their greatness, passed into a state of decrepitude 
and finally disappeared. On the grave of perished dynasties 
he has built new sovereignties, grander, nobler than any that 
flourished in the Past. Take the magnificence of Greece, as 
exemplified in the valor of her sons, the intellectuality of 
her statesmen and the wisdom of her philosophers, in the 
days when Leonidas met the invader at Thermopylae; or, 
later by a century, when Demosthenes by his impassioned elo- 
quence kept at bay the Macedonian king. Consider the 
grandeur of Rome, “that most high and palmy State of 
Rome, a little ere the mightiest Julius fell,” when Virgil 
sang'so sweetly in the garden of Maecenas; or Cicero, incan- 
descent with patriotic fire, hurled from the forum, those burn- 
ing javelins of formal, terrible impeachment against Cataline 
the conspirator; consider them both—Greece and Rome in 
the noon-tide of their glory; they were flowers that bloomed 
in a later day, the seeds were planted originally in the gar- 
dens of Assyria, from wThich the world in all ages has been 
supplied. Man was mighty in the beginning—a very giant, 19 
and the first recorded Empire that he founded in forms more 
or less modified, has been repeated in every system of civil- 
ized government, down to the present day. 
Gentlemen, have you ever stopped to reflect upon the 
the thoughts that must havp filled the mind of him who first 
beheld the ocean? A wide expanse of water, stretching into 
infinite distance, sublime when in repose, and terrible when 
its billows, lifted by the titan shoulders of the tempest, 
“mount to the welkin’s cheek,” did it not say to him, “ Thus 
far and no farther;” and did he not feel, if he disobeyed the 
voice of warning and tried an element not his own, that 
“ Like a drop of rain, 
He'd sink into the depths with bubbling groan, 
Without a grave—unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.” 
But man was not satisfied; he chafed at boundaries to his 
progress, he rebelled against the tyranny of the ocean, and 
that rebellion weak at first, triumphed at last, and he goes 
down to the seaandlauncheshisstrong-knit bark,—bespreads 
his canvass to the gale, and makes the trackless deep a high- 
way through the world;—and when in his wanderings on the 
sea,—night and tempest shut out the friendly light of sun and 
stars, he seeks his needle, that wonderous offspring of his 
intellect, and true as the lightning, whose spirit has been 
breathed upon it, it silently leads him to his haven at last! 
In the long ago, when the thunderstorm blackened the 
Heavens, and the conflagration of the lightning light up the 
entire sky, man trembled and fled, believing the Deity was 
angry and contemplated disaster to the world. In a later 
day, Franklin sends up his little paper kite and the fiery, 
untamed spirit of the clouds becomes the docile creature of 
his will, and where he bids it go, it meekly obeys, and human 
life and property no longer dread its vengeance. 
More than this : Man has taken a little wire and stretched 
it from land to land, and under the ocean from continent to 
continent, and over this slender thread, he sends the lightning, 
his messenger, which flashes his wishes and his thought “ from 
Indus to the Poles !” A word more ere we finish. We have 
all read in the Arabian Nights the story of the poor fisher- 20 
man who, in casting his nets, drew from the sea the copper 
vessel witli the seal of Solomon upon it. In opening the 
vessel a thick smoke issued from it and filled all the 
shore. Gradually the vaporous mass solidified and the form 
of a huge and angry genius appeared to the awe-struck fish- 
erman. The ungrateful demon, ignoring the means by 
which his deliverance w’as effected, was bent on destroying 
his saviour. Affecting to disbelieve that so enormous a giant 
was ever contained within the narraw compass of the copper 
vessel, the fisherman induced the genius to return, and once 
having him within his dungeon, he put the seal of Solomon 
upon it, and the Devil was at his mercy! 
Man, by a process of incantation his intellect devised, has 
raised from the surface of the water a spirit as vast, power- 
ful and destructive as the one which towered above the hap- 
less fisherman. He has bound him down with bands of iron 
and ribs of steel, he has laid an iron pathway for him,—earth 
and rocks would crumble under his mighty stride,—and over 
the valleys and through the mountain gorge the angry mon- 
ster goes, howling with breath of flame and sinews that 
never tire, transporting his master and his property to and 
from the four winds of Heaven! 
Steam in the hands of man has revolutionized the industry 
of the world. 
We can dwell no longer on his other triumphs. I have 
taken but a drop from the ocean of his wealth, study will 
recall what I have been obliged to omit. Be assured of 
this, however, that the more we investigate man’s past his- 
tory, his present achievements and his almost infinite possi- 
bilities, the more fully will be revealed the truth of the poet 
in that sublime apostrophe of his upon this marvel of Om- 
nipotence: “What a piece of work is man! how noble in 
reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how 
express and admirable ; in action how like an angel, in appre- 
hension how like a god ; the beauty of the world, the para- 
gon of Creation!”