What he
is and is to be we must attempt to trace in another lecture. But to
one or two characteristic results of his progress we must call
attention here.
The principal subject of man's study is not so much the things which
surround him as his relation to them and theirs to each other. His
environment has become really one, not so much one of tangible and
visible objects as of invisible relations. And these will demand
endless investigation. The more he studies them the more wonderful
do they become. The vein broadens and grows indefinitely richer the
deeper he searches into it. We find thus the purpose of the
intellect; it is to study environment.
And now a little about motives. The animal begins with appetite, and
some animals and men never get any farther. And yet how easily this
appetite for food is satiated! We all remember our experiences as
children around the Thanksgiving or Christmas table. What a
disappointment it was to us to find how soon our appetite had
forsaken us, and that we had lost the power of enjoying the
delicacies which we had most anticipated. And over-indulgence often
brought sad results and was followed by a period of penitential
fasting. And the appetites for sense gratification must always lead
to this result. They not only crave things which "perish with the
using;" temporarily at least, often permanently, the appetite itself
perishes with the gratification.
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