A great original thinker, untrammelled by the schools, and independent
of precedents, he saw nature before him, and studied closely all her
developments. Eminently schooled in the philosophy of life, deeply
read in the human mind and the heart, he searched for all the
influences operating its conclusions, and the motives of human action:
the relations of man to external nature, the connection of mind with
matter, the origin of things, their design as developed in their
creation, their connection and dependence, one upon the other, and the
relation of all to the Creator, and in those the duty of man. It was
his idea, that, commencing from the humblest, and ascending to man,
through created nature, the design was manifest that these were all,
in the animal and the vegetable kingdom, assigned by the Creator for
man's uses. To him alone, in all these creations, are given the
faculties necessary to a comprehension of the nature of all of these,
as well as their uses.
From this fact, so powerfully prominent in all natural developments,
he viewed man as the most intimate relation of the Creator on this
globe, and discovering in him no designs beyond the cultivation of the
great faculty of thought for time, the inference was natural that his
future was not for time, or time's uses.
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