amely, his essential individuality.

It is true that the human family, so called, is divided into many
distinct races, having each its peculiar conformation, color, and so
forth, which together constitute essential differences; but it is
to be remembered that these essentials are all physical; and _so
far_ they are properly generic, as implying a difference in kind.
But, though a striking difference is also observable in their moral
being, it is by no means of the same nature with that which marks
their physical condition, the difference in the moral being only of
degree; for, however fierce, brutal, stupid, or cunning, or gentle,
generous, or heroic, the same characteristics may each be paralleled
among ourselves; nay, we could hardly name a vice, a passion, or
a virtue, in Asia, Africa, or America, that has not its echo in
civilized Europe. And what is the inference? That climate and
circumstance, if such are the causes of the physical variety, have no
controlling power, except in degree, over the Moral. Does not this
undeniable fact, then, bring us to the fair conclusion, that the moral
being has no genera? To affirm otherwise would be virtually to
deny its responsible condition; since the law of its genus must be
paramount to all other laws,--to education, government, religion. Nor
can the result be evaded, except by the absurd supposition of generic
responsibilities! To us, therefore, it seems conclusive that a moral
being, as a free agent, cannot be subject to a generic law; nor
could he now be--what every man feels himself to be, in spite of
his theory--the fearful architect of his own destiny. In one sense,
indeed, we may admit a human genus,--such as every man must be in his
individual entireness.

Man has been called a microcosm, or little world. And such, however
mean and contemptible to others, is man to himself; nay, such he must
ever be, whether he wills it or not. He may hate, he may despise, yet
he cannot but cling to that without which he is not; he is the centre
and the circle, be it of pleasure or of pain; nor can he be other.
Touch him with misery, and he becomes paramount to the whole
world,--to a thousand worlds; for the beauty and the glory of the
universe are as nothing to him who is all darkness. Then it is that he
will _feel_, should he have before doubted, that he is not a mere
part, a fraction, of his kind, but indeed a world; and though little
in one sense, yet a world of awful magnitude i