rtain divine
spark of genius and intellect.

Though man is born a frail and powerless being, nevertheless he is safe
from all animals destitute of voice; and at the same time those other
animals of greater strength, although they bravely endure the violence
of weather, cannot be safe from man. And the result is, that reason
does more for man than nature does for brutes; since, in the latter,
neither the greatness of their strength nor the firmness of their
bodies can save them from being oppressed by us, and made subject to
our power. * * *

Plato returned thanks to nature that he had been born a man.

II. * * * aiding our slowness by carriages, and when it had taught men
to utter the elementary and confused sounds of unpolished expression,
articulated and distinguished them into their proper classes, and, as
their appropriate signs, attached certain words to certain things, and
thus associated, by the most delightful bond of speech, the once
divided races of men.

And by a similar intelligence, the inflections of the voice, which
appeared infinite, are, by the discovery of a few alphabetic
characters, all designated and expressed; by which we maintain converse
with our absent friends, by which also indications of our wishes and
monuments of past events are preserved. Then came the use of numbers--a
thing necessary to human life, and at the same time immutable and
eternal; a science which first urged us to raise our views to heaven,
and not gaze without an object on the motions of the stars, and the
distribution of days and nights.

III. * * *[332] [Then appeared the sages of philosophy], whose minds
took a higher flight, and who were able to conceive and to execute
designs worthy of the gifts of the Gods. Wherefore let those men who
have left us sublime essays on the principles of living be regarded as
great men--which indeed they are--as learned men, as masters of truth
and virtue; provided that these principles of civil government, this
system of governing people, whether it be a thing discovered by men who
have lived amidst a variety of political events, or one discussed
amidst their opportunities of literary tranquillity, is remembered to
be, as indeed it is, a thing by no means to be despised, being one
which causes in first-rate minds, as we not unfrequently see, an
incredible and almost divine virtue. And when to these high faculties
of soul, received from nature and expanded by social institutions, a
pol