these numerous traits, and with each trait its share of the law of God.
He widely differs from them in this: that he possesses not a single
characteristic that is equally prominent in each member of his race. You
can say the housefly is limitlessly brave, and in saying it you describe
the whole house-fly tribe; you can say the rabbit is limitlessly timid,
and by the phrase you describe the whole rabbit tribe; you can say the
spider and the tiger are limitlessly murderous, and by that phrase you
describe the whole spider and tiger tribes; you can say the lamb is
limitlessly innocent and sweet and gentle, and by that phrase you
describe all the lambs. There is hardly a creature that you cannot
definitely and satisfactorily describe by one single trait--except man.
Men are not all cowards like the rabbit, nor all brave like the
house-fly, nor all sweet and innocent and gentle like the lamb, nor all
murderous like the spider and the tiger and the wasp, nor all thieves
like the fox and the bluejay, nor all vain like the peacock, nor all
frisky like the monkey. These things are all in him somewhere, and they
develop according to the proportion of each he received in his allotment:
We describe a man by his vicious traits and condemn him; or by his fine
traits and gifts, and praise him and accord him high merit for their
possession. It is comical. He did not invent these things; he did not
stock himself with them. God conferred them upon him in the first
instant of creation. They constitute the law, and he could not escape
obedience to the decree any more than Paige could have built the
type-setter he invented, or the Pratt & Whitney machinists could have
invented the machine which they built."

He liked to stride up and down, smoking as he talked, and generally his
words were slowly measured, with varying pauses between them. He halted
in the midst of his march, and without a suggestion of a smile added:

"What an amusing creature the human being is!"

It is absolutely impossible, of course, to preserve the atmosphere and
personality of such talks as this--the delicacies of his speech and
manner which carried an ineffable charm. It was difficult, indeed, to
record the substance. I did not know shorthand, and I should not have
taken notes at such times in any case; but I had trained myself in
similar work to preserve, with a fair degree of accuracy, the form of
phrase, and to some extent its wording, if I could get hold of pe