Preamble

If someone from another world were to visit us, being a spiritual being, and were to behold man, the impressions from such contemplation would be such that he would esteem man as either a superior spirit incarnate, coming to reign upon the earth, or a heavenly citizen descended from the heavens to quicken the earth and give it sensation and life, to draw it out from the state of inertia, to grant it movement through his presence, to direct all creation through his intellect and word in order to save it from destruction. He would regard man as the intelligent soul of creation, giving it sensation and reason to understand its Creator. In no way could man be underestimated; for he knows his weaknesses and his deficiencies; for he begets, raises, and develops both physically and spiritually; this first stage of human life gives him grounds for straying and for forming false ideas and opinions about himself and erroneous judgments, on account of which he regards himself so humiliated before his own eyes that he forgets himself and overlooks his own greatness and the power of the word by which he judges himself and proclaims his own worth, yet he is unable to perceive and discover the superiority, worthiness, and divine attributes through which he is more closely related to the heavenly spirits than he is to the other creatures of earth through his weakness to the remaining creation and to the inhabitants of the earth.

Regarding the esteem of man, we suffer from the same difficulty as with the diffused beauty dispersed over the whole face of the earth. All things are adorned with boundless beauties, all things are endowed with such abundant graces that even a single flower in full bloom would have been sufficient to adorn the world; and yet so often do we disdain the peculiar and brilliant image unfolding before our eyes that we do not even deign to look upon it; we pass by without the slightest impression. We bestow the same disregard upon the brilliant radiance of the sun through habit. The Heaven that proclaims the glory of the divine Creator likewise arouses little wonder in us and merits little attention from us. Yet what would we say, we who so greatly underestimate all things, if we were to ascend from the dark recesses of the earth in the prime of our youth and behold humans in their full age and maturity, the earth in its prime splendor, the sea in all its magnificence, the Heaven in the fullness of its glory? The impression would be such as to astonish and strike speechless the young observer, hitherto so eloquent and talkative. He would discover in all things brilliance, beauty, grace, delight, wisdom, understanding, omnipotence, and goodness, and would perceive the divine Artisan of creation, endowed with such abundant virtues; and he would feel himself most honored, able to discover the Creator from the creation; he would believe that he hears the divine voice speaking to him words of immortal life, and his heart, united with the divine and ineffable beauty of the revealed Creator, would be seized with utter devotion to Him, and forgetfulness of his own earthly existence would unite him with the spirits of Heaven. Such would be the result of this first contemplation. And yet habit casts a shadowy veil covering all grace, all brilliance, all magnificence; often it so darkens things that it even effaces all delight, all satisfaction, all joy, and alters things before our eyes to such a degree that even our sensations are transformed, and disagreeable things take the place of agreeable ones; and where joy should fill the soul, we feel instead an inevitable and irresistible sorrow. Such words lead to the underestimation and humiliation of man.

Man has grown accustomed to viewing the external man superficially and paying little attention in his mind to the inner man, and so has underestimated him. Man’s underestimation is analogous to the underestimation of the entire world; for just as the world receives esteem proportional to the attention it merits, so also man; and just as the cause of the world’s underestimation lies not in the world itself, but in superficiality, so also in man; not the ground of humiliation lies in him, but in the mind’s inattentiveness. Yet since things that are underestimated do not lose their worth by being underestimated— for it is incapacity, not lack of endowments, that has humbled them—neither does man cease to be most honored by the superficial underestimation of careless observers, but retains witnessed worth, excellence, and grandeur; for behold, a young researcher, a young investigator discovers what others could not find; behold, a wise and learned scholar, bearing the binoculars of science, sees things with different eyes, wholly other than what things appear; and the botanist stands in ecstasy before a tiny flower, and for an hour marvels at its wonderful attributes and its wonderful Creator; and the astronomer stands with reverence gazing upon the heavenly vault, and the wonderful cosmos of Heaven, which the divine Creator created for His glory and magnificence; and the philosopher who takes man as the object of his study recognizes him as the most noble of beings in creation, the most honorable, and as one who has received peculiar favor from his Maker.

The difference of the conclusions drawn teaches us that we ought to be deep researchers and careful examiners. Just as we examine both the external and internal organism of objects for accurate understanding and esteem of them, so must we study man for a true esteem of him; for a one-sided examination of the body may lead to the most incomplete and erroneous conclusions, which little differ from superficial observation. Man must be known in depth, not on the surface; we must come to know his spiritual powers, his spiritual life, his manner of living, his relations to the world and to his Creator; we must examine the purpose of his appearance upon the earth, so that we may know him worthily, so that concerning him may be restored what is fitting. Those who have already completed this work carefully reveal, arriving at the end, that man is a rational being, having a purpose on the earth, that he has a heavenly soul, and that only in his body does he belong to the earth, connecting it with the heavenly God. The opinion of those who think thus carries such weight that true reason and true science demand that these things be true. We too wish to demonstrate by examining man first externally and then internally.