Man

“What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” The psalmist’s question, answered at once with the claim that man is made little lower than God and crowned with dominion over the creatures¹, runs through the Harvard Classics more insistently than almost any other. It is a question about a nature: what sets man apart, what he is made of, whether he is good or corrupt, how he stands to his fellows and to the universe. It is also a question about value, about the dignity and the misery of the being who asks it. Because every other inquiry in these books, moral, political, religious or poetic, presupposes some answer, the idea of man is less one topic among others than the ground on which the others stand. Pope states the presupposition plainly. He proposes to study man’s nature and state first, since duty depends on man’s condition and purpose², and he concludes that the proper study of mankind is man³.

The call to self-knowledge is ancient. Epictetus asks whether we know what Man is and to what end we were born^4,5, and Marcus Aurelius holds that only what serves man’s nature as man can rightly be called his⁶. The moderns turn the call into method. Hobbes’s “read thyself” rests on the claim that the passions are alike in all men, though their objects vary⁷. Hume makes the same uniformity the basis of a science of human nature: avarice, ambition and revenge operate in every nation and age, so that a traveller’s tale of men without them may be rejected^8,9. Dryden finds Chaucer’s pilgrims still walking among us, mankind being ever the same¹⁰, and Johnson praises Shakespeare’s characters as the progeny of common humanity¹¹.

Against this confidence stands a persistent doubt. Augustine calls man a great deep whose heartbeats are harder to number than his hairs¹². Pascal finds man to himself the most wonderful object in nature, unable to conceive his body, his mind, or how they are joined¹³. Penn notes that we are ignorant of our own digestion and rational soul¹⁴, and Carlyle observes that the uttered part of any life is a small fraction of the unconscious whole¹⁵. A third position disputes uniformity itself. Burns finds man a puzzle that no system, not even Pope’s ruling passion, can define¹⁶. Bagehot denies that men are formed on one ideal type¹⁷, and Taine complains that earlier thought knew man in the abstract but not men¹⁸. Mill gives the dispute its sharpest modern form when he attacks the habit of treating differences between individuals, races and sexes as innate rather than as products of circumstance¹⁹.

What distinguishes man from the brutes? The prevailing answer is reason and speech. Descartes holds that reason alone constitutes us men, and that even the dullest man surpasses the most perfect animal in language^20,21. For Hobbes, speech and method raise man above other creatures, though they also make him uniquely liable to absurdity^22,23. Adam Smith finds a humbler sign in the propensity to exchange, found in no other animal²⁴. Pascal makes thought man’s whole dignity²⁵. Gray and Shelley note that man alone looks before and after^26,27.

Rousseau moves the distinction elsewhere. Man is specifically a free agent, and his perfectibility both raises him and lets him fall lower than any beast^28,29. Schiller agrees that man is the creature who does not remain where nature placed him³⁰. Mill, borrowing Humboldt, calls human nature a tree that grows from inward forces rather than a machine built to a pattern^31,32. Ecclesiastes stands nearly alone in denying any preeminence: man and beast share one breath and return to one dust³³. Far more common is the warning that man who abandons reason sinks below the beast, sounded by Hamlet³⁴, by Penn on the drunkard^35,36, and by Mephistopheles, who mocks reason as the gift that makes man more brutish than the brutes³⁷.

The distinction implies a composite. Epictetus sees man sharing body with the animals and reason with the gods³⁸. Browne calls him an amphibium and true microcosm, living the lives of mass, plants, animals, men and spirits³⁹. Hugo makes the same twofold nature the root of Christian drama^40,41. Kant gives the doctrine its critical form: man belongs to the sensible world as receptive of sensation and to the intelligible world as pure activity⁴². Whether the two sides war or can be reconciled divides the authors. Luther sets the flesh lusting against the spirit within one person⁴³, and Rousseau’s vicar infers from the pull of reason against passion that man is no simple substance⁴⁴. Byron’s Manfred, half dust and half deity, finds that mortality wins⁴⁵. Schiller alone makes reconciliation the goal. Man fails his destination if either sense or form dominates⁴⁶, and he is fully man only when he plays, since play develops both natures together^47,48. A third, Stoic line simply identifies the man with the ruling part. The body is vessel and instrument, intelligence alone is properly one’s own^49,50, and George Long glosses the body as vesture worn in the present existence⁵¹.

On this foundation rest the affirmations of dignity. Sophocles’ chorus hymns man as the most wonderful and fearful of creatures, master of sea, plough and beast, yet unable to escape death^52,53. The biblical and Christian writers ground dignity in the divine image. Milton’s Adam and Eve stand erect in their Maker’s likeness^54,55, and Bacon argues that to deny God is to destroy man’s nobility, since he is kin to the beasts by body and noble only if kin to God by spirit⁵⁶. Rousseau’s vicar places that likeness in conscience⁵⁷, and Channing calls reason and conscience a ray of Divinity⁵⁸. Kant secularizes the claim without weakening it. Rational beings are persons, ends in themselves, and possess a dignity beyond all price, independent of wants and external relations^59,60,61.

From such dignity follows equality. Hobbes reaches it from a different direction, holding men roughly equal by nature and rejecting the view that some are born to command⁶². Pascal reminds the great that their feet rest as low as anyone’s⁶³. Burns makes the theme his own: a man’s a man for a’ that⁶⁴. Channing and Emerson extend it into democratic doctrine^65,66, and Emerson presses it to the divinity of the individual. Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist⁶⁷, and man is a sot who now and then wakes to find himself a prince⁶⁸. Whitman holds nothing in the known universe more divine than men and women⁶⁹.

Yet the same books dwell as long on misery. Job’s man is of few days and full of trouble, born to it as the sparks fly upward^70,71, a worm before God⁷². The psalmist likens him to vanity and a passing shadow⁷³. Homer’s Odysseus finds nothing on earth feebler than man⁷⁴, and the chorus of Oedipus will call no mortal blest⁷⁵. Kempis concludes that man is nothing and has nothing good of himself⁷⁶. Hamlet traces Alexander to the bunghole⁷⁷. Bacon calls life a bubble⁷⁸, and Burns’s refrain is that man was made to mourn, his griefs multiplied by man’s inhumanity to man⁷⁹. Lear asks whether man is no more than this, and finds unaccommodated man a poor, bare, forked animal⁸⁰, though he also insists that without superfluity man’s life is cheap as a beast’s⁸¹.

The modern sense of cosmic scale sharpens the theme. Pascal asks what a man is in the Infinite⁸², Voltaire calls him a mite who fancies himself the image of the Infinite⁸³, and Newcomb sees human affairs sink before the frame of the heavens⁸⁴. Even here the ancients had answered in advance. Epictetus allows that man is a speck in body but holds him equal to the gods in reason⁸⁵.

Pascal unites both strands. Man is a thinking reed, feeblest in nature yet nobler than the universe that kills him, because he knows he dies⁸⁶. He is a chimera, judge of all things and imbecile worm⁸⁷, neither angel nor brute, and he who would act the angel acts the brute⁸⁸. Hamlet’s praise of man, noble in reason and infinite in faculty yet a quintessence of dust⁸⁹, and Pope’s middle being, darkly wise and rudely great³, belong to the same vision. Pascal pushes further than either. Wretchedness itself proves greatness, since a ruined house is not miserable and only a deposed king is^90,91. The paradox, he holds, is explained only by two states, creation and fall^92,93. His point is that error comes from ignoring that our present state differs from our first⁹⁴, and that knowledge of God without knowledge of our corruption breeds pride, as the reverse breeds despair⁹⁵. Milton’s Michael says the image was defaced by serving appetite⁹⁶, and Penn holds man a contradiction to himself by corruption, not constitution⁹⁷. The Romantics transpose the paradox into striving. Faust, claiming to be God’s image, is thrust back to humanity’s uncertain fate⁹⁸. Emerson’s man is “God in nature” and “a weed by the wall”⁹⁹, and Browning sees the spark of soul that disturbs his clod as making him a God in the germ¹⁰⁰.

Here lies the great controversy over man’s goodness. Augustine finds selfishness in the infant, whose innocence lies in weak limbs rather than will¹⁰¹. Bunyan’s pilgrims read the heart as evil from youth¹⁰², and Pascal speaks of two natures in us, lust having become a second nature¹⁰³. Hobbes, without theology, finds a restless desire of power after power in all mankind¹⁰⁴ and three causes of quarrel in human nature: competition, diffidence and glory¹⁰⁵. Machiavelli calls men thankless, fickle and false¹⁰⁶. Rousseau answers Hobbes directly. Natural man is not wicked but gentle, restrained by compassion^107,108, not a wolf¹⁰⁹. Emerson denies any pure malignity¹¹⁰, Franklin thinks man can be greatly amended by good management¹¹¹, and Mill rejects radical corruption in favour of Greek self-development joined to Christian self-government¹¹². Between the camps lies a broad literature of folly that needs no verdict on depravity. It is chiefly Pascal’s account of diversion, by which men flee the thought of themselves^113,114, and Burns’s wish to see ourselves as others see us¹¹⁵.

The controversy carries over into politics. For Marcus Aurelius man is a rational and therefore social animal¹¹⁶, all men akin through shared intelligence¹¹⁷. Carlyle and Burke likewise hold that man becomes what he can be only in society^118,119. Hobbes’s natural condition, by contrast, is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short¹²⁰. Rousseau’s savage is solitary too, but self-sufficient and not miserable^121,122, and society is what produces artificial men with factitious passions¹²³. Schiller develops the charge. The Greeks embodied whole human nature in each individual, while moderns cultivate only fragments of their faculties¹²⁴. Emerson’s man in society is divided into functions, the scholar being Man Thinking¹²⁵, and he fears that machines unman their users¹²⁶. Wordsworth laments what man has made of man¹²⁷.

Finally the books test the common nature against its varieties. Darwin, struck by the gulf between Fuegian and Englishman, still holds them one race differing by degrees of civilization, and he marvels at Jemmy Button’s transformation^128,129,130. Taine treats race as innate hereditary disposition¹³¹, the position Mill resisted. On the sexes, Cervantes’ speakers and Milton’s Adam voice old reproaches^132,133, while Ruskin describes distinct natures that complete each other and rejects talk of superiority¹³⁴. Augustine and Wordsworth read childhood in opposite lights, the one finding the self-centred will¹³⁵, the other the child who is father of the man¹³⁶.

The questions remain open in just these terms. Is human nature uniform or plastic? Is it fallen, naturally good, or merely self-interested? Can its two sides be harmonized, or only ruled? The authors agree on surprisingly little except that the question must be asked, and that whoever answers it has thereby decided much else.