Kingsland, John P. 编

暂无相关内容，正在全力查找中

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ch. ii.] HUMAN NATURE 35 CHAPTER II MANKIND The problems involved in the existence and the present condition of the human race exercised a peculiar fascination over my friend, and were studied by him with the keenest interest. His notes on these subjects are very numerous, and in the present chapter I put before the reader a few selections. They are most of them from his earlier manuscripts, and in the succeeding chapters some modifications of the views embodied in some of these extracts will probably be noted; but the reader will find in them all that note of faith, that deep and sincere conviction of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, which appears more and more clearly in all that he wrote after he had emerged from that conflict with doubt to which I have alluded in the previous chapter. The following extract will give the reader some idea of the point of view from which he contemplated mankind:? " Human nature, as we see it, presents the spectacle of conditioned personality, as yet not fully acquainted with or having full control overits conditions, nor having fully adjusted them to its environment. " The extent and the right use of his powers man is at present learning from experience; but he has as yet only imperfectly succeeded in doing either; hence the sin, the misery, and the confusion of life. " Why the Eternal should allow man thus to find out for himself his powers and the right use of them, we cannot say, any more than we can say why He has given human nature the powers and constitution which it has, instead of different ones; why, that is to say, He has conditioned personality as we find it to be conditioned, with a body, with five senses, and with a mind. Can we, however, conceive of any other plan (than this of allowing humanity to find o...