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16 ESOTERIC ANTHROPOLOGY.
intellect and moral character, are below the average
elephant. But with all this, the fact remains, that man
is greatly superior to all other animals in his capacity,
and generally iu his development. He is an instrument
of greater compass and power, and more liable to get
out of order. His capacity for improvement is a ca
pacity for perversion and depravation. God could not
give him the power of progression without also giving
him liberty of action ; and liberty implies the power
of doing wrong. Man could not have had the power of
being sublimely great and happy, without the liability to
become degraded and miserable. In order to do good,
he must have been made at liberty to do evil ; and that
he might feel the glorious satisfaction of doing right, it
was necessary that he should have the dangerous faculty
of doing wrong.
God has done His best for man and the world. Could
He have done better, He doubtless would ; and the world
and mankind, in their present stage of progress, are just
as far along, and just as well off, as God could possibly
have them. Man and the earth are full of present dis
cords, but just as full of the possible harmonies of the
future.
It is our work now to study carefully the nature of
this complex and wonderful being, man ; to see wherein
he has strayed from nature ; with what results ; and how
these evils are to be remedied by a return to the path
of physical and moral rectitude.
These are one. All the laws of nature, which are
the laws of God, are in harmony, and discord is the
only sin.
When we exam"ie the structure of this animal, man,