THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD OF MAN.

While we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men.

There are nations more susceptible of cultivation, more highly civilized, more ennobled by mental cultivation, than others; but none in themselves nobler than others.

All are, in like degree, designed for freedom--a freedom which, in the ruder conditions of society, belongs only to the individual; but which, in social states, enjoying political institutions, appertains as a right to the whole body of the community.

If we would indicate an idea which, throughout the whole course of history, has ever more and more widely extended its empire; or which, more than any other, testifies to the much contested and more misunderstood perfectibility of the whole human race; it is that of establishing our common humanity--of striving to remove the barriers which prejudice and limited views of every kind have erected among men; and to treat all mankind, without reference to religion, nation, or colour, as one fraternity, one great communion, fitted for the attainment of one object--the unrestrained development of the physical powers.

This is the ultimate and highest aim of society, identical with the direction implanted by nature in the mind of man towards the indefinite extension of his existence.

He regards the earth in all its limits, and the heavens, as far as his eye can scan their bright and starry depths, as inwardly his own; given to him as objects for contemplation, and as a field for the development of his energies.

Even the child longs to pass the hills or the seas which enclose his narrow home; yet when his eager steps have borne him beyond those limits, he pines, like the plant, for his native soil; and it is by this touching and beautiful attribute of man,--this longing for that which is unknown, and this fond remembrance of that which is lost--that he is spared from an exclusive attachment to the present.

Thus deeply rooted in the innermost nature of man, and even enjoined upon him by his highest tendencies, the recognition of the bond of humanity becomes one of the noblest leading principles in the history of mankind.

-- Humboldt's Cosmos.