In the earliest ages; in the very childhood of the race, the momentous question was asked: What am I? The solution was felt to be fraught with momentous consequences not only in this life but the interminable future which was vaguely shadowed in the mind of savage man. The answers given became the foundations of the great religious systems of the world. The conjecture of untutored minds was received as the true system of causation, and growing hoary with age arrogated to itself infallible authority, and required implicit faith, and the exercise of reason, only, in making palatable the requirements of that faith. Conceived in an age when nature was an unknown realm, when science opened her mysteries to the understanding, and one by one, dogmas claiming infallibility were shown to be false, there of necessity was antagonism and conflict. I do not propose to enlarge on the theological aspect of this subject more than incidentally. That treatment has grown “stale, flat and unprofitable,” for every drop of vital juice it contained has been extracted long ago. The interminable sects, wrangling over the dogmatic solution of this vital question of man’s origin and destiny, arriving at nothing determinate, wrangling with each other and themselves, are not incentives to beguile the earnest truth-seeker to follow their paths. If metaphysical theology contained the germ of a truthful solution, satisfaction would have resulted ages ago, and the mind, reposing contented with the answer, would have employed its energies in other directions. Instead, there is restlessness, turmoil, conflict and indecision, and never has been an answer so broad and deep in Catholicity of truth as to meet the demand. If science fails also, it can not retrieve its failure by assumed infallibility. Its teachings are ever tentative and prophecies of final triumph, as the grandest study of mankind is man, the crowning work of science is the solution of this vexed question. PHYSICAL MAN.--First, as most tangible and obvious in this investigation, is the physical man, the body, the temple of the psyche. The student, even when imbued with the doctrine of materialism, arises from the study of the physical machine with wonder and surprise akin to awe, declaring man to be fearfully and wonderfully made. It is not surprising that we die, but that we live. The rupture of a nerve fiber, the obstruction of a valve, the momentary cessation of breath, the introduction of a mote at some vital point, brings this most complex structure to eternal rest. By what constant oversight, by what persistency of reparation is it preserved from ruin!