Last of all, our soul has in it an imperial prerogative of understanding beyond sense, of judging by reason, of directing action for duty towards God and our fellowmen, for conquest in affection and attainment in knowledge, and for such other things as minister to the varied uses of our mortal life, and prove its title to continue beyond the sphere of this roaming pilgrimage. To serve this honourable purpose of understanding and reasoning, nature, though she has no place in this earthly body of ours worthy to receive such great and stately guests with their whole retinue, yet does what she can, and, herself acting as harbinger, assigns them for lodging her principal chamber, the very closet of the brain, where she bestows every one of reason’s understanding friends, according to their various ranks and special dignities. All those capacities in their first natural condition concern only the existence of an uncultivated man; but when they are fashioned to their best by good education, they form the life of a perfect and excellent man. For to exist merely, to feed, to multiply, to use the senses, to desire, to have natural and unimproved reason--what great thing is it, though it is something more than brute beasts have, if the other divine qualities that build upon these are not diligently followed? These higher powers not only rise out of the lower at the first, but honour them in the end, just as the best fruit honours its first blossom, or as the most skilful work graces the first ground on which it is wrought. Besides that they prove themselves to be the most excellent ends which nature meant from the first, though she herself made but a weak show, however pliable for man’s industry to work on for his own advantage. He who does not live at all cannot live well; he who does not feed at all cannot feed moderately; he who does not reproduce cannot exercise continence; he who has no sense cannot use it soberly; he who does not desire cannot desire considerately; he who uses no reason cannot use it advisedly. But he who exercises all these functions has in them all the capacities that nature can afford him to use them all well, and he will so use them if judgment rule as much in having them well as necessity in having them at all. For reason, as it is our difference in comparison with beasts, is our excellence in comparison with men, if we use it aright.