Tritum est in scholis, he
says, esse hominem minorem mundum, in quo mixtum ex elementis corpus et
spiritus coelestis et plantarum anima vegetalis et brutorum sensus et
ratio et angelica mens et Dei similitudo conspicitur.--"It is a
commonplace of the schools that man is a little world, in which we may
discern a body mingled of earthy elements, and ethereal breath, and the
vegetable life of plants, and the senses of the lower animals, and
reason, and the intelligence of angels, and a likeness to God."--A
commonplace of the schools! But perhaps it had some new significance and
authority, when men heard one like Pico reiterate it; and, false as its
basis was, the theory had its use. For this high dignity of man, thus
bringing the dust under his feet into sensible communion with the
thoughts and affections of the angels, was supposed to belong to him,
not as renewed by a religious system, but by his own natural right. The
proclamation of it was a counterpoise to the increasing tendency of
medieval religion to depreciate man's nature, to sacrifice this or that
element in it, to make it ashamed of itself, to keep the degrading or
painful accidents of it always in view.
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