“There was Paige,” he said; “an ignorant man who could not make a machine himself that would stand up, nor draw the working plans for one; but he invented the eighteen thousand details of the most wonderful machine the world has ever known.  He watched over the expert draftsmen, and superintended the building of that marvel.  Pratt & Whitney built it; but it was Paige’s machine, nevertheless—­the child of his marvelous gift.  We don’t create any of our traits; we inherit all of them.  They have come down to us from what we impudently call the lower animals.  Man is the last expression, and combines every attribute of the animal tribes that preceded him.  One or two conspicuous traits distinguish each family of animals from the others, and those one or two traits are found in every member of each family, and are so prominent as to eternally and unchangeably establish the character of that branch of the animal world.  In these cases we concede that the several temperaments constitute a law of God, a command of God, and that whatsoever is done in obedience to that law is blameless.  Man, in his evolution, inherited the whole sum of these numerous traits, and with each trait its share of the law of God.  He widely differs from them in this:  that he possesses not a single characteristic that is equally prominent in each member of his race.  You can say the housefly is limitlessly brave, and in saying it you describe the whole house-fly tribe; you can say the rabbit is limitlessly timid, and by the phrase you describe the whole rabbit tribe; you can say the spider and the tiger are limitlessly murderous, and by that phrase you describe the whole spider and tiger tribes; you can say the lamb is limitlessly innocent and sweet and gentle, and by that phrase you describe all the lambs.  There is hardly a creature that you cannot definitely and satisfactorily describe by one single trait—­except man.  Men are not all cowards like the rabbit, nor all brave like the house-fly, nor all sweet and innocent and gentle like the lamb, nor all murderous like the spider and the tiger and the wasp, nor all thieves like the fox and the bluejay, nor all vain like the peacock, nor all frisky like the monkey.  These things are all in him somewhere, and they develop according to the proportion of each he received in his allotment:  We describe a man by his vicious traits and condemn him; or by his fine traits and gifts, and praise him and accord him high merit for their possession.  It is comical.  He did not invent these things; he did not stock himself with them.  God conferred them upon him in the first instant of creation.  They constitute the law, and he could not escape obedience to the decree any more than Paige could have built the type-setter he invented, or the Pratt & Whitney machinists could have invented the machine which they built.”

He liked to stride up and down, smoking as he talked, and generally his words were slowly measured, with varying pauses between them.  He halted in the midst of his march, and without a suggestion of a smile added: