DISSERTATION ON MAN
Man is the individual who is able to shape his own character, master his own will, direct his own life and shape his own ends. When God breathed into the nostrils of man the breath of life, made him a living soul, and bestowed upon him the authority of "Lord of Creation," He never intended that that individual should descend to the level of a peon, a serf, or a slave, but that he should be always man in the fullest possession of his senses, and with the truest knowledge of himself. But how changed has man become since creation? We find him today divided into different classes - the helpless imbecile, the dependent slave, the servant and the master. These different classes God never created. He created MAN. But this individual has so retrograded, as to make it impossible to find him - a real man. As far as the Negro race is concerned, we can find but few real men to measure up to the higher purpose of the creation, and because of this lack of manhood in the race, we have stagnated for centuries and now find ourselves at the foot of the great human ladder. After the creation, and after man was given possession of the world, the Creator relinquished all authority to his lord, except that which was spiritual. All that authority which meant the regulation of human affairs, human society, and human happiness was given to man by the Creator, and man, therefore, became master of his own destiny, and architect of his own fate. In process of time we find that only a certain type of man has been able to make good in God's creation. We find them building nations, governments and empires, as also great monuments of commerce, industry and education (these men realizing the power given them exerted every bit of it to their own good and to their posterity's) while, on the other hand, 400,000,000 Negroes who claim the common Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, have fallen back so completely, as to make us today the serfs and slaves of those who fully know themselves and have taken control of the world, which was given to all in common by the Creator. I desire to impress upon the 400,000,000 members of my race that our failings in the past, present and of the future will be through our failures to know ourselves and to realize the true functions of man on this mundane sphere. |
