Excerpt from "Oration on the Dignity of Man":
"At last, the Supreme Maker decreed that this creature, to whom He could
give nothing wholly his own, should have a share in the particular endowment
of every other creature. Taking man, therefore, this creature of indeterminate
image, He set him in the middle of the world and thus spoke to him: "We have
given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your
own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may,
with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your
own judgement and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined
and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded
by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We
have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature.
I have placed you at the very center of the world, so that from that vantage
point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that the world
contains. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither
mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper
of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be
in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be
able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose
life is divine."
- Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
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