A thing surpassing belief and smiting the soul with wonder.
Here is the author’s description of man. Man—mankind…you know, man and woman—is this thing that surpasses belief and wallops the soul upside its head to make it wonder about the species’ own greatness. This is an important thing to know because the central premise of this work of literature is…well, right there in its title, actually. The author is giving profound consideration to why man above all species created by God is inherently entitled to a sense of dignity not befitting the brutes.
The brutes, from the moment of their birth, bring with them, as Lucilius says, “from their mother’s womb” all that they will ever possess.
God’s creatures which are not covered by the dignity of being man are the “brutes.” Animals and other less beings, in other words. Like, for instance, vegetables and flowers and rocks and stuff. Pretty much anything created by God which comes into the world through some sort of birthing process are brutes, but no take the word too literally in the modern sense. Today, “brute” connotes something tough and without compassion whereas the author merely means anything created by God which cannot change or grow or evolve while—and this is significant—being self-aware of their inability to change or grow or evolve.
If you see a man dedicated to his stomach, crawling on the ground, you see a plant and not a man; or if you see a man bedazzled by the empty forms of the imagination, as by the wiles of Calypso, and through their alluring solicitations made a slave to his own senses, you see a brute and not a man.
So, it turns out not all men are men and not all brutes are beasts. Men can be brutes. Men without the ability to change or grow and evolve and also ill-equipped for understanding that they cannot change or grow or evolve. Except…that’s not always true. It is true that some men are brutes because they simply just don’t carry any more self-awareness than a snake or flower, some men are brutes precisely because they choose to be. That is the downside of the gift of free will.
“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.”
The significance of free will is bountiful enough that for one of the few times in the work, the author steps outside his own voice and puts words into the mouth of a character. Not just a character, but the Supreme Being Himself, talking to Adam and letting man know the full extent of this gift of free will. Free will is the gift that endows mankind with dignity. It is also the curse that can just as easily remove that dignity.
It should be added that any school which attacks the more established truths and by clever slander ridicules the valid arguments of reason confirms, rather than weakens, the truth itself, which, like embers, is fanned to life, rather than extinguished by stirring. These considerations have motivated me in my determination to bring to men’s attention the opinions of all schools rather than the doctrine of some one or other (as some might have preferred).
"The Oration on the Dignity of Man" is split into two quite separate sections. The first is essentially a standard volume of philosophical theorizing, presenting little of controversy. The second section—the thesis of which is essentially established with this quote—nearly sent the author down the same path as Galileo as it was denied publication by the Vatican with several assertions being declared heretical. Attempts at defending himself against charges of heresy did not quite end with Pico della Mirandello winding up in the same state as Galileo, but it did ensure that his work would never be widely disseminated during his lifetime. And just what was so heretical about the second part? His attempt to reconcile pagan theological philosophy with Christian doctrine to create and sustain a harmonic connection between all world philosophies.
