Key Arguments

• He reasons from species-harmony that conspecifics are most useful, then specifies the apex case: the rational man.
• He elevates pedagogy of reason as the supreme display of skill and disposition.

Source Quotes

IX. Nothing can be in more harmony with the nature of any given thing than other individuals of the same species; therefore (cf. vii.) for man in the preservation of his being and the enjoyment of the rational life there is nothing more useful than his fellow—man who is led by reason. Further, as we know not anything among individual things which is more excellent than a man led by reason, no man can better display the power of his skill and disposition, than in so training men, that they come at last to live under the dominion of their own reason.

Nothing can be in more harmony with the nature of any given thing than other individuals of the same species; therefore (cf. vii.) for man in the preservation of his being and the enjoyment of the rational life there is nothing more useful than his fellow—man who is led by reason. Further, as we know not anything among individual things which is more excellent than a man led by reason, no man can better display the power of his skill and disposition, than in so training men, that they come at last to live under the dominion of their own reason. X.

Key Concepts

• for man in the preservation of his being and the enjoyment of the rational life there is nothing more useful than his fellow—man who is led by reason.
• no man can better display the power of his skill and disposition, than in so training men, that they come at last to live under the dominion of their own reason.

Context

Part IV, Appendix, thesis IX on rational sociability and ethical education.