from Anthony Esolen's "What is Man?" Touchstone current issue

"The young girl Sonia, in love with the hero Raskolnikov, urged him to confess the murder he has committed. She--who has known sin and suffering and degradation in her own life--says that he must go out into the public square, in broad daylight, and throw himself to the ground, crying out that he, he alone, has sinned against all mankind and the whole earth, and that he alone is responsible for all the wickedness that has ever been done...(he) does exactly that. 'Plastered.' says a bystander."

Alexander Pope: 'The proper study of mankind is Man--the glory, jest and riddle of the world.'

"Every language I know has a word that names Man, the universal, including every one in being; therefore also naming each: a universal, singular, and personal term. A little consideration shows that there is no substitute in English for Man. None of the alternatives do the necessary work.

 "The common good cannot be the mere good of the collective, just as the common good cannot be described quantitatively, as all forms of utilitarianism attempt to do. That is because common good is a good of personal beings. Maritain: "Even if the common good of human society were uniquely and exclusively a sum of temporal advantages and achievements, like the common good--not really common but totalitarian-- of an apiary or an anthill, it would surely be nonsensical to sacrifice the life of a human person for it."

"From this point of view, 'The human person, as a spiritual totality referred to the transcendent whole, surpasses and is superior to all human societies...A single human soul is worth more than the entire universe of temporal goods.'"

"Who is it that, gleaning among the dry husks left by the reapers? It is Man. Who is that, looking enraptured upon the beaty of the night sky?  It is Man.  Who is that, whispering into the ear of the  drowsy child, filled with milk from the breast? It is Man, and so is the child. Who is that sucking its thumb in the warmth of the womb? Man; and it is Man, stretched upon the bed, breathing his last heavy breaths in this world."

""Turn back O Man,' says the old hymn.  Man can do so, and I, Man, can do so, because of the One who called Himself the Son of Man.  He, too, is Man. Not simply an adult male, a human being, a person, a man, but Man himself, sinless, one with the Father.  We can...now look to Jesus, and say with the unwitting Pilate, 'Ecce Homo," Behold the Man, or, mysteriously, "Behold, Man."