# 114 Ulisse Aldrovandi
Indeed, according to the same author, while other animals by the law of nature incline their faces toward the earth—and consequently have no rightful place in the Heavens—man alone stands upright. Touching the earth only lightly with his feet, he displays his nobility, for though he dwells upon it for only a short time, he yearns for a celestial fatherland. This sentiment seems to align with the mind of Saint Paul when he said: "our conversation is in Heaven." For man alone contemplates God; in this regard, Anaxagoras is praised, as he used to claim he was born for the sake of seeing the Heavens—that is, seeing God. Indeed, the soul of man is the temple of God, for the Apostle wrote on this matter: "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwells within you?" Furthermore, man is the image of God, containing all things that are in God. In memory resides the Father, in the intellect the Son, and in the will the Divine Spirit. These are the qualities that have granted such a distinguished lineage to the human race.
Beyond this, man is also called the "coinage" of God. When we read in the Gospel of Matthew, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's," Saint Paschasius, in his commentary on Matthew, writes: "Because the whole man is the coinage of God, created in His image, he must return himself to God; this he can hardly achieve unless he first strips himself of Caesar’s tax, so that he may henceforth be free." Ultimately, the excellence of man is derived from the fact that he is closest to God; hence Dionysius of Halicarnassus proclaimed the human race to be by far the dearest of all to the gods. On this subject, one may read this six-line verse in sacred Pathology:
Everything that exists anywhere is encompassed by the majesty of God, Without which nothing can stand or even exist. If man serves Him rightly, he remains close to Him; If he rebels, he lives in a wretched exile. Thus the Lord distinguishes all things in a just order, Whereby the highest things are prepared for the good, and the lowest for the wicked.
# THE MISERY OF MAN
We gather that human life is plagued by hardships from the very moment of its origin. We observe that infancy is subject to countless dangers, youth is fleeting, and old age is headlong. Furthermore, if childhood is led all the way to old age, how little is actually left? Ovid described this calamity in the following manner:
The infant, brought forth into the light, lay without strength; Soon he crawled on all fours, moving his limbs in the manner of beasts, And gradually trembling, with knees not yet firm, He stood upright, his nerves assisted by some effort. Then he became strong and swift, and passed through the span of youth; And having completed the years of middle age, He glides down the declining path of setting old age; This undermines and demolishes the strength of his earlier life.
To this are added six hundred other anxieties and infinite types of ailments with which the human race is daily oppressed, which Virgil elegantly expressed in these verses:
For wretched mortals, every best day of life Is the first to flee; diseases and somber old age steal in, Along with labor, and the harsh cruelty of death carries us away.
On this point, we can sing the following couplet:
The heart is nothing but care, the flesh nothing but a sad corpse. To be born is to be sick; to live is often to die.
Furthermore, poisons, collapses, shipwrecks, earthquakes, wars, falls, lightning, and other things of this sort increase human sorrow. Some, swallowing a grape seed, are