all human perfection, as a perfect man, free from fault or
blemish. "There is none holy as the Lord, for there is none beside Thee,"
says Scripture.(993) Instead of extolling any single mortal as the type or
ideal of perfection, our sages rather say with reference to the lofty
characters of the Bible: "There is no generation which cannot show a man
with the love for righteousness of an Abraham, or the nobility of spirit
of a Moses, or the love for truth of a Samuel."(994) That is to say, every
age creates its own heroes, who reflect the majesty of God in their own
way.

4. As man is the keystone of all creation, so he is called upon to take
his full share in the progress of the race. "He who formed the earth
created it not a waste; He formed it to be inhabited," says the
prophet.(995) True humanity has its seat, not in the life of the recluse,
but in the family circle, amid mutual love and loyalty between husband and
wife, between parents and children. The sages, with their keen insight
into the spirit of the Scripture, point to the fact that it is man and
wife together who first receive the name of "man," because only the mutual
helpfulness and influence, the care and toil for one another draw forth
the treasures of the soul, and create relations which warrant permanency
and give promise of a future.(996)

5. Still the family circle itself is only a segment of the nation, which
creates speech and custom, and assigns to each person his share in the
common activity of the various classes of men. Only within the social bond
of the nation or tribe is the interdependence of all brought home to the
consciousness of the individual, together with all the common moral
obligations and religious yearnings. Through the few elect ones of the
nation or tribe, God's voice is heard as to what is right in both custom
and law, and through them the individual is roused to a sense of duty. It
is society which enables the human mind to triumph over physical necessity
by ever new discoveries of tools and means of life, thus to attain freedom
and prosperity, and, through meditation over the continually expanding
realm of God's world, to build up the various systems of science and of
art.

6. But the single nation also is too dependent upon the conditions of its
historic past, of its land and its racial characteristics, to bring the
divine image to its full development in a perfect man. Humanity as a whole
comes to its own, to true self-co