We carry with us the wonders we seek without us: There is all Africa and her prodigies in us.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682), physician and prose stylist, wrote this line in the mid-17th century as part of his reflective, learned meditation on human nature and the mind’s inward “geography.” In an age fascinated by travel narratives and the marvels of newly described lands—Africa especially figured in European writing as a place of “wonders” and “prodigies”—Browne turns that outward curiosity inward. The remark belongs to his broader habit of blending natural philosophy, theology, and classical learning to argue that the human being is itself a microcosm: a world of mysteries, contradictions, and marvels that rivals any distant continent.

Browne suggests that the impulse to seek marvels in far-off places overlooks a more intimate truth: the human self already contains strangeness, richness, and unexplored territory. “Africa” functions less as a literal destination than as a symbol of the exotic and unknown—what people imagine lies “without us.” By claiming “all Africa and her prodigies” are “in us,” he advances a microcosm–macrocosm idea: the mind and body mirror the world’s complexity. The line can be read as a critique of restless external searching and a call to inward attention, self-knowledge, and humility about the mysteries housed within ordinary human life.