418 



GRADATION OF OBJECTS. 



almost three thousand years ago, makes his heroes hurl stones in 

 battle which 



^ ou Swo <y'av5pe pfyoiEv 

 OToi vuv $poroi si<n.* 



Yet the giant who was the terror of the Israelites did not pro- 

 bably exceed nine feet in height, and it was to David who slew 

 him and appeared but little more than a century later than Ho- 

 mer's heroes that Barzillai thus excused himself for not visiting 

 the royal palace at Jerusalem : " I am this day fourscore years 

 old ; and can I discern between good and evil ? can thy ser- 

 vant taste what I eat or what I drink ? can I hear any more the 

 voice of singing men and singing women ? wherefore then 

 should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord the king ?"f 

 Moses lived five hundred years earlier than David, and writes, 

 " The days of our years are threescore and ten ; and if by reason 

 of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour 

 and sorrow : for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.J 



(F) The functions of the human machine having now been 

 fully described, it may be useful to consider it in its relation to 

 other animated systems anxl to review the chief varieties in which 

 it appears. 



Numerous authors have remarked that a gradation exists among 

 all the objects of the Universe, from the Almighty Creator, 

 through arch-angels and angels, men, brutes, vegetables, and 

 inanimate matter, down to nothing. 



" Vast chain of being which from God began, 

 Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, 

 "Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, 

 No glass can reach, from infinite to thee, 

 From thee to nothing." 



* Iliad, lib. 5. 



t // Samuel, xix. 35. 



J Psalm 90/ ascribed to Moses by most biblical scholars, 



Pope, En\ai/ mi Man. Epistle 1. 



