Stark's Elements of Natural Hhtorij. 167 



of connection between the material and immaterial worlds. While the 

 inferior animals enjoy unalloyed the blessings of life and present enjoy- 

 ment, man combines the past, the present, and the future, in his calcula- 

 tions of happiness ; and while some parts of his organization connect him 

 with the creatures around him, and sober his rule over beings with animal 

 feelings of pleasure and pain as acute as his own, his intellectual powers 

 trace the Divinity in all the parts of creation, and connect him with the 

 Great Author of his Being." — " The physical structure of man also widely 

 separates him from the other portions of the mammiferous class. But 

 these variations in form and proportion are neither so prominent nor so 

 totally different in character from the other animal structures, as to account 

 for the superiority which he enjoys. Destined to be nourished on sub- 

 stances used in common by other animals, the mechanism of his frame 

 must so far correspond with theirs, as to be able to convert these substances 

 to the fluids which support his animal life ; and his organs of sensation 

 must necessarily be analogous in some degree to those of beings on whom 

 the material world is destined to make similar impressions. But no mate- 

 rial organs which Man possesses, abstracted from the raind of which they 

 are but the instruments, can account for his intellectual supremacy ; and 

 all those hypotheses which would trace Man's intellectual and moral powers 

 from the absolute or relative size of the brain or other material organs, have 

 miserably failed in connecting mind with matter, or thought with organic 

 structure." — " In other respects Man appears to possess nothing resemb- 

 ling the instinct of animals. He is not stimulated to any regular or con- 

 tinuous exertion of industry by an uncontrollable impulse. His knowledge 

 is the consequence of his own sensation and reflection, or of those of his 

 predecessors ; and from these results, transmitted by language or example, 

 and applied to his various wants and enjoyments, have originated all the 

 arts. Language and letters, by affording the means of preserving and com- 

 municating acquired knowledge, hold out to the huma« race indefinite 

 sources of improvement." After some remarks on the varieties of the hu- 

 man species, Mr S. adds, " Some French naturalists have endeavoured to 

 raise the varieties now observable among the human race into different 

 species ; but, as Cuvier justly remarks, 'the indiscriminate sexual inter- 

 course and consequent production of an offspring capable of propagation 

 prove mankind to be but a single species. And it is remarked by Blumen- 

 bach, that all national differences in the form and colour of the human 

 body are not more remarkable, nor more inconceivable, than those by which 

 varieties of so many other organized bodies,, and particularly of domestic 

 animals, arise as it were under our eyes." 



The second order of Mammalia is the Quadrumanous Animals. These 

 approach nearest in bodily structure to man. Of the first family it is re- 

 marked, that, " if the conformation of the body always implied corre- 

 sponding intellectual attributes, the Simioe or apes should approach the 

 nearest to man. But this is not found to be the case; and though the fa- 

 mily of apes have, like man, their anterior hands free, and opposable thumbs, 

 though in a less degree, yet it is not found that their sagacity is superior 

 or equal to some other tribes of mammiferous animals. The structure of 

 their body, indeed, enables them to perform many movements similar to 



