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and indivisible, and therefore immortal, spirit. There is no question that, in as 

 far as man is animal, his organization is more perfect, in all its parts, than that of 

 any of the irrational animals ; some of these exceed him in one particular appli- 

 cation of their powers, and some in another. He has not, for instance, the scent 

 of the Blood-hound, the swiftness of the Antelope, or the wing of the Eagle. But 

 when we take it into consideration that the human body is only the instrument 

 fitted for the use of a superior principle, while the body of the animal is both the 

 principle and the instrument, we cannot fail to perceive that the universality of 

 adaptation of which the human body is capable, is far better fitted for being obe- 

 dient to all the purposes of an intellectual principle, than if the principal exertion 

 of which it is capable had been concentrated upon some one particular kind of 

 action, as is the case with those animals to which we have alluded, and, indeed, 

 with every animal, except man. 



From this general perfection of organization in the human body, we must 

 conclude that if man had been entirely dependent upon animal instincts, as the 

 rest of the living creation are — that is, if there had been nothing intervening be- 

 tween the impression on the bodily sense, general or local — man would have re- 

 quired, and would, according to the universal law which runs through the whole 

 creation, have possessed more perfect instincts, and instincts more sentient to 

 every change of external circumstances, than any other animal whatsoever. But 

 in man there comes in a middle operation between the impression, or the sensal 

 body, and the action ; and it depends upon this middle part whether there 

 shall be an action, or even a feeling, of the system, consequent of the impression 

 upon the sense. This is a beautiful part of the physiology of man, and a part 

 which gives him great advantages in a mental point of view. If man had been 

 compelled by instinct to obey, or even to feel, every little variation or casualty 

 from without, he could never by possibility have had repose and quietude enough 

 for carrying on any elaborate process of thought. The temperature, the pressure, 

 the motion, the humidity, and the electric state of the atmosphere by which our 

 bodies are surrounded, at all times and at every point, are in a state of perpetual 

 change ; and if man had been sensitive to every slight shade of those changes, his 

 life would have been both unprofitable and miserable. The gentle breeze would 

 have shaken him as with an ague ; the summer sun would have scorched him into 

 agony ; and the winter frost would have chilled him to an icicle. 



We have approximate proofs of this in those whose bodies have an extreme 

 degree of sensibility, or who are, as it is popularly denominated, of a nervous 

 temperament ; and all of us — except such as have the general structure of their 

 bodies knit and sinewed by habitual exposure to the variable atmosphere, or are 

 placed in an atmosphere so artificial as that the natural changes which are going 

 on without have no effect upon them — at times feel, in our own systems, the pain 

 of this kind of sensibility. This pain, though we often cannot give it a name, or 

 assign it a local seat in any one part of the system, is torment to us beyond the 



