1793' LITERARY INTELLIGENCER. II 



one clafs of animals remain without any change. Their 

 numbers may increafe or diminifli ; but their faculties 

 are, upon the whole, for ever the fame. The diftinc- 

 tive properties of the horfe, the afs, the elephant, the 

 bee, and all other clafles of animals we know, are pre- 

 cifely the fame at the prefent moment as in the days of 

 Mofes and of Homer, and will continue unchanged till 

 the end of time. But of man, the fame thing cannot 

 be faid. Each indi-jidual of lots fpecies, like thofe of 

 other animals, comes into the world, endowed with 

 certain inflinfts and perceptive faculties, which ena- 

 ble him to make obfervations, and derive knowledge 

 from experience as they do, and from reafoning. This 

 experience, and the knowledge refulting from it, is not, 

 however, in him confined to the individual alone — he 

 is endowed with the faculty of communicating the 

 knowledge he has individually acquired to others of 

 his own fpecies, and to derive from them in return, 

 the knowledge that other individuals who fall in his 

 way, have in the fame manner acquired. The young 

 derive information from the old ; and thus are enabled, 

 at their firft entry into life, to fet out with a greater 

 (hare of nr^wzV^J knowledge than any one individual of 

 the human fpecies ever could have attained during the 

 courfe of the longell life, had he been left entirely to 

 himfelf, like other animals. He does more — The ex- 

 perience of ages thus furniflies an accumulated ftock 

 of knowledge for every fingle perfon ; and the individu- 

 al who died a thoufand years ago, may become the in- 

 (Iruftor of thofe who ai'e born in the prefent time. 

 It is this faculty of accumulating knowledge in the 

 ggregate, which forms the diftinftive eharafter of the 

 luman fpecies, when compared with every other clafs 

 af animals, and which has conferred upon man that 

 liftinguiihed rank he holds in the univerfe. It is this 

 ;ircum(tance which gives to the man, even of the low- 

 iil intellectual powers, that marked fuperiority he holds 

 ibove the moll intelligent individuals of the moft faga- 



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