OP NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 3 



regions, where the warmth of the climate, the paucity 

 of enemies, and the abundance of vegetable food, 

 might permit it to linger. 



(2.) Yet man is the undisputed lord of the crea- 

 tion. The strongest and fiercest of his fellow- 

 creatures, the whale, the elephant, the eagle, and 

 the tiger, are slaughtered by him to supply his most 

 capricious wants, or tamed to do him service, or im- 

 prisoned to make him sport. The spoils of all nature 

 are in daily requisition for his most common uses, 

 yielded with more or less readiness, or wrested 

 with reluctance, from the mine, the forest, the 

 ocean, and the air. Such are the first fruits of 

 reason. Were they the only or the principal ones, 

 were the mere acquisition of power over the ma- 

 terials, and the less gifted animals which surround 

 us, and the consequent increase of our external 

 comforts, and our means of preservation and sensual 

 enjoyment, the sum of the privileges which the pos- 

 session of this faculty conferred, we should after all 

 have little to plume ourselves upon. But this is so far 

 from oeing the case, that every one who passes his life 

 in tolerable ease and comfort, or rather whose whole 

 time is not anxiously consumed in providing the ab- 

 solute necessaries of existence, is conscious of wants 

 and cravings in which the senses have no part, of a 

 series of pains and pleasures totally distinct in kind 

 from any which the infliction of bodily misery or the 

 gratification of bodily appetites has ever afforded him ; 

 and if he has experienced these pleasures and these 

 pains in any degree of intensity, he will readily admit 

 them to hold a much higher rank, and to deserve much 

 more attention, than the former class. Independent of 

 B 2 



