THE HUMAN FRAME. 537 



to superiority can be founded ; for in each of these 

 endowments man is excelled in turn by particu- 

 lar races of the lower animals ; but the chief per- 

 fection of his frame consists in its general adap- 

 tation to an incomparably greater variety of ob- 

 jects, and an infinitely more expanded sphere 

 of action. As the beauty of an edifice depends 

 not on the elaborate finishing of any one portion, 

 but results from the general suitableness of the 

 whole to the purposes for which it was constructed, 

 so the excellence of the human fabric is to be 

 estimated by the exquisite proportion and har- 

 mony subsisting among all its parts, and per- 

 vading the whole system of its functions. The 

 design of its structure and economy embraces 

 widely different, and far higher aims than those 

 contemplated in the organization of any of the 

 inferior animals. Destined to an intellectual, a 

 social, and a moral existence, Man has had 

 every part of his organization modified with an 

 express relation to these great objects of his for- 

 mation. This will best appear when we come to 

 examine the organs which are subservient to 

 the sensitive and active faculties ; but even 

 here, where our views must, for the present, be 

 limited to the mechanical circumstances of his 

 structure, the proofs are sufficiently numerous to 

 warrant this general conclusion. 



Man presents the only instance among the 

 mammalia of a conformation by which the erect 



