MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MAN. 425 



review under two divisions, the first embracing the mental, and 

 the second the corporeal, characteristics of mankind. 



In judging of the mental faculties of mankind,* not merely 

 those should be considered which an unfortunately situated indi- 

 vidual may display, but those which all the race would display 

 under favourable circumstances. A seed and a pebble may not 

 on a shelf appear very dissimilar, but, if both are placed in the 

 earth, the innate characteristic energies of the seed soon become 

 conspicuous. A savage may in the same manner seem little 

 superior to an orang-outang, but, if instruction is afforded to 

 both, the former will gradually develope the powers of our nature 

 in all their noble superiority, while the latter will still remain an 

 orang-outang. The excellence of man's mind demonstrates 

 itself by his voice and hand3. Witness the infinite variety and 

 the depth of thought expressed by means of words : witness his 

 great reasoning powers, his ingenuity, his taste, his upright, 

 religious, and benevolent, feelings, in his manufactories, his 

 galleries of the fine arts, his halls of justice, his temples, and his 

 charitable establishments. Besides the qualities common to all 

 animals, each of which he, like every animal, possesses in a 

 degree peculiar to himself, and some indeed in a degree very far 

 surpassing that in which any brute possesses them, for instance, 

 benevolence, mechanical contrivance, the sense for music and 

 languages, and the general power of observation and inference 

 respecting present circumstances, he appears exclusively gifted 

 with at least feelings of religion and justice, with taste, with wit, 

 and with the reflecting faculties of comparing and reasoning into 

 causes.f 



The corporeal characteristics of mankind are not less striking 



* In the external senses of at least smelling, hearing, and seeing, man is 

 surpassed by brutes. Whether they have any sense not possessed by us I cannot 

 )retend to say. 



+ Dr. Spurzhcim, System of Pht/siogjtomy, passim. 



