B I M A N A. 



381 



tnrough the endless succession of names in the various 

 mythologies, till we come to that which may be consi- 

 dered as probably the highest natural effort of man the 

 idol of the early student of nature a living principle 

 pervading and acting upon the whole ; and though 

 it must be confessed that this conception comes far 

 short of the truth, when that truth is once revealed, 

 yet it must be admitted that it is not only in the way 

 of the truth, but the best preparation of the mind for 

 its reception, and the very nearest approach to it 

 which man in his own strength is capable of making. 

 Nor need we much wonder, though there are tran- 

 sient apparitions of the vision of this idol, upon the 

 misty confines of all the kingdoms of nature, continued 

 downward even to the times in which we live. There 

 is a strong natural disposition to keep the pretension 

 to knowledge quite up to the reality; and, sometimes 

 vanity, sometimes the wings of a name, wherewithal 

 to rise in the world above the proper level of our 

 deserts, push it considerably ahead. In these cases 

 it is easy to see that the whole measure by which the 



Eretension is thus set in advance of the reality, must 

 e composed of idols of some sort or other, inasmuch 

 as there is nothing else of which it can be composed. 

 These little aberrations are, however, harmless, in pro- 

 portion to the extent of real knowledge, and they are 

 besides a short-lived race ; because every succeeding 

 idolater is much more intent upon breaking the 

 idols of his predecessors, and setting up his own idols 

 in their stead, than on studying those truths in 

 advance of which the idols are set. 



It is only upon the shadowy confines that such 

 phantoms in natural history can now be conjured up, 

 even by the most fond pursuer of phantom celebrity. 

 But the connexion between man and the rest of 

 material nature, and the distinction between him and 

 that, which coexist and are inseparable, render the 

 study of man, regarded as a portion of that class of 

 animals which in the structure and functions of his 

 body he most nearly resembles, the portion of the 

 subject upon which assumptions of this kind are the 

 most likely to be made, and, being made, the most 

 certain to be dangerous. It is for this reason chiefly 

 that we shall treat of that part of the character of 

 man which belongs to natural history in a separate 

 article under the word MAN, rather than under the 

 present article, as the name of an order of mammalia. 



At the same time it must be admitted that the sepa- j 

 ration of man from those animals with which he used 

 formerly to be combined, and in part confounded, in 

 the systems (see APE and BAT\ is an important step 

 towards improvement. We thereby get rid of that 

 continual appeal from man to other animals, or from 

 other animals to man, which used so much to disfigure 

 the pages of writers on natural history. When the 

 comparison is one of mere structure or organisation, 

 it is perfectly legitimate, and may, indeed must, be 

 productive of advantage. The human body is made 

 of the same matter, and very nearly the same kind of 

 matter, as the other mammalia ; and, in so far as the 

 mere action of the structure is concerned, the analogy 

 holds. Man feeds, and breathes, his pulse beats, and 

 all his merely animal functions are performed, in the 

 same kind or way as those of the other mammalia, 

 though the mode is different, just as there are differ- 

 ences of mode among these ; and, as is the case with 

 these, the organisation is adapted to its purpose with 

 the same perfection of form and economy of materials, 

 fio that the knowledge of the one leads us to the know- 



ledge of the other, in so far as both are composed oi 

 matter, and sustained by those laws of common 

 animal life in matter, which are necessary for enabling 

 the organic being so far to overcome the resistances 

 of inorganic matter as to be able 10 perform its 

 functions. 



But here there is a limit : in tne case of every 



animal, when we have duly studied that animal, and 



also the earth in its various latitudes and productions, 



we can lay our finger upon a precise point of the map, 



which we know to be under given circumstances at 



I the place of our making the assertion, and say, not 



| only with perfect confidence, but in the spirit of the 



soundest philosophy, " Here is the proper home and 



dwelling of this animal." But we are altogether 



unable to pronounce thus in the case of man ; for all 



i the earth is his habitation ; and though, for the mere 



I support of his animal nature, he is obliged to toil 



1 more in some situations than in others, there is no 



i latitude from the equator to the pole but which can 



be his home and dwelling place. 



Man can endure greater variations of temperature 

 than any other animal. He cannot instinctively repel 

 that which would either mechanically crush or che- 

 mically decompose the substance of his body ; but 

 he can avoid the one, and blunt the virulence of the 

 other by contrivance, a power which no other animal 

 possesses. He cannot endure boiling water, neither 

 can he bear to be frozen into solid ice ; but if the air 

 is dry, he can bear a heat very considerably greater 

 than that at which water boils, or a degree of cold 

 more intense than that which freezes mercury. In 

 the experiments that have been made of exposure to 

 very high temperatures, the length of time has not 

 been so great as to warrant the belief that man could 

 live permanently under so great a heat ; but as those 

 experiments have generally been made by immediate 

 transition from common temperatures to the high 

 ones, the oppressive heat, which has soon begun to be 

 felt under them, affords no conclusive proof that man 

 could not exist habitually under Such a temperature, 

 if duly and gradually prepared for it. The intense 

 cold is usually guarded against by an increase of thick 

 clothing, formed of materials which are bad conductors 

 of heat ; but it is probable that this also is habit, at 

 least in great part. Though we cannot implicitly 

 believe all the accounts which the historians of anti- 

 quity have left us of those rude nations upon which, 

 in those times, civilised man showed such a disposi- 

 tion to make war ; yet it is highly probable that in 

 the early ages, the people of middle Europe, and 

 those of Britain among the rest, went naked or nearly 

 so, for at least the greater part of the year : and at 

 the present time, the people where the Highland kelt 

 is worn, do not find the exposed parts of their limbs, 

 either more affected by cold, or more liable to become 

 diseased, than those who attire themselves more 

 closely. The fact seems rather the reverse ; for it is 

 proverbial, that a genuine ghtine dhu, which was never 

 once cased in cloth, can stand on the march against 

 the best knee that ever was defended agaiust the 

 weather from infancy upward. 



It must be borne in mind, too, that, at the period 

 when the natives of Europe are represented as having 

 gone wholly, or nearly naked, the climate must have 

 been colder, if not upon the average, at least in 

 winter, than it is at present. We have direct evidence, 

 from the freezing of the Tiber, that the Campagna 

 di Roma was much colder then than it is now ; and 



