B I M A N A. 



883 



probably senses different altogether from those of 

 man, or if of the same kind, more acute in degree ; 

 but all their senses tend to mere animal preserva- 

 tion : and beyond this they have no speculation ; no 

 tendency to notice, or in any way heed, that which 

 is around them. All their organisations tend to these 

 purposes ; and this is the reason why the animal, the 

 locality, and the food are reciprocally adapted to 

 each other ; but as man is organised chiefly for 

 observation, and for observation of all that nature 

 presents in space or in time, the structure of his 

 body is not an index to any particular locality or 

 climate. If we may so express it, the material or 

 organic part is an inferior portion of a human being ; 

 while in the rest of animated nature it is the whole 

 of the creature. The animal is complete in its 

 instincts ; and in these it forms a perfect member 

 of the system of material nature ; but as we cannot 

 imagine a human body to exist without the mind or 

 intellectual part, how much soever that part may be 

 clouded by ignorance or concealed by disease, we 

 cannot regard the human body as an entire crea- 

 ture at all. It is that wherewith something superior 

 to matter is to work ; and therefore if by any cir- 

 cumstances that superior part cannot work, the body 

 is as inefficient as a tool is without the workman. 



We have melancholy proofs of this, in those cases 

 of disease to which the name of mental derangement 

 is usually given. The name is evidently a faulty 

 one ; because to be diseased or deranged is quite 

 incompatible with the simplicity of essence, and the 

 eternity of duration, which are the essential attributes 

 of the mind. Even those diseases must be bodily ; 

 but as they do not necessarily and immediately pro- 

 duce any topical or systematic effect upon the body, 

 which in its material structure follows the general 

 law of material creatures, we are unable to point out 

 where the disease lies, or in what it consists. But 

 we can see clearly that when this connexion between 

 the intellectual and the corporeal part of a human 

 being is disturbed, that being does not descend in the 

 animal scale, and take the habits of some creature in 

 which the organisation is less developed than in 

 the human subject. It does not fall into a regular 

 government of instincts does not become more 

 uniform and consistent in its acting, than a sane 

 human being. It becomes a fragment a thing of ruin 

 unfit for its proper function in creation, and equally 

 unfit for the humbler one of an unreasoning animal. 



Thus viewing man in any light, in which with a 

 knowledge of the facts before us, he can be viewed, we 

 find it impossible to class him with the other animals, 

 because we cannot find his peculiar place in merely 

 material nature ; and therefore a system which includes 

 him in the same manner as it includes the others cannot 

 be natural. Even when we take the single circum- 

 stance of the hands, and call the race bimana, or two- 

 handed, as distinguished from the quadrumana,or four- 

 handed mammalia, we find that, although there is 

 some resemblance in the organs on which we found 

 the names, they are so far from being similar in their 

 structure or their uses ; that we might with quite as 

 much propriety take the distinguishing character 

 from the feet, and style man a biped, to distinguish 

 him from those mammalia which are quadruped. The 

 hands of the quadrumana are (see the article APE] 

 feet, and feet limited to peculiar habitations, or 

 adapted for locomotion which answers upon only a 

 limit nl portion of the earth's surface. No art of 



man could people with them the pine forests of the 

 North, or even the groves of deciduous timber trees 

 in the latitudes of a mean temperature ; nor is it an 

 easy matter to keep a single individual in health for 

 any length of time in our climate, even with the aid 

 of artificial shelter and careful feeding. 



It will be said that apes are observant animals, and 

 carry their observation so far as to make it the foun- 

 dation of imitation. But the observation which we 

 find in these animals is not of the same kind with 

 that which forms the grand distinguishing character 

 of man. It may be more acute at moderate distances 

 than that of many other animals, because that accords 

 with, or is necessary for their natural habit of sitting 

 or climbing among the branches of a tree, and scru- 

 tinising the twigs in quest of fruit. But there is no 

 evidence whatever of any observation of events in 

 their succession, which can be made the basis of 

 analogies of cause and effect ; and it is this observa- 

 tion of the successions, and not the more simple gaze 

 at the substances or the occurrences, which consti- 

 tutes in man that observation which is his grand 

 characteristic. 



So far as we can feel in ourselves, and judge from 

 analogy, the material organ of sense, whether it 

 belong to man or to any other animal, can perceive 

 matter only ; and thus far the perception by the same 

 kind of organ is probably similar in all, because, 

 thus far all are material ; but there is an after process 

 in man which has not any material type, and which, 

 therefore, cannot be perceived by any material organ. 

 This is the only part of the process which can be 

 considered as purely mental ; and it is the part which 

 is knowledge, or science ; remaining with the indi- 

 vidual as a guide in future cases, and capable of 

 being communicated from individual to individual, 

 and handed down from generation to generation. 

 The merely animal sensation, or perception, even in 

 man, cannot be thus communicated or transmitted. 

 In itself, and without the mental process which dis- 

 covers the relations of the sensation to the object of 

 sense, and to other sensations and other objects, the 

 sensation is a mere feeling of pleasure or of pain 

 according to circumstances. This is the case what- 

 ever be the sense which is affected. Those who 

 have been born blinded, by means of an opaque film 

 covering their otherwise perfect eyes, who have lived 

 for some time in that state, and who have afterwards 

 had the film removed by an operation, so that they 

 could see, have described the feelings at first result- 

 ing from their newly-acquired sense, as if the objects 

 seen touched the eye, bright and especially red 

 colours producing pain similar to that inflicted by a 

 sharp instrument. In the case of hearing, where the 

 relation between the sensation and the sounding 

 body is not so direct and clear as between sight and 

 the visible one, an unexpected sound of unusual loud- 

 ness has very much the feeling of a blow on the ear ; 

 as for instance, when a piece of ordnance is unex- 

 pectedly fired, a person not accustomed to the report 

 of cannon, will, if standing near it, clap his hands on 

 his ears, just as persons do upon any part of the 

 body, in which sudden and severe pain is felt. And 

 though this feeling of pain is a mere deception, the 

 sensation is so strong that there have been instances 

 of the party falling down, in the full belief of being 

 shot. The ear does receive an injury, though of 

 what kind it is not very easy to say ; because those 

 who are for the first time in a hot cannonade, become 



