MAN CANNOT IMITATE FLIGHT. 39 



to construct flying apparatus, or even to accomplish 

 the apparently much simpler object of directing a 

 balloon, which floats buoyantly without any effort, 

 because it is filled with gas specifically lighter than 

 the atmosphere, the attempters, notwithstanding all 

 their mechanical skill, and even their mechanical 

 science, have found that they would require to go a 

 long time to school before they could accomplish even 

 the most apparently simple of those objects. A 

 flying apparatus, to be moved by the human arms, 

 is, like the kindred fancy of a perpetual motion, a 

 physical impossibility, and the attempt to construct 

 one is one of those absurdities into which men are 

 apt to fall in the infancy of knowledge, when they 

 have vanity enough to lead them wrong, but want 

 the requisite knowledge for keeping them right. Even 

 if the arms could'be trimmed to perfect wings, bearing 

 the same proportion to the weight of the human body 

 as those of the bird of most powerful flight have to its 

 weight, there are not in the human body any muscles 

 by which such wings could receive any thing like a 

 flying motion. Then, if that difficulty could be got 

 the better of (which it evidently could not), the spine 

 would bend, the body cant over, and tumble to the 

 ground on whatever part happened to be the heaviest. 

 Or, if this again could be got the better of, man is 

 not adapted for breathing on the wing, and thus the 

 circulation would stop, and there would be an end of 

 the flyer in the very beginning of his flight. In short, 

 it may be said without fear of contradiction that no 

 addition to the human body could make man a flier. 

 If the study of the structure of birds had no other 

 effect than the preventing of such fancies as these 

 fancies which, like the other absurdity mentioned, 

 still sometimes occupy time in which the schemer 



