A COMPARISON OF ANIMALS. 229 



an opportunity of seeing in this part of the world ; they 

 are incapable of living separate from their kindred vege- 

 tables, which grow only in a certain climate. 



Such animals as are formed more perfect, lead a life of 

 less dependence ; and some kinds are found to subsist in 

 many parts of the world at the same time. But, of all 

 the races of animated nature, man is the least affected by 

 the soil where he resides, and least influenced by the vari- 

 ations of vegetable sustenance : equally unaffected by 

 the luxuriance of the warm climates, or the sterility of the 

 poles, he has spread his habitations over the whole earth ; 

 and finds subsistence as well amidst the ice of the north, 

 as the burning deserts under the Line. All creatures of 

 an inferior nature, as has been said, have peculiar propen- 

 sities to peculiar climates ; they are circumscribed to zones, 

 and confined to territories, where their proper food is found 

 in the greatest abundance ; but man may be called the 

 animal of every climate, and suffers but very gradual al- 

 terations from the nature of any situation. 



As to animals of a meaner rank, whom man compels to 

 attend him in his migrations, these being obliged to live in 

 a kind of constraint, and upon vegetable food, often differ- 

 ent from that of their native soil, they very soon alter their 

 natures with the nature of their nourishment, assimilate to 

 the vegetables upon which they are fed, and thus assume 

 very different habits as well as appearances. Thus, man, 

 unaffected himself, alters and directs the nature of other 

 animals at his pleasure ; increases their strength for his 

 delight, or their patience for his necessities. 



This power of altering the appearances of things, seems 

 to have been given him for very wise purposes. The De- 

 ity, when he made the earth, was willing to give his favored 

 creature many opponents, that might at once exercise his 

 virtues, and call forth his latent abilities. Hence, we find 

 in those wide uncultivated wildernesses, where man, in 

 his savage state, owns inferior strength, and the beasts 



