52 HISTORY OF 



fingers, by long habit, become greater masters irt 

 the art than any others, even where the sensation 

 is more delicate and fine.* It is from this habit, 

 therefore, and their peculiar formation, and not, 

 as is supposed, from their being furnished with a 

 greater quantity of nerves, that the fingers are 

 thus perfectly qualified to judge of forms. Blind 

 men, who are obliged to use them much oftener, 

 have this sense much finer ; so that the delicacy 

 of the touch arises rather from the habit of con- 

 stantly employing the fingers, than from any fan- 

 cied nervousness in their conformation. 



All animals that are furnished with hands 1 

 seem to have more understanding than others. 

 Monkeys have so many actions like those of men, 

 that they appear to have similar ideas of the form 

 of bodies. All other creatures, deprived of hands, 

 can have no distinct ideas of the shape of the ob- 

 jects by which they are surrounded, as they want 

 this organ, which serves to examine and measure 

 their forms, their risings and depressions. A 

 quadruped probably conceives as erroneous an 

 idea of any thing near him, as a child would of a 

 rock or a mountain that it beheld at a distance. 

 It may be for this reason that we often see them 

 frighted at things with which they ought to be 

 better acquainted. Fishes, whose bodies are 

 covered with scales, and who have no organs for 

 feeling, must be the most stupid of all animals. 

 Serpents, that are likewise destitute, are yet, by 

 winding round several bodies, better capable of 



* Buffbn, vol. vi. p. 80. f Ibid. p. 82. 



