516 THE SENSORIAL FUNCTIONS. 



city, and docility. In man, in whom all the facul- 

 ties of sense and intellect are so harmoniously 

 combined, the brain is not only the largest in its 

 size, but beyond all comparison the most compli- 

 cated in its structure.* 



A large brain has been bestowed on man, evi- 

 dently with the design that he should exercise 

 superior powers of intellect; the great distinguishing 

 features of which are the capacity for retaining an 

 immense variety of impressions, and the strength, 

 the extent, and vast range of the associating prin- 

 ciple, which combines them into groups, and forms 

 them into abstract ideas. Yet the lower animals 

 also possess their share of memory, and of reason : 

 they are capable of acquiring knowledge from ex- 

 perience ; and, on some rare occasions, of devising 

 expedients for accomplishing particular ends. But 

 still this knowledge and these efforts of intellect 

 are confined within very narrow limits ; for nature 

 has assigned boundaries to the advancement of the 

 lower animals, which they can never pass. If one 

 favoured individual be selected for a special educa- 

 tion, some additional share of intelligence, may, 

 perhaps, with infinite pains, be infused ; but the 

 improvement perishes with that individual, and is 

 wholly lost to the race. By far the greater portion 

 of that knowledge which it imports them to possess 

 is the gift of Him, who has wisely implanted such 

 instinctive impulses as are necessary for their pre- 



* All the parts met with in the brain of animals exist also in the 

 brain of man ; while several of those found in man are either 

 extremely small, or altogether absent in the brains of the lower 

 animals. Soemmering has enumerated no less than fifteen mate- 

 rial anatomical differences between the human brain and that of 

 the ape. 



