NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN. 471 



question ? They may best, we believe, be classed under three 

 heads : First, the Physiological ; including all that regards 

 the physical conformation of Man his mental endowments 

 the question of the unity or plurality of species and the 

 laws which license or limit the deviations from a common 

 standard. Secondly, the Philological; including all that 

 relates to human languages their connections, diversities, 

 the theory of the changes they undergo, and the history of 

 such actual changes, as far as we can follow it. Thirdly, 

 the Historical; including all written history, inscriptions, 

 traditions, mythology, and even the more common usages 

 which designate and distinguish the different communities 

 of mankind. 



This too seems the natural course and order of the enquiry. 

 Man is first to be considered as a part of the animal creation 

 at large, and under the many points of close and unalterable 

 likeness to other forms of animal life, in all that relates to 

 his procreation, nutrition, growth, decay, and death; as 

 well as in regard to the modifications of which the species is 

 susceptible, and the diversities it actually exhibits. Various 

 instincts belonging especially to the early stage of life 

 before the higher faculties have risen into action further 

 attest this great natural relation, which human pride can 

 neither deny nor discard. But beyond and above this comes 

 in the peculiar condition of Man as an intellectual being, 

 richly provided by his Maker with those endowments which, 

 in their highest elevation from nature or culture, have be- 

 queathed to the admiration of all ages names made immortal 

 by their genius and attainments (Homer, Aristotle, Dante, 

 Bacon, Shakspeare, Milton, Newton, Leibnitz, Pascal, 

 Laplace, and others which crowd on the memory) and 

 gifted yet further with that moral sense, those faculties and 

 sensibilities of feeling and passion, to which, duly guarded 

 and governed, we owe our understanding of virtue and 



