382 THE HAEMONIES OF NATURE. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



MAN. 



Pre-eminence of Man His Greatness and his Weakness The Brain of Man Tho 

 Telegraphic System of the Nerves The Optic Nerve The Organs of Hearing, 

 Taste, Smelling, and Touch Spinal Nerves Motile Nerves Sympathetic 

 Nerves The Human Hand Its Harmony with the Intellectual Faculties of 

 Man Differences in the Limbs of the Ape and Man Man's Upright Walk 

 His Privileges and his Duties. 



THE star-spangled heavens, the brilliant sun, the magnificent 

 ocean with its constantly-returning tides, the numberless plants 

 which ornament our earth, and the vast hosts of animals that 

 find their subsistence upon her teeming surface, are all most 

 splendid monuments of the Creator's power ; but, as far as we 

 are able to probe the secrets of the universe, Man is beyond all 

 doubt the most wonderful, the most perfect of His works. For 

 the stars wander through the heavens unconscious of their own 

 magnificence ; the sun knows not that but for him countless 

 beings would sink into night and death; the ocean is blind 

 to the majesty of his rolling waves, and deaf to their awful 

 music ; the flower spreads its sweet odours, or enrobes itself in 

 every hue of the rainbow without any conception of its loveli- 

 ness ; the animal's feelings are confined to the present moment 

 with its joys or sorrows: but the eye of man darts into the 

 boundless future and the illimitable past, and the vast range of 

 his mind embraces the universe, and rises from the visible world 

 to the throne of the invisible God from whose unspeakable 

 goodness, wisdom, and power all those stupendous works have 

 emanated ! And it is not only the infinite external world that 

 lies open to the mind of man ; he also penetrates into the mys- 

 teries of his own being, watches attentively all the movements 

 of his soul, and carries in himself the judge of all his actions, 

 thoughts, and sensations. 



