IN MENTAL FACULTIES. 199 



" Once convinced that it could combat nature by the 

 means which she herself afforded, genius reposed no more ; 

 it watched her without relaxation ; it incessantly made new 

 conquests over her, all of them distinguished by some im- 

 provement in the situation of our race. 



" From that time a succession of conducting minds, faith- 

 ful depositories of the attainments already made, constantly 

 occupied in connecting them, in vivifying them by means 

 of each other, have conducted us, in less than forty ages, 

 from the first essays of rude observers, to the profound 

 calculations of Newton and La Place, to the learned clas- 

 sifications of LiNNiEUS and Jussieu. This precious inhe- 

 ritance, perpetually increasing, brought from Chaldea into 

 Egypt, from Egypt into Greece, concealed during ages of 

 disaster and of darkness, recovered in more fortunate times, 

 unequally spread among the nations of Europe, has every- 

 where been followed by wealth and power ; the nations 

 which have reaped it, are become the mistresses of the 

 world ; such as have neglected it, are fallen into weakness 

 and obscurity"*." 



Man has made tools for assisting his labour ; and hence 

 Franklin sagaciously defined him a "tool-making animal:" 

 he has formed arms and weapons ; he has devised various 

 means of procuring fire. Lastly, " The most noble and 

 profitable invention of all others was that of speech ; 

 whereby men declare their thoughts one to another for 

 mutual utility and conversation, without which there had 

 been amongst men neither commonwealth nor society, no 

 more than amongst lions, bears, and wolves f." This is a 

 most important characteristic of man ; since it is not born 

 with kirn, like tlie voices of animals, but has been framed 

 and hrou-ht int-o use by himself, as the arbitrary variety of 

 different languages incontestably proves. 



Man exhibits, by external signs, what passes within him : 



♦ CiTviER, ReJIectionr, on the Progress of the Sciences^ S^c. read at the 

 Royal Institute of France, AinW 24, 1816. 

 t HoBBES ; Lcviatham 



