IN MENTAL FACULTIES. 20! 



is what he will remain through life, and the species, after a 

 thousand years, just what it was in the first year : — contrast 

 the results of human industry and invention, and the fruits 

 of that perfectibility which characterizes both i:he species 

 and the individual. By the intelligence of man the animals 

 have been subdued, tamed, and reduced to slavery : by his 

 labours, marshes have been drained, rivers confined, their 

 cataracts effaced, forests cleared, and the earth cultivated. 

 By his reflection, time has been computed, space measured, 

 the celestial motions recognized and represented ; the 

 heavens and the earth compared. He has not merely ex- 

 ecuted, but has executed with the utmost accuracy, the 

 apparently impracticable tasks assigned by the poet : — 



Go, wond'rous creature ! mount where science guides ; 

 Weigh air, measure earth, and calculate the tides. 



By human art, which is an emanation of science, mountains 

 have been overcome, and the seas have been traversed ; the 

 pilot pursuing his course on the ocean, with as much 

 certainty as if it had been traced for him by engineers, 

 and finding at each moment the exact point of the globe 

 on which he is, by means of astronomical tables. Thus 

 nations have been united ; and a new world has been dis- 

 covered, opening such a field for the unfettered and 

 uncorrupted energies of our race, that the senses are 

 confused, the mind dazzled, and judgment and calculation 

 almost suspended by the grandeur and brightness of the 

 glorious and interminable prospects. The whole face of 

 the earth at present exhibits the works of human power, 

 which, though subordinate to that of nature, often exceeds, 

 at least, so wonderfully seconds her operations, that, by 

 the aid of man, her whole extent is unfolded, and she has 

 gradually arrived at that point of perfection and magnificence 

 in which we now behold her. 



In the point of view which 1 have just considered, man 

 stands alone : his faculties, and what he has effected by 

 them, place him at a wide interval from all animals — at an 

 interval which no animal hitherto known to us can fill up. 



