MENTAL AND CORPOREAL 271 



animals have been provided from the natural 

 structure of their frame, and from their habits 

 with the intuitive means of defending them- 

 selves against their enemies. But had man trusted 

 to his physical powers only, his race would 

 soon have been extinct. For inferior in strength 

 and swiftness to a large proportion, and in his 

 structure, having no means of destroying the 

 the more ferocious animals, he could neither 

 have resisted, nor fled from their attacks; but 

 must soon have fallen a prey to such of them, 

 whose thirst of blood might render him an 

 object of their conquest. 



For this deficiency of natural defence, he is 

 amply compensated, by his talent for stratagem, 

 or by the force of his genius; thus affording 

 proofs the most incontestible, of the superiority 

 of intellect over physical force, however threat- 

 ening its aspect, or well directed its energies. 



His hands being the principal means by which 

 his actions are produced, these would have 

 been of no avail to him even with the co-oper- 

 ation of his feet, had he not by his own invention 

 constructed instruments, which, under his judici- 

 ous direction, few animals could resist ; or brought 

 under his controul some swifter animal, through 

 whose fleet exertions he could fly from the attack. 



The forest, in the first instance, would natu- 

 rally suggest to him the source from which these 

 instruments were to be derived ; and hence the 



