278 ON THE HUMAN FACULTIES, 



can raise, draw, and support much greater weights 

 than any animal of the same size with himself. 



But if the body and extremities generally admit 

 of such diversified movements, what may not he 

 expected separately from those best instruments 

 of the mind, the human hands, whose structure 

 and situation mark them out for so many useful 

 applications ? 



Other animals from their horizontal attitude, 

 and from the limitation of their wants, can dis- 

 pense with the use of hands, since a supply of 

 food being their principal necessity, and this 

 being usually within reach of their mouths, they 

 can always obtain it by the agency of their teeth, 

 assisted in some animals by their claws. But 

 man, from his erect attitude, cannot procure his 

 food in the same way; and from the mixed 

 nature of his diet and the culinary process and 

 minuter division it has to undergo before it be 

 suitable to his digestion, he would perish had he 

 not his hands to prepare, divide, and convey it 

 into his mouth, as his necessities require ; and 

 this circumstance alone confers on him a physical 

 attribute distinct from all other animals. 



But it is not his common natural wants only, 

 which the hands of men were intended to supply; 

 but a comprehensive variety of artificial ones, 

 which the progress of society and of human im- 

 provements, have rendered necessary to his hap- 

 piness, and from long established habits, even to 

 his very existence. When we consider all those 



