8 MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MAN. 



by his voice and hands. Witness the infinite variety and the 

 depth of thought expressed by means of words : witness his great 

 reasoning powers, his ingenuity, his taste, his upright, religious, 

 and benevolent, feelings, in his manufactories, his galleries of the 

 fine arts, his halls of justice, his temples, and his charitable estab- 

 lishments. Besides the qualities common to all animals, each of 

 which he, like every animal, possesses in a degree peculiar to 

 himself, and some indeed in a degree very far surpassing that in 

 which any brute possesses them, for instance, benevolence, me- 

 chanical contrivance, the sense for music and language, and the 

 general power of observation and inference respecting present 

 circumstances, he appears exclusively gifted with at least feelings 

 of religion and justice, with taste, with wit, and with decided 

 reflecting faculties of comparing and reasoning into causes. 



The corporeal characteristics of mankind are not less striking 

 and noble. m Among the beings beheld by Satan in Milton's 

 Paradise, 



" Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall, 

 Godlike erect, with native honour clad, 

 In naked majesty seem'd lords of all." n 



The erect posture is natural and peculiar to man.o All nations 

 walk erect, and, among those individuals who have been disco- 



m Consult Blumenbach, De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa. Sect. i. De 

 Hominis a cseteris Animalibus differentia. 



n Paradise Lost, book iv. 288. 



* There is little necessity in the present day to attempt the refutation of the 

 ridiculous opinion that man is destined to walk on all-fours. But I do so for the 

 purpose of displaying many peculiarities of our structure. 



It is almost incredible that a thinking man could have entertained it for a 

 moment, any more than the idea of our naturally having tails. Yet this is the 

 fact ; and, in exquisite ridicule of such philosophers, Butler makes Hudibras, 

 after proving to his mistress by his beard that he is no gelding, fruitlessly urge 

 his erect posture in proof that he is not a horse. 



" Next it appears I am no horse, 

 That I can argue and discourse, 

 Have but two legs, and ne'er a tail. 

 Quoth she, That nothing will avail ; 

 For some philosophers of late here 

 Write, men have four legs by nature, 

 And that 'tis custom makes them go, 

 Erroneously upon but two. 



