HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY. 



I. GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY. 



CHAPTER I. 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE DEJECTS OF NATURE, AND OF MAN AS 

 DISTINGUISHED FROM THE REST. 



NUMEROUS authors have remarked that a gradation exists among 

 all the objects of the universe, from the Almighty Creator, through 

 archangels and angels, men, brutes, vegetables, and inanimate 

 matter, down to nothing. 



" Vast chain of being which from God began, 



Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, *;-i, 'si jilj 



Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, 

 No glass can reach, from infinite to thee, 

 From thee to nothing." a 



Yet this gradation, striking as it is, deserves not the epithet 

 regular or insensible. " The highest being not infinite must be, 

 as has been often observed, at an infinite distance below infinity." 

 " And in this distance between finite and infinite there will be 

 room for ever for an infinite series of indefinable existence. Be- 

 tween the lowest positive existence and nothing, wherever we 

 suppose existence to cease, is another chasm infinitely deep; 

 where there is room again for endless orders of subordinate 

 beings, continued for ever and ever, and yet infinitely superior to 



3 Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle 1. 

 B 



