32 MAMMALIA— MAN. 



other classes of animated beings, and distinguished by reason and the power 

 of speech, this wonderfully constructed being seems the bond of connection 

 between the material and immaterial worlds. Possessed of mental powers 

 which raise him beyond the level of the surrounding creation, and connect 

 him with higher orders of existences, man is the only being who looks 

 forward to futurity, and intuitively perceives his connection with and depen- 

 dence upon the great Source of Intelligence. While the inferior animals 

 enjoy unalloyed the blessings of life and present enjoyment, man combines 

 the past, the present, and the future in his calculations of happiness ; and 

 while some parts of his organization connect him with creatures around 

 him, and sober his rule over beings with animal feelings of pleasure and 

 pain as acute as his own, his intellectual powers, unfettered by the material 

 organs which are their instruments, trace the Divinity in all the parts of 

 creation. Hence has arisen the religious feeling among every tribe of 

 human beings, however rude ; and man alone, seems to connect himself 

 •with the Great Author of his being, through the medium of intellectual 

 homage and worship, according to his conceptions of that Almighty Being, 

 the Creator and Preserver of all. 



While reason places man at such an infinite distance from the inferior 

 animals, the faculty of articulate speech, and an artificial language, widen 

 the barrier still further ; for although some of the animals possess the power 

 of articulation in a considerable degree, and can communicate by natural 

 signs, significant to those of their own species, they totally fail in those 

 powers which enable man to classify objects, and to employ sounds or 

 signs as an instrument of thought. Brutes possess, indeed, the powers of 

 sensation, perception, and memory, and seem to be capable of intellectual 

 operations to a certain extent; but their action is extremely limited, and 

 bounded to the supply of their bodily wants ; and, though susceptible of a 

 species of education, their imitative powers are neither subservient to the 

 improvement of the individual nor his species. 



The faculty Avhich seems to direct the inferior animals, in most of their 

 operations, essentially different from any thing like human intelligence, is 

 called instinct. This wonderful faculty, surer in its limited aims than rea- 

 son, bears, however, no proportion to the general intelligence of the animals 

 which exercise it ; for it has been remarked, that those in whom the in- 

 stinctive propensity displays the greatest seeming wisdom and contrivance, 

 upon some occasions, are upon others, remarkably deficient in sagacity. 



The physical structure of man, also, widely separates him from the other 

 portions of the mammiferous class. But these variations, in form and pro- 

 portion, are neither so prominent, nor so totally different in character, from 

 the other animal structures, as to account for the superiority which he enjoys. 

 Destined to be nourished on substances used in common with other animals, 

 the mechanism of his frame must so far correspond with theirs, as to be 



