a2 MAMMALIA—MAN. 
other classes of animated beings, and distinguished by reason and the yowe: 
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 heing 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 which seems to direct the inferior animals, in most of their 
operations, essentially different from any thing like human intelligence, is 
called instenct. 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, 
apon some occasions, are upon others, remarkably deficient in sagacity. 
The physical structure of man, also, widely separates him from the otner 
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 
