54 ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO n. 



Whose mingling virtues interweave at length 

 The mother's beauty with the father's strength. 



.. 



So tulip-bulbs emerging from the seed, 

 Year after year unknown to sex proceed; 

 Erewhile the stamens and the styles display 

 Their petal-curtains, and adorn the day; 

 The beaux and beauties in each blossom glow 







With wedded joy, or amatorial woe. 1 30 



It has been supposed by some, that mankind were formerly qua- 

 drupeds as well as hermaphrodites ; and that some parts of the body 

 are not yet so convenient to an erect attitude as to a horizontal one; as 

 the fundus of the bladder in an erect posture is not exactly over the 

 insertion of the urethra; whence it is seldom completely evacuated, 

 and thus renders mankind more subject to the stone, than if he had 

 preserved his horizontaTity : these philosophers, with BufFon and 

 Helvetius, seem to imagine, that mankind arose from one family of 

 monkeys on the banks of the Mediterranean; who accidentally had 

 learned to use the adductor pollicis, or that strong muscle which consti- 

 tutes the ball of the thumb, and draws the point of it to meet the points 

 of the fingers; which common monkeys do not; and that this muscle 

 gradually increased in size, strength, and activity, in successive ge- 

 nerations; and by this improved use of the sense of touch, that mon- 

 keys acquired clear ideas, and gradually became men. 



Perhaps all the productions of nature are in their progress to greater 

 perfection! an idea countenanced by modern discoveries and de- 

 ductions concerning the progressive formation of the solid parts of 

 the terraqueous globe, and consonant to the dignity of the CYeator 

 of all things. 



