FIDO FIDES. 
275 
vated any particular bodily faculty, are too hasty in 
ascribing superiorities of sense and muscular power to 
hawks, and hounds, and horses; but, in truth, man can 
match any of them, surpass them in perception and 
strength, and assert his lordship on those grounds alone. 
But it is the perfection of his nervous system which 
enables him to compete with the horse, the fox, the 
eagle, and the camel; for the system of communications 
between his senses and his mind is elaborated to a 
perfection excelling theirs, and his nutritive system is 
equal to the demands of all possible circumstances of 
ordinary or extraordinary effort both of the limbs and of 
the will. Art appeals to us directly by means of the 
senses, and the most attractive delights of literature 
require the exercise of memory on the facts of sensation. 
For what else does imagination work with, but stored 
reminiscences of what has been previously felt, and seen, 
and heard ? But add to this perfection of his senses 
the immense capacity of his brain, its refined construc¬ 
tion and numerous convolutions: give him a hand in 
which the sense of touch is wonderfully developed: give 
him his upright attitude—and creation must own him as 
entitled to dominion. But the superiority, so far, is 
wholly physical. The brain of Homer or Shakspere is 
not chemically different to the brain of a Hottentot; 
and the brain of the Hottentot contains no chemical 
principles not to be found in the brain of the Orang 
Outang. It is not necessary to the determination of 
distinctions, to insist that thought is a direct result of 
the operation of the nervous system, but we should not 
be deterred from accepting such a conclusion, if facts 
t 2 
