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CHAPTER II.

THE HUMAN BODY.

HERE, then, stands an embodied man. Can we infer his origin from his present appearance? He is unclothed, or covered only with feeling, and self-balanced in uprightness; all parts of his body, nerved by will, marvellously consent to preserve that position against a force that constantly tends to drag them to the ground. He has a centre in himself. The upper limbs stand out in symmetrical ease and freedom beside the lifeorgans as if ever ready to protect them. Here are real perfect bands, never employed pronely for progression, but completely adapted to the use and purpose of a high intelligence, a will conjoined with reason. Here, too, are perfect feet, conformed to the rational soul equally with the hands. Such is the general impression: let us observe more particularly.

See, first, how the majesty of mind sits enthroned on that brow, and speaks its power in every feature of that face. There is no true face and index of mind but the human. It is formed and moulded to be moved by the emotions of the man, and it presents under their

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influence a living picture of the heart in such a manner as to awaken other hearts to a fellowship with the feeling it embodies. Face answers face like a mirror. Sympathetically responding to the spirit breathing in the looks of friendship and love, the face expresses a language beyond words; and thus man learns the depth of many meanings which the soul no otherwise could utter. We watch the play of thought upon the face, as of a spirit breathing on the waters, as of a light that animates its every movement, and makes it as plastic to the moving spirit as matter is to life. What eye but man's speaks thought, or looks into another's eye for the touch of intelligence, feeling, and desire? When with kindled heart, and fascinated with the resplendent and respondent face of our cordial friend, lit up and glorified with the light of love and intellect, and beaming with good-will, we feel what is meant by the human face divine,' and own before that look no dim relationship with meaner beings that possess neither means nor mind for any fellowship with spirit. An ape may grin but he cannot smile, and laughter is unknown except with reason: that alone is conscious of the true, the ludicrous, the ridiculous, the incongruous, the comical, the witty.

Need we anatomise the brain of our friend to settle any question in our mind as to how far the organ, through which his will is impressed and his thought operates, corresponds in its measure and proportions with that of apes and monkeys? Must we dissect his cerebrum and cerebellum, and take the dimensions of

his hippocampus minor and posterior cornu, or analyse the whole brain to determine how much fat and phosphorus it contains, in order to determine the nature of our friend's affections and the place he is fit to occupy among animals? We may as well anatomise and analyse his hands to ascertain what they can do; for they, too, are but means and instruments through which his soul works out its will. It is not mass, it is the invisibly minute, it is the force that lies behind atoms, that constitutes essential differences, and, in forms of life, the mathematical axiom is not true, that things that are measurably equal to the same thing are equal to one another. No; we have visibly before us, in man, a being, as all true physiologists allow, evidently underived from any other known in the categories of the naturalist's library, or found recorded in the true old chronicle of rocks. And this we know without consulting them, when we look into a face enlightened with the inner sunshine of reason and of love.

Still, as so great a discordance has been produced by confounding things that differ, and so much has been made of the few general resemblances existing between the anatomy of man and that of apes, baboons, and monkeys, it will be proper to point to certain prominent and peculiar characteristics in man's bodily organisation, which in a marked manner distinguish it from that of any other creature. There is not the smallest part of any human bone which does not essentially differ in its 'make' from any corresponding bone in lower animals, and that in a degree sufficient to enable

a good anatomist to say, 'This is human.' Even the very blood-disk in man is moulded into shape by a power that makes it organically as much human as the man himself. It is characterised by vital qualities, form, proportion, action, as much as the rest of the body of which it constitutes an integral and living part; it is acted upon and acting altogether humanly in brain, lungs, and heart, as it rolls along its intricate and mazy channels. It gives and takes its life in a human manner, with a power of its own in relation to the air of heaven and the elements which form the body and regulate the very working of our thoughts.

Resemblances to the human form will, of course, necessarily arise in the anatomy of those animals which are endowed with arms and hands; the possession of these implies and requires certain other correspondencies, such as a mouth to be reached and served by the hand, and also the power of sitting at ease, with ability to stand more or less erect occasionally, because this ability is needed, in accommodation to the hand in reaching forth to seize any object, as is evinced by all those four-limbed animals that climb trees and gather fruit for the support of life. Since the ape and monkey tribes not only gather fruit, but depend for life on fruits that grow on the extremity of branches which would not sustain their weights, they are enabled by their long arms and adroit hands to accomplish what they need. But this they do the better by the additional accommodation of handy feet that grasp like hands what they stand on. They naturally approxi

mate to the erect position only in such efforts. Their limbs are indeed admirable exemplifications of the principle observed throughout nature, namely, anatomical adaptation to the habitat, habits, and requirements of everything that lives and feels desires. Apes, baboons, and monkeys, then, necessarily more resemble man in general form than any other vertebrates, simply because their mode of feeding requires and obliges them to exercise some of the mechanical powers of man. And if there were not such creatures formed to dwell in the forests of the tropics, the richest provisions for the sustentation and enjoyment of animal life would be produced in vain ; and thus an instance of mere wasteful bounty, an exception to the general order of living creation, would be found where least to be expected; for the universal rule is that, wherever the means of life are found, there also are found living creatures fitted to enjoy them. The Power that produces life produces food also, and these are proportioned to each other all the world over; food sustaining life, and life causing the growth of food.

The peculiarities of human anatomy are no less fulfilments of the general law of adaptation. Man dwells everywhere, does everything that can be done with mind and hands, and thus he rules supreme over all the earth in virtue of his intellect, as endowed with appropriate instruments. Physiologists say that man's superior brain enables him to exercise his other high corporeal endowments, and therefore there can be no strict objection to the use of the term Archencephala,