but which he can hardly comprehend, while he profits by them.

If man, of all living creatures, be alone capable of gratitude, and through this sense be capable also of religion, the transition is natural; since the gratitude due to parents is abundantly more owing to Him "who saw him in his blood, and said, Live."

For the continuance of life a thousand provisions are made. If the vital actions of a man's frame were directed by his will, they are necessarily so minute and complicated, that they would immediately fall into confusion. He cannot draw a breath, without the exercise of sensibilities as well ordered as those of

the eye or ear. A tracery of nervous cords unites many organs in sympathy; and if any one filament of these were broken, pain and spasm and suffocation would ensue. The action of his heart, and the circulation of his blood, and all the vital functions, are governed through means and by laws which are not dependent on his will; and to which the powers of his mind are altogether inadequate. For had they been under the influence of his will, a doubt, a moment's pause of irresolution, a forgetfulness of a single action at its appointed time, would have terminated his existence.

Now, when man sees that his vital operations could not be directed by reason-that they are constant, and far too important to be exposed to all the changes incident to his mind, and that they are given up to the direction of other sources of motion than the will, he acquires a full sense of his dependence. If he be fretful and wayward, and subject to inordinate passion, we perceive the benevolent design in withdrawing the vital motions from the influence of such capricious sources of action, so that they may neither be disturbed like his moral actions, nor lost in a moment of despair.

Ray, in speaking of the first drawing of breath, delivers himself very naturally: "Here, methinks, appears a necessity of bringing in the agency of some superintendent intelligent Being, for what else should put the diaphragm and the muscles serving respiration in motion all of a sudden so soon as ever the fœtus is brought forth? Why could they not have rested as well as they did in the womb? What aileth them that they must needs bestir themselves to get in air to maintain the creature's

life? Why could they not patiently suffer it to die? You will say the spirits do at this time flow to the organs of respiration, the diaphragm, and other muscles which concur to that action and move them. But what raises the spirits which were quiescent, &c., I am not subtile enough to discover."

We cannot call this agency a new intelligence different from the mind, because, independently of consciousness, we can hardly so define it. But a sensibility is bestowed, which being roused (and it is excited by the state of the circulation,) governs these muscles of respiration, and ministers to life and safety, independently of the will.

When man thus perceives, that in respect to all these vital operations he is more helpless than the infant, and that his boasted reason can neither give them order nor protection, is not his insensibility to the Giver of these secret endowments worse than ingratitude? In a rational creature, ignorance of his condition becomes a species of ingratitude; it dulls his sense of benefits, and hardens him into a temper of mind with which it is impossible to reason, and from which no improvement can be expected.

Debased in some measure by a habit of inattention, and lost, to all sense of the benevolence of the Creator, he is roused to reflection only by overwhelming calamities, which appear to him magnified and disproportioned; and hence arises a conception of the Author of his being more in terror than in love.

There is inconsistency and something of the child's propensities still in mankind. A piece of mechanism, as a watch, a barometer, or a dial, will fix attention-a man will make journeys to see an engine stamp a coin, or turn a block; yet the organs through which he has a thousand sources of enjoyment, and which are in themselves, the most exquisite in design, and the most curious both in contrivance and mechanism, do not enter his thoughts; and if he admire a living action, that admiration will probably be more excited by what is uncommon and monstrous, than by what is natural and perfectly adjusted to its office-by the elephant's trunk, than by the human hand. This does not arise from unwillingness to contemplate the superiority or dignity of our own nature, or from incapacity of admiring the adaptation of parts. It is the effect of habit. The human hand is so beautifully formed, it has so fine a sensibility,

that sensibility governs its motions so correctly, every effort of the will is answered so instantly, as if the hand itself were the seat of that will; its actions are so powerful, so free, and yet so delicate, as if it possessed a quality of instinct in itself, that there is no thought of its complexity as an instrument, or of the relations which make it subservient to the mind; we use it as we draw our breath, unconsciously, and have lost all recollection of the feeble and ill-directed efforts of its first exercise, by which it has been perfected. Is it not the very perfection of the instrument which makes us insensible to its use? A vulgar admiration is excited by seeing the spider-monkey pick up a straw, or a piece of wood, with its tail; or the elephant searching the keeper's pocket with his trunk. Now, if we examined the peculiarity of the elephant's structure fully, that is to say, from its huge mass deduced the necessity for its form, and from the form the necessity for its trunk, it would lead us, through a train of very curious observations, to a more correct notion of that appendage, and therefore to a truer admiration of it; but I contrast this part with the human hand, merely to show how insensible we are to the perfections of our own frame, and to the advantages attained through such a form. We use the limbs without being conscious, or, at least, without any conception of the thousand parts which must conform to a single act. To excite attention, the motions of the human frame must either be performed in a strange and unexpected mode, that will raise the wonder of the ignorant and vulgar; or we must rouse ourselves, by an effort of the cultivated mind, to observe things and actions, of which the sense has been lost by long familiarity.

In the following pages, I shall treat the subject comparatively; and exhibit a view of the bones of the arm, descending from the human Hand to the Fin of the fish. I shall in the next place review the actions of the Muscles of the arm and hand. Then proceeding to the vital properties, I shall advance to the subject of Sensibility, leading to that of Touch; afterwards, I shall show the necessity of combining the Muscular Action with the exercise of the senses, and especially with that of touch, to constitute the hand, what it has been called, the geometrical sense. I shall describe the organ of touch, the cuticle and skin, and arrange the nerves of the hand according to their functions. I shall then inquire into the correspondence between the capa

cities or endowments of the mind, and the external organs, and more especially the properties of the hand. And I shall conclude by showing that animals have been created with a reference to the globe they inhabit; that all their endowments and various organisation bear a relation to their state of existence, and to the elements around them; that there is a plan universal, extending through all animated nature, and which has prevailed in the earliest condition of the world; and finally, that on the most minute, or the most comprehensive, study of those subjects, we everywhere behold Prospective Design.

CHAPTER II.

DEFINITION OF THE HAND.

THE ARMS AND HAND, VARIOUSLY MODIFIED, ADAPTED TO AN EXTENSIVE SYSTEM OF ANIMALS.

WE ought to define the Hand as belonging exclusively to Man -corresponding in its sensibility and motion to the endowments of his Mind, and especially to that ingenuity which, through means of it, converts the being who is the weakest in natural defence, to be the ruler over animate and inanimate nature.

If we describe the hand, including the arm, as an extremity in which the thumb and fingers are opposed to each other, so as to form an instrument of prehension, we embrace in the definition the extremities of the quadrumana or monkeys. Now, as these animals possess four such hands, it implies that we include the posterior as well as the anterior extremities. But the anterior extremity of the monkey is as much a foot as the posterior extremity is a hand: both are calculated for their mode of progression, climbing, and leaping from the branches of trees; just as the tail in some species is converted to the same purpose, and is as useful an instrument of suspension as any of the four extremities.*

*The following is a sketch of the Coaita, or Spider Monkey, so called from the extraordinary length of its extremities, and from its motions. The tail answers all the purposes of a hand, and the animal throws itself about from branch to branch, sometimes swinging by the foot, sometimes by the fore extremity, but oftener, and with a greater reach,

by the tail. The prehensile part of the tail is covered with skin only, forming an organ of touch as discriminating as the proper extremities. The Caraya, or Black Howling Monkey of Cumana, when shot, is found suspended by its tail round a branch. Naturalists have been so struck with the property of the tail of the Ateles, that they have com