bility 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 more exquisite in design and more curious both in contrivance and in 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 an un willingness to contemplate the superiority or dignity of our own nature, nor from an 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, that it seems to possess a quality instinct in itself, and 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, fully to examine the peculiarity of the elephant's structure, that is to say, from its huge mass, to deduce the necessity for its form, and from the form the necessity for its trunk, 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 take this part in contrast 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 our attention, we must either see the actions of the human frame performed in some mode, strange and unexpected, such as may raise the wonder of the ignorant and vulgar; or by an effort of the cultivated mind, we must rouse ourselves to observe things and actions, of which, as we have said, the sense has been lost by long familiarity. In the following essay, I shall take up 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 shew the necessity of combining the muscular action with the exercise of the senses, and especially with that of touch, to constitute in the hand what 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 enquire into the correspondence between the capacities and endowments of the mind, in comparison with the external organs, and more especially with the properties of the hand; and conclude by showing that animals have been created with a reference to the globe they inhabit; that all their endowments and various organization 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 that, finally, in the most minute or most comprehensive study of those things we every where see prospective design. |