The subject may perhaps be more shortly and safely dispatched by consi dering it a posteriori; and placing the prerogative of man in the circumstance of his having brought all other animals un der subjection to himself. That he has effected this is obvious ; and it is equally clear, that his dominion has not been ac quired by superior bodily strength : it can therefore only be referred to the powers of his mind ; and to these, whatever be their nature, we give the name of reason. Man is designed to use all kinds of food ; and to inhabit every climate of the globe. The unlimited power which lie possesses in these respects, gives rise to various wants, from the infinite variety of climate, soil, and other circumstances. Man re. ceives therefore from his Creator the power of invention and reason, which supply his wants. Hence, in the most ancient times, and by the wisest nations, the genius of invention has been honour ed with divine worship : it forms the Thoth of the Egyptians, the Hermes of the Greeks. Thus, to give a few instan ces : man has made tools for assisting his labour ; and hence Franklin sagaciously defined man as a "tool-making animal : he has formed arms and weapons ; he has devised various means of procuring fire ; and, lastly, for the purpose of com municating with his fellows, he has in vented speech. This is to be accounted a most important characteristic of man ; since it is not born with him, like the voices of animals, but has been framed and brought into use by himself, as the arbitrary variety of different languages incontestibly proves.
There is some doubt with respect to laughing and weeping; which belong ra ther to the passions than to reason. It is well known, that many animals besides man secrete tears. But the question is, do they weep from grief? The fact has been asserted by some great men ; as by Steller, of the seal ; and l'allas, of the camel. But it is very doubtful, whether they ever manifest cheerfulness by laugh ing.
There are numerous diseases peculiar to the human subject, which it might be considered wrong to speak of in remarks on the natural history of man ; yet these unnatural phenomena undoubtedly de serve a place in the discussion, since they arise out of the natural habits of the body. The subject is obscure ; since the nosology of brutes is exposed, by its very nature, to the most serious and almost insupera ble difficulties. The following may how ever be considered, with all probability, as diseases peculiar to man : small-pox, measles, scarlatina, petechim, plague, he morrhoids, menorrhagia, hypochondria sis, hysteria, the various affections of the mind, scrofula ? tues venerea, pellagra, lepra, amenorrhxa, cancer ? hernia con genita I tinea capitis. These, though by no means all, are the chief points of dif ference between man and other animals : they have been enumerated, we can hardly say considered, in a very cursory manner ; otherwise they would have afforded mat ter for a lengthened disquisition. The peculiarities appear abundantly sufficient to characterise man as a distinct genus ; and consequently to overturn the wild chimeras of those visionary speculators, who regard him, in some of his races and modifications, only as an improved orang outang.
Our next point is the consideration of the varieties of the human species and their causes. This disquisition will per haps appear superfluous to the devout believer, whose philosophy on this point will be derived from the writings com posed with the assistance of divine inspi ration, and therefore commanding our implicit assent. The account of the cre ation of the human race, and of its dis persion over the face of the globe, con tained in the book of Genesis, will super sede in his mind the necessity of hav ing recourse to any argument on the subject. We shall venture to submit, that the Mosaic account does not make it quite clear that the inhabitants of all the world descended from Adam and Eve : we are told, indeed, that " Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living." But in the first chapter of Genesis we learn, that God created man, male and female; and this seems to have been previously to the formation of Eve, which did not take place until after the garden of Eden had been made. Again, we are informed in the fifth chapter of Gene sis, that " in the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him ; male and female created he them ; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were cre ated." We find also that Cain, after slaying his brother, was married, al though it does not appear that Eve had produced any daughters before this time. It appears, therefore, that the field is open for discussion on this subject ; and at all events, if the descent of mankind from one stock can be proved inde pendently of the holy writings, the con clusion will establish the authority of these inspired annals.
If we fail in tracing the succession of the human race from above downwards, much less are we able to trace back any particular tribe to their first origin from the present stock. To use the words of an elegant modern historian ; " neither the annals nor traditions of nations reach back to those remote ages, in which the different descendants of the first pair took possession of the different countries where they are now settled. We can. not trace the branches of this first fa mily, nor point .out with certainty the time and manner in which they divided and spread over the face of the globe. Even among the most enlightened peo ple the period of authentic history is ex tremely short, and every thing prior to that is fabulous and obscure." We must, therefore, in tracing the variations from the original stock, assign those causes, which are well known to have great influ ence on mankind, as climate, manner. of life, state of society, gr.c.; occasionally deriving assistance from the analogies which are to be met with in the natural history of other animals.