The arms of men but very little resemble the fore legs of quadrupeds, and much less the wings of birds. The ape is the only animal that is possessed of hands and arms; and they are fashioned more rudely, and with less exact proportion, than in men. The shoulders are also much larger in man than in any other animal, and of a form widely distinct.
The form of the back differs not much from that of many quadrupeds, only that the reins are more muscular and strong. The buttock, however, in man is different from that of all animals whatsoever. What goes by that name in other creatures is only the upper part of the thigh, and by no means similar: man being the only animal that can support himself perfectly erect, the peculiar hardness of this part enables him to sustain that position.
The human feet are also different from those of all animals, even apes not excepted. The foot of the ape is rather a kind of aukward hand; its toes, or rather fingers, are long, and that in the middle longest of all; the foot also wants the heel. In man the sole of the foot is broader and more adapted to maintain the equilibrium of the body in walking, dancing, or running.
The nails are smaller in man than those of any animal. If they were much longer than the extremities of the fingers, they would obstruct the management of the hand. Such savages as suffer them to grow long, make use of them in flaying and tearing animals, but though their nails are considerably larger than ours, they are yet by no means to be compared to the hoofs or the claws of other animals.
There is little known exactly with regard to the proportion of the human figure, for the same parts do not bear similar proportions in any two individuals; nor even in the same, for seldom is it that the right leg or arm is of equal dimensions with the left. It is not by taking an exact _resemblance_ that we can determine on the best proportion of the human figure; we must seek for it in taste and sentiment, which have exceeded the laws of mechanism in the imitation of Nature; and in which imitation we recognize her perfections more conspicuously than in her own productions; and by the same rule the beauty of the best statues is much better conceived by observation than by measurement. The ancients executed statues in so high a degree of perfection, that they have ever been considered as exact representations of the most perfect human figures. These statues, which were at first copied after the human form, are now considered as the most perfect models of it; and for this plain reason, that they were not formed after any one individual, but from a diligent observation of the perfect symmetry that was to be collected, as it were, from the whole species. In doing this, these artists also considered each part of the human frame should be of certain dimensions to become the standard of perfection; for instance, that the body should be ten times the length of the face; and that the face should also be divisible into three equal parts, the first form the hair on the forehead to the nose, the second the nose, and the third from the nose to the end of the chin. In measuring the body they use the term nose as the third of the face, one of which they reckon in height, from the top of the forehead to the crown of the head, therefore from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin is a face and one third, and from the chin to the upper part of the breasts two thirds more, which of course makes two tenths of the whole body; to the bottom of the paps another, to the navel a fourth, and from thence to the division of the lower extremities a fifth, or half the body; two more faces are assigned to the thighs, half a one to the knee, two from the knee to the top of the foot, and the other half from thence to the sole, which completes the ten. This division does not hold good in men of a more than ordinary size, in whom about half a face is allowed between the paps and the commencement of the thighs, which in them is not the middle of the body. The arms being stretched out, measure from the ends of the middle fingers ten faces, or exactly the length of the body. The hand is the length of the face, the thumb that of the nose, as is also the longest toe, and the bottom of the foot, is one sixth part of the length of the body. The space between the eyes is the breadth of the eye: the breadth of the thickest part of the thigh is double that of the thickest part of the leg, and treble the smallest. Were any individual measured by these rules, those we consider as the most perfect would be found highly deficient.