Enough has been here advanced to demonstrate the excellence of our nature, and of the immense distance which the bounty of the Creator has placed between man and the brute. The former is a rational being, the latter a being devoid of reason. And as there is no medium between the positive and the negative, between the rational and irrational being, it is evident that man is of a nature entirely different from that of the animal; that all the resemblance he bears to it is merely external; and that to judge of him by this resemblance, is wilfully to shut our eyes against that light, by which we ought to distinguish truth from falsehood.
Having thus considered man as to his internal properties, and proved the immateriality of his soul; we shall now proceed to examine his external part, and give the history of his body. We have already traced him from his formation to his birth, and after taking a view of the different ages of his life, we shall conduct him to that period when he must be separated from his body, and then resign him to the common mass of matter to which he belongs.
Nothing can give us a more striking idea of imbecility, than the condition in which an infant appears on its first entrance into the world. Incapable of making use of its organs, or senses, the infant is in want of every assistance. It is an image of pain and misery; it is more helpless than the young of any other animal; it seems as if every moment would finish its doubtful existence; it can neither move nor support itself; hardly has it strength enough to exist or announce, by its cries, the sufferings it experiences; as if nature chose to apprise it, that it was born to suffer, and that it has obtained a place among the human species to partake of its infirmities and sorrows.
Let us not disdain to consider that state through which we have all passed; let us view human kind in the cradle; let us enquire by what degrees this delicate machine, this new-born and hardly existing body, acquires motion, consistency, and strength.