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Show ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CA N'fO HI. 118 Compares and measures by imagined lines Ellipses, circles, tangents, angles, sines; Repeats \vith nice libration, and decrees In what each differs, and in what agrees; With quick Volitions unfatigued selects Means for some end, and causes of effects; All human science worth the natne imparts, And builds on Nature's base the works of Arts. 410 " The Wasp, :fine architect, surrounds his domes With paper-foliage, and suspends his combs; called judgment; if we in vain endeavour to determine it, it is called doubting. If we reexcite the ideas in which they differ, it is called distinguishing. If we reexcite those in which they correspond, it is called comparing. The TVasjJ, fine architect, 1. 411. Those animals which possess a better sense of touch are, in general, more ingenious than others. Those which have claviculre, or collar-bones, and thence use the forefeet as hands, as the monkey, squirrel, rat, are more ingenious in seizing their prey or escaping from danger. And the ingenuity of the elephant appears to arise from the sense of touch at the extremity ~f his proboscis, which has a prominence on one side of its cavity hke a thumb to close against the other side of it, by which I have seen him readily pick up a shilling which was thrown amongst the straw he stood upon. Hence the excellence of the sense of touch in CANTO III. PROGRESS OF THE MIND. Secured from frost the Bee industrious dwells, And fills for winter all her waxen cells., The cunning Spider with adhesive line Weaves his firm net immeasurably fine; The Wren, when embryon eggs her cares engross, Seeks the soft down, and Jines the cradling moss; Conscious of change the Silkworm-Nymphs begin 119 Attach'd to leaves their gluten-threads to spin; 420 Then round and round they weave with circling heads Sphere within Sphere, and form their silken beds. -Say, did these fine volitions :first commence From clear ideas of the tangent sense; From sires to sons by imitation caught, Or in dumb language by tradition taught? Or did they rise in some primeval site Of larva~gnat, or microscopic mite; many insects seems to have given them wonderful ingenuity so as to equal or even excel mankind in some of their arts and discoveries· many of which may have been acquired in situations previous to their' present ones, as the great globe itself, and all that it inhabit, appear to be in a perpetual state of mutation and improvement; see Addi-. tional Note IX. |