239. Finally, there is nothing in the whole mundane system more perfect than man, and yet nothing more imperfect if he abuses the faculties designed to be employed in making him perfect. In general we may observe that man is an animal machine possessing a structure worthy of our highest admiration; he is a most marvellous complement to the whole mundane system; so marvellous, indeed, that all nature appears to have unfolded herself in him. In order the more to see how astonishing are his perfections, let me recall the attention of the reader to a few only of our preceding remarks.
1. How ingeniously in the human body is one thing subordinated to another; how is an imperfect part placed under the rule of a more perfect: for the vessels are subordinated to the fibres, the blood to the spirituous fluid, the body to the brains; while upon the brains are bestowed science and efficient power.
2. In man, all those things are multiplied which are more perfect, and which pertain to causes or first principles. For he has a larger brain, its divisions are more ordinate, and the fibres thence educed correspond in quantity and purity to the superior organization of the brain: by these fibres the contained fluid is so dispensed, that everything in the body is in subservience to them.
3. There is bestowed upon the brain a still more universal first principle and eminent faculty; namely, the soul; which is as it were a tutelar deity and demi goddess presiding over her own little world; and to which is assigned within the limits of that world a certain species of omnipresence, knowledge, power, and providence. The power, presence, knowledge, and providence, however, which are supreme, the Author of nature has reserved to himself; and these He exercises upon such conditions, that so far as the corresponding faculties of man are dependent upon Him, so far are these faculties conducive to more perfect and universal ends.
4. When therefore the Author and Builder of all things graciously bestowed upon man a soul possessing the faculty of immortality, to this faculty he added that of reason, and to reason that of the will, and both will and reason he endowed with liberty. This he did, to the end that, contrary to what prevails in brutes, no external moving cause and incitement might how into act, without a previous consultation of reason; but that it might receive from reason a specific determination.
