"By industry," said Uncle Jack.

"By the physical conditions of his body," said Mr. Squills. He could
not have made himself other than he was at first in the woods and wilds
if he had fins like a fish, or could only chatter gibberish like a
monkey. Hands and a tongue, sir,--these are the instruments of
progress."

"Mr. Squills," said my father, nodding, "Anaxagoras said very much the
same thing before you, touching the hands."

"I cannot help that," answered Mr. Squills; "one could not open one's
lips, if one were bound to say what nobody else had said. But after
all, our superiority is less in our hands than the greatness, of our
thumbs."

"Albinus, 'De Sceleto,' and our own learned William Lawrence, have made
a similar remark," again put in my father. "Hang it, sir!" exclaimed
Squills, "what business have you to know everything?"

"Everything! No; but thumbs furnish subjects of investigation to the
simplest understanding," said my father, modestly.

"Gentlemen," re-commenced my Uncle Roland, "thumbs and hands are given
to an Esquimaux, as well as to scholars and surgeons,--and what the
deuce are they the wiser for them? Sirs, you cannot reduce us thus into
mechanism. Look within. Man, I say, re-creates himself. How? By The
Principle Of Honor. His first desire is to excel some one else; his
first impulse is distinction above his fellows. Heaven places in his
soul, as if it were a compass, a needle that always points to one end;