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Plants, again, inasmuch as they are without locomotion, present no
great variety in their heterogeneous parts. For, where the functions
are but few, few also are the organs required to effect them. The
configuration of plants is a matter then for separate consideration.
Animals, however, that not only live but feel, present a greater
multiformity of parts, and this diversity is greater in some animals
than in others, being most varied in those to whose share has fallen
not mere life but life of high degree. Now such an animal is man.
For of all living beings with which we are acquainted man alone
partakes of the divine, or at any rate partakes of it in a fuller
measure than the rest. For this reason, then, and also because his
external parts and their forms are more familiar to us than those of
other animals, we must speak of man first; and this the more fitly,
because in him alone do the natural parts hold the natural position;
his upper part being turned towards that which is upper in the
universe. For, of all animals, man alone stands erect.
In man, then, the head is destitute of flesh; this being the
necessary consequence of what has already been stated concerning the
brain. There are, indeed, some who hold that the life of man-would
be longer than it is, were his head more abundantly furnished with
flesh; and they account for the absence of this substance by saying
that it is intended to add to the perfection of sensation
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