There are creatures, as it
is said, (sit fides penes authorem, but there appears no contradiction
that there should be such), that, with language and reason and a shape
in other things agreeing with ours, have hairy tails; others where the
males have no beards, and others where the females have. If it be
asked whether these be all men or no, all of human species? it is
plain, the question refers only to the nominal essence: for those of
them to whom the definition of the word man, or the complex idea
signified by the name, agrees, are men, and the other not. But if
the inquiry be made concerning the supposed real essence; and
whether the internal constitution and frame of these several creatures
be specifically different, it is wholly impossible for us to answer,
no part of that going into our specific idea: only we have reason to
think, that where the faculties or outward frame so much differs,
the internal constitution is not exactly the same. But what difference
in the real internal constitution makes a specific difference it is in
vain to inquire; whilst our measures of species be, as they are,
only our abstract ideas, which we know; and not that internal
constitution, which makes no part of them. Shall the difference of
hair only on the skin be a mark of a different internal specific
constitution between a changeling and a drill, when they agree in
shape, and want of reason and speech? And shall not the want of reason
and speech be a sign to us of different real constitutions and species
between a changeling and a reasonable man? And so of the rest, if we
pretend that distinction of species or sorts is fixedly established by
the real frame and secret constitutions of things.
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