He
that annexes the name to a complex idea, made up of sense and
spontaneous motion, joined to a body of such a shape, has thereby
one essence of the species man; and he that, upon further examination,
adds rationality, has another essence of the species he calls man:
by which means the same individual will be a true man to the one which
is not so to the other. I think there is scarce any one will allow
this upright figure, so well known, to be the essential difference
of the species man; and yet how far men determine of the sorts of
animals rather by their shape than descent, is very visible; since
it has been more than once debated, whether several human foetuses
should be preserved or received to baptism or no, only because of
the difference of their outward configuration from the ordinary make
of children, without knowing whether they were not as capable of
reason as infants cast in another mould: some whereof, though of an
approved shape, are never capable of as much appearance of reason
all their lives as is to be found in an ape, or an elephant, and never
give any signs of being acted by a rational soul. Whereby it is
evident, that the outward figure, which only was found wanting, and
not the faculty of reason, which nobody could know would be wanting in
its due season, was made essential to the human species.
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