The learned
divine and lawyer must, on such occasions, renounce his sacred
definition of animal rationale, and substitute some other essence of
the human species. Monsieur Menage furnishes us with an example
worth the taking notice of on this occasion: "When the abbot of
Saint Martin," says he, "was born, he had so little of the figure of a
man, that it bespake him rather a monster. It was for some time
under deliberation, whether he should be baptized or no. However, he
was baptized, and declared a man provisionally till time should show
what he would prove. Nature had moulded him so untowardly, that he was
called all his life the Abbot Malotru; i.e. ill-shaped. He was of
Caen." (Menagiana, 278, 430.) This child, we see, was very near
being excluded out of the species of man, barely by his shape. He
escaped very narrowly as he was; and it is certain, a figure a
little more oddly turned had cast him, and he had been executed, as
a thing not to be allowed to pass for a man. And yet there can be no
reason given why, if the lineaments of his face had been a little
altered, a rational soul could not have been lodged in him; why a
visage somewhat longer, or a nose flatter, or a wider mouth, could not
have consisted, as well as the rest of his ill figure, with such a
soul, such parts, as made him, disfigured as he was, capable to be a
dignitary in the church.
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