16. Monsters. But it is the issue of rational parents, and must
therefore be concluded to have a rational soul. I know not by what
logic you must so conclude. I am sure this is a conclusion that men
nowhere allow of. For if they did, they would not make bold, as
everywhere they do, to destroy ill-formed and mis-shaped
productions. Ay, but these are monsters. Let them be so: what will
your drivelling, unintelligent, intractable changeling be? Shall a
defect in the body make a monster; a defect in the mind (the far
more noble, and, in the common phrase, the far more essential part)
not? Shall the want of a nose, or a neck, make a monster, and put such
issue out of the rank of men; the want of reason and understanding,
not? This is to bring all back again to what was exploded just now:
this is to place all in the shape, and to take the measure of a man
only by his outside. To show that according to the ordinary way of
reasoning in this matter, people do lay the whole stress on the
figure, and resolve the whole essence of the species of man (as they
make it) into the outward shape, how unreasonable soever it be, and
how much soever they disown it, we need but trace their thoughts and
practice a little further, and then it will plainly appear. The
well-shaped changeling is a man, has a rational soul, though it appear
not: this is past doubt, say you: make the ears a little longer, and
more pointed, and the nose a little flatter than ordinary, and then
you begin to boggle: make the face yet narrower, flatter, and
longer, and then you are at a stand: add still more and more of the
likeness of a brute to it, and let the head be perfectly that of
some other animal, then presently it is a monster; and it is
demonstration with you that it hath no rational soul, and must be
destroyed.
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