Where now (I ask) shall be the just measure; which the
utmost bounds of that shape, that carries with it a rational soul?
For, since there have been human foetuses produced, half beast and
half man; and others three parts one, and one part the other; and so
it is possible they may be in all the variety of approaches to the one
or the other shape, and may have several degrees of mixture of the
likeness of a man, or a brute;- I would gladly know what are those
precise lineaments, which, according to this hypothesis, are or are
not capable of a rational soul to be joined to them. What sort of
outside is the certain sign that there is or is not such an inhabitant
within? For till that be done, we talk at random of man: and shall
always, I fear, do so, as long as we give ourselves up to certain
sounds, and the imaginations of settled and fixed species in nature,
we know not what. But, after all, I desire it may be considered,
that those who think they have answered the difficulty, by telling us,
that a mis-shaped foetus is a monster, run into the same fault they
are arguing against; by constituting a species between man and
beast. For what else, I pray, is their monster in the case, (if the
word monster signifies anything at all,) but something neither man nor
beast, but partaking somewhat of either? And just so is the changeling
before mentioned.
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