26. Therefore very various and uncertain in the ideas of different men.
Since then it is evident that we sort and
name substances by their nominal and not by their real essences, the next thing to be considered is how, and by
whom these essences come to be made. As to the latter, it is evident they are made by the mind, and not by nature:
for were they Nature's workmanship, they could not be so various and different in several men as experience tells
us they are. For if we will examine it, we shall not find the nominal essence of any one species of substances in all
men the same: no, not of that which of all others we are the most intimately acquainted with. It could not possibly
be that the abstract idea to which the name man is given should be different in several men, if it were of Nature's
making; and that to one it should be animal rationale, and to another, animal implume bipes latis unguibus. 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. 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.