that figure, and had such a particular frame of its visible parts.  Such an opinion as this, placing immortality in a certain superficial figure, turns out of doors all consideration of soul or spirit; upon whose account alone some corporeal beings have hitherto been concluded immortal, and others not.  This is to attribute more to the outside than inside of things; and to place the excellency of a man more in the external shape of his body, than internal perfections of his soul:  which is but little better than to annex the great and inestimable advantage of immortality and life everlasting, which he has above other material beings, to annex it, I say, to the cut of his beard, or the fashion of his coat.  For this or that outward mark of our bodies no more carries with it the hope of an eternal duration, than the fashion of a man’s suit gives him reasonable grounds to imagine it will never wear out, or that it will make him immortal.  It will perhaps be said, that nobody thinks that the shape makes anything immortal, but it is the shape that is the sign of a rational soul within, which is immortal.  I wonder who made it the sign of any such thing:  for barely saying it, will not make it so.  It would require some proofs to persuade one of it.  No figure that I know speaks any such language.  For it may as rationally be concluded, that the dead body of a man, wherein there is to be found no more appearance or action of life than there is in a statue, has yet nevertheless a living soul in it, because of its shape; as that there is a rational soul in a changeling, because he has the outside of a rational creature, when his actions carry far less marks of reason with them, in the whole course of his life than what are to be found in many a beast.

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