Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/518

482 that the pride of man was alarmed, and made him blind to the author's design, so as to charge him with an intention of degrading and vilifying the whole of human nature below that of brutes. I have already shown that the whole of human nature has no concern in what is related of this creature, as he is entirely deprived of all the characteristick properties of man which distinguish him from, and elevate him above all other animals. I have also shown, that even his body, however resembling in outward form, is not the body of a man, but of a beast. In the first place it is prone, like all other beasts, which never was the case in any human creature.

In the next, he has long hooked claws, which enable him to climb the highest trees with the nimbleness of a squirrel, and to dig holes in the earth for his habitation. Their faces too, as in some other tribes of animals, were all alike, being thus described: "The face of this animal indeed was flat and broad, the nose depressed, the lips large, and the mouth wide." When we consider too, that these features were never enlivened by the rational soul, nor the countenance lighted up by the benevolent sensations in man, which constitute the chief beauty of the human face, but on the contrary were continually distorted by a variety of malevolent passions, we must conclude with Gulliver, that such a man beast must be the most odious animal that ever crawled upon the face of the earth; and that his