Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/520

484 see the necessity there is that the one should have an absolute command over the other. In your merely animal capacity, says he to man, without reason to guide you, and actuated only by a blind instinct, I will show you that you would be degraded below the beasts of the field. That very form, that very body, you are now so proud of, as giving you such a superiority over all other animals, I will show you owe all their beauty, and all their greatest powers, to their being actuated by a rational soul. Let that be withdrawn, let the body be inhabited by the mind of a brute, let it be prone as theirs are, and suffered like theirs to take its natural course, without any assistance from art, you would in that case be the most deformed, as to your external appearance, the most detestable of all creatures. And with regard to your internal frame, filled with all the evil dispositions, and malignant passions of mankind, you would be the most miserable of beings, living in a continued state of internal vexation, and of hatred and warfare with each other.

On the other hand, I will show another picture of an animal endowed with a rational soul, and acting uniformly up to the dictates of right reason. Here you may see collected all the virtues, all the great qualities, which dignify man's nature, and constitute the happiness of his life. What is the natural inference to be drawn from these two different representations? Is it not evidently a lesson to mankind, warning them not to suffer the animal part to be predominant in them, lest they resemble the vile Yahoo, and fall into vice and misery; but to emulate the noble and generous Houyhnhnm, by cultivating the rational faculty to the most;