Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/87

Rh line; whose unhappy chance it was to fall into the hands of Europeans. Oran Outang, whose value was not known to us, for he was a mute philosopher: Oran Outang, by whose dissection the learned Dr. Tyson has added a confirmation to this system, from the resemblance between the homo sylvestris, and our human body, in those organs by which the rational soul is exerted.

We must now descend to consider this people as sunk into the bruta natura by their continual commerce with beasts. Yet even at this time, what experiments do they not afford us, of relieving some from the spleen, and others from imposthumes, by occasioning laughter at proper seasons! with what readiness do they enter into the imitation of whatever is remarkable in human life! and what surprising relations have le Comte and others given of their appetites, actions, conceptions, affections, varieties of imaginations, and abilities capable of pursuing them! If under their present low circumstances of birth and breeding, and in so short a term of life as is now allotted them, they so far exceed all beasts, and equal many men what prodigies may we not conceive of those, who were nati melioribus annis, those primitive, longeval, and antediluvian mantigers, who first taught science to the world?

This account, which is entirely my own, I am proud to imagine has traced knowledge from a fountain correspondent to several opinions of the ancients, though hitherto undiscovered both by them and the more ingenious moderns. And now what shall I say to mankind in the thought of this great discovery? . XVII.