Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/231

Rh innate in us, and consequently inseparable from our nature. Now, if this definition be allowed to be just, it will be incumbent on the patrons of innate dignity to show in what it consists; and whether it be discernible in our state of infancy, which is more helpless than that of any other creature; or at a more advanced period of our lives, when we are slaves to our passions? or whether its splendour is more evident when our sun sets, enveloped in the cheerless clouds of dotage? Till this point be determined, I shall beg leave to remain an infidel with respect to the existence of this much injured dignity.

The writers on this subject seem to have involved themselves in an errour, by not distinguishing between the terms natural and acquired. That human nature is, by the practice of virtue, capable of acquiring great dignity, is what I most readily admit; but the dignity of an individual, thus acquired by himself, cannot be said to be the dignity of the species. No man who sees two mares at Astley's dancing a minuet will affirm, that dancing is common to the whole species; or, because some men are born with a power of erecting their ears, that therefore it is a power common to the whole race. But admitting that this same dignity existed any where but in the imaginations of those who declaim about it, the History of the Yahoos can by no means be considered as offering any insult to our nature. It only paints mankind in that state to which habits of vice must necessarily sink them. And it is surely no very reprehensible part of Swift's character, that, being by profession a teacher of morals, he should paint the deformity of vice in colours the most glaring, and in situations the most disgusting. It therefore