Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/220

168 great designs, as well as performances; whether you will consider his notions or his looks, surely no man ever advanced into the publick, with fitter qualifications of body and mind, for the propagation of a new religion. O, had those happy talents, misapplied to vain philosophy, been turned into their proper channels of dreams and visions, where distortion of mind and countenance are of such sovereign use; the base detracting world would not then have dared to report, that something is amiss, that his brain has undergone an unlucky shake; which even his brother modernists themselves, like ungrates, do whisper so loud, that it reaches up to the very garret I am now waiting in!

Lastly, whosoever pleases to look into the fountains of enthusiasm, from whence in all ages have eternally proceeded such fattening streams, will find the spring head, to have been as troubled and muddy, as the current: of such great emolument is a tincture of this vapour, which the world calls madness, that without its help, the world would not only be deprived of those two great blessings, conquests and systems, but even all mankind, would unhappily be reduced to the same belief in things invisible. Now, the former postulatum being held, that it is of no import from what originals this vapour proceeds, but either in what angles it strikes and spreads over the understanding, or upon what species of brain it ascends; it will be a very delicate point to cut the feather, and divide the several reasons to a nice and curious reader, how this numerical difference in the brain, can produce effects of so vast a difference from the same vapour, as to be the sole point of individuation, between Alexander the Great, Jack