Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/517

rial differences even in his bodily organs and powers, sufficient to distinguish it from the human race. He says, — "They climbed high trees as nimbly as a squirrel, for they had strong extended claws before and behind, terminating in sharp points, and hooked." Now it is well known, that the human nails, when suffered to grow to any considerable length, never assume that shape, and unless pared, disable the hands from discharging their office^[1]. He says in another place, — "They are prodigiously nimble from their infancy." This is directly opposite to the nature of the children of men, who are the most helpless in infancy, and the slowest in arriving at any degree of strength or agility, of all living creatures. Indeed it was necessary to the author's end, that of showing the vicious qualities of man's nature in their pure unmixed state, that the creature in whom they were placed should be a mere brute, governed as all others are by an irresistible instinct, without any control from a superiour faculty; and accordingly he seems to have thrown in these additional circumstances to distinguish it from any thing human. At the same time it was also necessary to give this creature the human form, in order to bring the lesson home to man, by having the vicious part of his nature reflected back to him from one in his own shape; for in the form of any other creature, he would not think himself at all concerned in it. Yet it is on account of its bodily form only, represented as it is in so hideous a light,

1. The mandarins of China, from an absurd custom of letting their nails grow to their utmost extent, as a mark of distinction, are obliged to have all the common offices of life, even to that of feeding them, performed by their domesticks.