an example worth the taking notice of on this occasion: 'When the abbot
of Saint Martin,' says he, 'was born, he had so little of the figure of
a man, that it bespake him rather a monster. It was for some time under
deliberation, whether he should be baptized or no. However, he was
baptized, and declared a man provisionally [till time should show what
he would prove]. Nature had moulded him so untowardly, that he was
called all his life the Abbot Malotru; i.e. ill-shaped. He was of Caen.
(Menagiana, 278, 430.) This child, we see, was very near being excluded
out of the species of man, barely by his shape. He escaped very narrowly
as he was; and it is certain, a figure a little more oddly turned had
cast him, and he had been executed, as a thing not to be allowed to pass
for a man. And yet there can be no reason given why, if the lineaments
of his face had been a little altered, a rational soul could not have
been lodged in him; why a visage somewhat longer, or a nose flatter, or
a wider mouth, could not have consisted, as well as the rest of his ill
figure, with such a soul, such parts, as made him, disfigured as he was,
capable to be a dignitary in the church.]


27. Nominal Essences of particular substances are undetermined by
nature, and therefore various as men vary.

Wherein, then, would I gladly know, consist the precise and unmovable
boundaries of that species? It is plain, if we examine, there is no
such thing made by Nature, and established by her amongst men. The real
essence of that or any other sort of substances, it is evident, we know
not; and therefore are so undetermined in our nominal essences, which we
make ourselves, that, if several men were to be asked concerning some
oddly-shaped foetus, as soon as born, whether it were a man or no, it
is past doubt one should meet with different answers. Which could not