which it would not go sweetly, or would not go at all.

After this excursus, which I regard as not unworthy the attention
of the eminent Dean of Westminster, who has for long been, through
his admirable works, my guide and philosopher in all matters relating
to the study of words, I recur to the grand principle laid down at
the beginning of the present dissertation, and say deliberately,
that ALMOST EVERY MAN THAT LIVES, IS WHAT, IF HE WERE A
HORSE, WOULD BE CALLED A

SCREW. Almost every man is unsound. Every man (to use the language
of a veterinary surgeon) has in him the seeds of unsoundness. You
could not honestly give a warranty with almost any mortal. Alas!
my brother; in the highest and most solemn of all respects, if
soundness ascribed to a creature implies that it is what it ought
to be, who shall venture to warrant any man sound!

I do not mean to make my readers uncomfortable, by suggesting that
every man is physically unsound: I speak of intellectual and moral
unsoundness. You know, the most important thing about a horse is.
his body; and accordingly when we speak of a horse's soundness or
unsoundness, we speak physically; we speak of his body. But the
most important thing about a man is his mind; and so, when we say
a man is sound or unsound, we are thinking of mental soundness or
unsoundness. In short, the man is mainly a soul; the horse is mainly
and essentially a body. And though the moral qualities even of a
horse are of great importance,--such qualities as vice (which in a
horse means malignity of temper), obstinacy, nervous shyness (which
carried out into its practical result becomes shying); still the
name of screw is chiefly suggestive of physical defects. Its main