motion, joined to a body of such a shape, has thereby one essence of the species man; and he that, upon further examination, adds rationality, has another essence of the species he calls man:  by which means the same individual will be a true man to the one which is not so to the other.  I think there is scarce any one will allow this upright figure, so well known, to be the essential difference of the species man; and yet how far men determine of the sorts of animals rather by their shape than descent, is very visible; since it has been more than once debated, whether several human foetuses should be preserved or received to baptism or no, only because of the difference of their outward configuration from the ordinary make of children, without knowing whether they were not as capable of reason as infants cast in another mould:  some whereof, though of an approved shape, are never capable of as much appearance of reason all their lives as is to be found in an ape, or an elephant, and never give any signs of being acted by a rational soul.  Whereby it is evident, that the outward figure, which only was found wanting, and not the faculty of reason, which nobody could know would be wanting in its due season, was made essential to the human species.  The learned divine and lawyer must, on such occasions, renounce his sacred definition of animal rationale, and substitute some other essence of the human species. [Monsieur Menage furnishes us with 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.