[134] Le sang humain abruti ne pouvait plus s’élever aux choses intellectuelles. See Discours sur L’Histoire Universelle, a historical sketch which, though necessarily infected by the theological prejudices of the bishop, is, for the rest, considering the period in which it was written, a meritorious production as one of the earliest attempts at a sort of “philosophy of history.”
[135] Penny Cyclopædia, Article Mandeville.
[136] Upon which Ritson aptly remarks: “The sheep is not so much ‘designed’ for the man as the man is for the tiger, this animal being naturally carnivorous, which man is not. But nature, and justice, and humanity are not always one and the same thing.” To this remark we may add with equal force, that almost all the living beings upon whom our species preys have been so artificially changed from their natural condition for the gratification of its selfish appetite as to be with difficulty identified with the original stocks. So much for this theory of creative design.
[137] Fable of the Bees, i. 187, &c.
[138] Fable xxxvi., Pythagoras and the Countryman. This fable of Gay may have been suggested by that of Æsop—preserved by Plutarch—who represents a wolf watching a number of shepherds eating a sheep, and saying to himself—“If I were doing what you are now about, what an uproar you would make!” See also the instructive fable of La Fontaine—L’Homme et la Couleuvre, one of the finest in the whole twelve Books (Livre x., 2), in which the Cow and Ox accuse the base ingratitude of Man for the cruel neglect, and, finally, for the barbarous slaughter of his fellow-labourers. The Cow, appealed to by the Adder, replies:—
“Pourquoi dissimuler?
Je nourris celui-ci depuis longues années:
Il n’a sans mes bienfaits passé nulles journées.
Tout n’est que pour lui seul: mon lait et mes enfants
Le font à la maison revenir les mains pleines.