5
In the mean time I have something to offer by the by, which is this, that I am of opinion that there is a mutilation, disease, and defect peculiar to every part and faculty, —as blindness of the eye, lameness of the leg, and stuttering of the tongue,—which defects cannot be appropriated to any other members. For that blindness can never be attributed to that which was never created to see, nor lameness to that which never could go, nor can any thing be said to stammer that wants a tongue, or to lisp or stutter that has not a vocal utterance. And nothing can be said to be a changeling or beside his wits or mad, to which Nature never gave the use of thought, reason, and understanding; for it is impossible to be so without some faculty that can suffer either privation or mutilation or some other defect. But you have seen dogs that were mad, and I have seen horses under the same predicament; and some there are who say that bulls and foxes will be mad. But the example of dogs is sufficient, which is unquestionable. This makes it evident, that those creatures have a sort of reason and understanding not to be despised, which being once confused and troubled, the affection arises which is called madness. For we do not find either their sight or their hearing diminished. Now, as when a man is affected with hypochondriac melancholy, or in a delirium, it would be absurd to say that he was not beside himself, or that his sense, reason, and memory were not disturbed,—for custom tells that they who are in a raving condition are not in their right senses, but are fallen from their reason,—so whoever believes that there is any other cause why dogs run mad, but only that their natural senses, reason, and memories are disturbed, while they cease to know faces the most familiar to them before, and abandon their most usual food, and overlook what is just before their eyes, such a man, I say, seems to me either to overlook what is just before his eyes, or else, seeing the conclusions that follow, to fight against the truth itself.
