Page 413 sur 734

Brutishness is not so low in the scale as Vice, yet it is to be

regarded with more fear: because it is not that the highest

principle has been corrupted, as in the human creature, but the

subject has it not at all.

It is much the same, therefore, as if one should compare an

inanimate with an animate being, which were the worse: for the

badness of that which has no principle of origination is always

less harmful; now Intellect is a principle of origination. A

similar case would be the comparing injustice and an unjust man

together: for in different ways each is the worst: a bad man

would produce ten thousand times as much harm as a bad brute.

Chapter VII.