atoms which compose this apparently solid mass, whole nations of living beings maybe dwelling, and exercising their mutual works of peace or hostility; while perhaps, if philosophy can be exercised, in brains of such infinitesimal dimensions, in the same manner as in our coarser organs, the nature of the atoms, or distant worlds around them, may be dividing with endless absurdities, the Ptolemies and Aristotles of the little republics. We have all so much of the nature of the inhabitants of Brobdignag, that a supposition of this kind,--which is perhaps truly in itself not a very probable one,--yet appears to us much more improbable, than it really is. We smile, as recognizing our own nature, when the sovereign of that country of giants is represented by the most unfortunate, or rather the most fortunate of all voyagers, as “turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff, near as tall as the mainmast of the Royal Sovereign, and observing how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects.” “And yet,” said he, “I dare engage, those creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour; they contrive their nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray.” And we fully enter into the difficulty which the _savans_ of the country, who had all agreed that the new-discovered animal could not have been produced according to the regular laws of nature, must have found, in giving him a name. “One of them seemed to think that I might be an embryo, or abortive birth. But this opinion was rejected by the other two, who observed my limbs to be perfect and finished; and that I had lived several years, as it was manifest from my beard, the stumps whereof they plainly discovered through a magnifying-glass. They would not allow me to be a dwarf, because my littleness was beyond all degrees of comparison; for the queen's favourite dwarf, the smallest ever known in that kingdom, was near thirty feet high. After much debate, they concluded unanimously, that I was only _relplum scalcath_, which is interpreted literally _lusus naturæ_; a determination exactly agreeable to the modern philosophy of Europe, whose professors, disdaining the old evasion of occult causes, whereby the followers of Aristotle endeavoured in vain to disguise their ignorance, have invented this wonderful solution of all difficulties, to the unspeakable advancement of human knowledge.”[50]