Johnson defended the oriental regulation of different castes of men, which was objected to as totally destructive of the hopes of rising in society by personal merit. He shewed that there was a principle in it sufficiently plausible by analogy. “We see (said he) in metals that there are different species; and so likewise in animals, though one species may not differ very widely from another, as in the species of dogs, – the cur, the spaniel, the mastiff. The Bramins are the mastiffs of mankind.”
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1791)
With your belief in some apriorities like equality you may have difficulties. I who believe in force (mitigated by politeness) have no trouble – and if I were sincere and were asked certain whys by a woman should reply, “Because Ma’am I am the bull.”
Holmes, Jr., letter to Harold Laski (1928)
These examples serve as exceptions to the typical pattern in which comparisons to animals reduce the stature of a human subject. With adjustment, though, even an animal of high status can, if impaired, put the subject of a comparison into a diminished light.
“Make all men equal so far as laws can make them equal, and what does that mean but that each unit is to be rendered hopelessly feeble in presence of an overwhelming majority?” The existence of such a state of society reduces individuals to impotence, and to tell them to be powerful, original, and independent is to mock them. It is like plucking a bird’s feathers in order to put it on a level with beasts, and then telling it to fly.
James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873)
The orator almost always spoke without notes. On the few occasions when he used them they were an evident embarrassment: it was like an eagle walking.
Martin, Wendell Phillips (1890)
Hastings. Besides, the King hath wasted all his rods
On late offenders, that he now doth lack
The very instruments of chastisement;
So that his power, like to a fangless lion,
May offer, but not hold.
2 Henry IV, 4, 1
Good effects can be had by introducing two animals and identifying the subject of the comparison with one of them rather than the other: like this animal, not that one.
And I will shoot Mr. Wood and his deputies through the head, like highwaymen or housebreakers, if they dare to force one farthing of their coin upon me in the payment of an hundred pounds. It is no loss of honour to submit to the lion, but who, with the figure of a man, can think with patience of being devoured alive by a rat.
Swift, Letter to Mr. Harding the Printer (1724)
I know he has endeavoured to show himself master of the art of swift writing, and would persuade the world that what he writes is ex tempore
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Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)
