But when my father read on, and was let into the secret, that when a child was turned topsy-turvy, which was easy for an operator to do, and was extracted by the feet;--that instead of the cerebrum being propelled towards the cerebellum, the cerebellum, on the contrary, was propelled simply towards the cerebrum, where it could do no manner of hurt:--By heavens! cried he, the world is in conspiracy to drive out what little wit God has given us,--and the professors of the obstetric art are listed into the same conspiracy.--What is it to me which end of my son comes foremost into the world, provided all goes right after, and his cerebellum escapes uncrushed?
It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of great use.
When my father was gone with this about a month, there was scarce a phaenomenon of stupidity or of genius, which he could not readily solve by it;--it accounted for the eldest son being the greatest blockhead in the family.--Poor devil, he would say,--he made way for the capacity of his younger brothers.--It unriddled the observations of drivellers and monstrous heads,--shewing a priori, it could not be otherwise,--unless . . . I don't know what. It wonderfully explained and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sunshine, &c.--which for aught he knew, might as well rarefy and dilute the faculties of the soul into nothing, by one extreme,--as they are condensed in colder climates by the other;--but he traced the affair up to its spring-head;--shewed that, in warmer climates, nature had laid a lighter tax upon the fairest parts of the creation;--their pleasures more;--the necessity of their pains less, insomuch that the pressure and resistance upon the vertex was so slight, that the whole organization of the cerebellum was preserved;--nay, he did not believe, in natural births, that so much as a single thread of the net-work was broke or displaced,--so that the soul might just act as she liked.
