As for that certain, very thin, subtle and very fragrant juice which
Coglionissimo Borri, the great Milaneze physician affirms, in a letter
to Bartholine, to have discovered in the cellulae of the occipital parts
of the cerebellum, and which he likewise affirms to be the principal
seat of the reasonable soul, (for, you must know, in these latter and
more enlightened ages, there are two souls in every man living,--the
one, according to the great Metheglingius, being called the Animus, the
other, the Anima;)--as for the opinion, I say of Borri,--my father
could never subscribe to it by any means; the very idea of so noble, so
refined, so immaterial, and so exalted a being as the Anima, or even the
Animus, taking up her residence, and sitting dabbling, like a tad-pole
all day long, both summer and winter, in a puddle,--or in a liquid
of any kind, how thick or thin soever, he would say, shocked his
imagination; he would scarce give the doctrine a hearing.

What, therefore, seemed the least liable to objections of any, was that
the chief sensorium, or head-quarters of the soul, and to which place
all intelligences were referred, and from whence all her mandates were
issued,--was in, or near, the cerebellum,--or rather somewhere about the
medulla oblongata, wherein it was generally agreed by Dutch anatomists,
that all the minute nerves from all the organs of the seven senses
concentered, like streets and winding alleys, into a square.

So far there was nothing singular in my father's opinion,--he had
the best of philosophers, of all ages and climates, to go along with
him.--But here he took a road of his own, setting up another Shandean
hypothesis upon these corner-stones they had laid for him;--and which
said hypothesis equally stood its ground; whether the subtilty and
fineness of the soul depended upon the temperature and clearness of
the said liquor, or of the finer net-work and texture in the cerebellum
itself; which opinion he favoured.

He maintained, that next to the due care to be taken in the act of
propagation of each individual, which required all the thought in the
world, as it laid the foundation of this incomprehensible contexture,
in which wit, memory, fancy, eloquence, and what is usually meant by
the name of good natural parts, do consist;--that next to this and his
Christian-name, which were the two original and most efficacious causes
of all;--that the third cause, or rather what logicians call the Cau