ead 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.

When my father had got so far,--what a blaze of light did the accounts
of the Caesarian section, and of the towering geniuses who ha