An Opinion of any kind, when once on foot, is a Law to Posterity, till repealed by the Doubts and Scrutinies of the Learned and Curious. Doubt is the only Path to Truth; for by this we examine, search, and discern Truth from Error; natural History affords Examples enough of Falshoods copy’d and handed down from Age to Age, through the whole Class of Writers, who never doubted each other, and consequently were never able to know the Truth of Things, upon which many Volumes have been wrote; and it is matter of no small surprise, that Authors never were able to take the least hint from the Practice of the People of some of the _Asiatick_, as well as the _African_ Nations, concerning these large Clitorides; for as in both these Parts of the World, the Women have them most commonly very long, and the People knowing that the Length of them produces two Evils, _viz._ the hindering the Coitus, and Womens abuse of them with each other, wisely cut or burn them off while Girls are young, and at the same time never entertain the least Notion of the Existence of any other Nature besides the Female in those Subjects who are thus depriv’d of that useless Part. This Knowledge is not confin’d to Men of Science alone amongst the _Egyptians_ and _Ethiopians_, nor indeed amongst the _Asiaticks_; for every Parent knows when the Child has this part longer than ordinary, and performs the Operation at a proper Time; which De Graaff seems very much to approve[28]: ‘_And the Excision of this Part is as necessary as it is decent to those Eastern People._’—Which was also perform’d and taught, by several of the ancient Physicians[29], as particularly as any other Operation whatsoever; and yet even in our own Days, we find some Anatomists of Repute confessing a double Nature, and a Mixture of Sexes in the same Body, and others calling the Labia pudendi a divided Scrotum, and fancying Urine and Semen to pass thro’ the Clitoris. But it is observable, that where there is a perfect Penis and Scrotum found in a Child, there is never the least Sign of any Part proper to a Female annexed to it; but that, on the contrary, whatsoever Subject is said to be an Hermaphrodite has the _Feminine_ Parts in Perfection, and no Penis nor Scrotum, nor, according to _De Graaf_’s Dissection, any Organ serving to their Nutrition, Action, Accretion, or any other Function, but only the Clitoris (common to all Women) somewhat larger than Ordinary, which will fully appear when we come to speak of him.