However, that women were in some respects better than men, he did not deny. He doubted not but that Cannibals thought them so; for we know by the testimony of such Cannibals as happen to have tried both, that white men are considered better meat than negroes, and Englishmen than Frenchmen, and there could be little doubt that for the same reason, women would be preferred to men. Yet this was not the case with animals, as was proved by buck venison, ox beef, and wether mutton. The tallow of the female goat would not make as good candles as that of the male. Nature takes more pains in elaborating her nobler work; and that the male, as being the nobler, was that which Nature finished with greatest care must be evident, he thought, to any one who called to mind the difference between cock and hen birds, a difference discoverable even in the egg, the larger and finer eggs with a denser white, and a richer yolk, containing male chicks. Other and more curious observations had been made tending to the same conclusion, but he omitted them, as not perhaps suited for general conversation, and not exactly capable of the same degree of proof. It was enough to hint at them. The great Ambrose Parey (the John Hunter and the Baron Larrey of the sixteenth century) has brought forward many instances wherein women have been changed into men, instances which are not fabulous: but he observes, “you shall find in no history, men that have degenerated into women; for nature always intends and goes from the imperfect to the more perfect, but never basely from the more perfect to the imperfect.” It was a rule in the Roman law, that when husband and wife overtaken by some common calamity perished at the same time, and it could not be ascertained which had lived the longest, the woman should be presumed to have expired the first, as being by nature the feeblest. And for the same reason if it had not been noted whether brother or sister being twins came first in the world, the legal conclusion was that the boy being the stronger was the first born. And from all these facts he thought the writer must be a judicious person who published a poem entitled the Great Birth of Man, or Excellence of his creation over Woman. Therefore according to the Bramins, the widow who burns herself with the body of her husband, will in her next state be born a male; but the widow, who refuses to make this self sacrifice, will never be any thing better than a woman, let her be born again as often as she may.