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 _Causa sina qua non_, and without which all that was done was of no manner of significance,——was the preservation of this delicate and fine-spun web, from the havock which was generally made in it by the violent compression and crush which the head was made to undergo, by the nonsensical method of bringing us into the world by that foremost. ——This requires explanation. My father, who dipped into all kinds of books, upon looking into _Lithopædus Senonesis de Portu difficili_,[4] published by _Adrianus Smelvgot_, had found out, that the lax and pliable state of a child’s head in parturition, the bones of the cranium having no sutures at that time, was such,——that by force of the woman’s efforts, which, in strong labour-pains, was equal, upon an average, to the weight of 470 pounds avoirdupois acting perpendicularly upon it;—it so happened, that in 49 instances out of 50, the said head was compressed and moulded into the shape of an oblong conical piece of dough, such as a pastry-cook generally rolls up in order to make a pye of.—Good God! cried my father, what havock and destruction must this make in the infinitely fine and tender texture of the cerebellum!—Or if there is such a juice as _Borri_ pretends—is it not enough to make the clearest liquid in the world both seculent and mothery? But how great was his apprehension, when he farther understood, that this force acting upon the very vertex of the head, not only injured the brain itself, or cerebrum,—but that it necessarily squeezed and propelled the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, which was the immediate seat of the understanding!——Angels and ministers of grace defend us! cried my father,——can any soul withstand this shock?—No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tattered as we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no better than a puzzled skein of silk,——all perplexity,——all confusion within-side.