The child studies, and becomes a prodigy; he finds that Fo could not change himself into anything but a white elephant, because that is the most beautiful of animals. The kings of Siam and Pegu, say he, went to war with one another for a white elephant: certainly, had not Fo been concealed in that elephant, these two kings would not have been so mad as to fight for the possession of a mere animal.
Fo's enemy will come and challenge him at the end of the world: this enemy will certainly be a rhinoceros; for the rhinoceros fights the elephant. Thus does the fakir's learned pupil reason in mature age, and he becomes one of the lights of the Indies: the more subtle his intellect, the more crooked; and he, in his turn, forms other intellects as distorted as his own.
Show these besotted beings a little geometry, and they learn it easily enough; but, strange to say, this does not set them right. They perceive the truths of geometry; but it does not teach them to weigh probabilities: they have taken their bent; they will reason against reason all their lives; and I am sorry for them.
Unfortunately, there are many ways of being wrong-headed, 1. Not to examine whether the principle is true, even when just consequences are drawn from it; and this is very common.
2. To draw false consequences from a principle acknowledged to be true. For instance: a servant is asked whether his master be at home, by persons whom he suspects of having a design against his master's life. If he were blockhead enough to tell them the truth, on pretence that it is wrong to tell a lie, it is clear that he would draw an absurd consequence from a very true principle.
The judge who should condemn a man for killing his assassin, would be alike iniquitous, and a bad reasoner. Cases like these are subdivided into a thousand different shades. The good mind, the judicious mind, is that which distinguishes them. Hence it is, that there have been so many iniquitous judgments; not because the judges were wicked in heart, but because they were not sufficiently enlightened.
WOMEN.
Physical and Moral.
Woman is in general less strong than man, smaller, and less capable of lasting labor. Her blood is more aqueous; her flesh less firm; her hair longer; her limbs more rounded; her arms less muscular; her mouth smaller; her hips more prominent; and her belly larger. These physical points distinguish women all over the earth, and of all races, from Lapland unto the coast of Guinea, and from America to China.