The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [77]
——This requires explanation.
My father, who dipp’d into all kinds of books, upon looking into Lithopædus Senonesis de Partu difficili*,21 published by Adrianus Smelvogt,22 had found out, That the lax and pliable state23 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 a weight of 470 pounds averdupoise 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 liquor in the world both feculent and mothery?24
But how great was his apprehension, when he further understood, that this force, acting upon the very vertex of the head, not only injured the brain itself or cerebrum,——but that it necessarily squeez’d and propell’d the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, which was the immediate seat of the understanding.25 Angels and Ministers of grace defend us!26 cried my father,—can any soul withstand this shock?—No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tatter’d 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.
But when my father read on, and was let into the secret, that when a child was turn’d topsy-turvy, which was easy for an operator to do, and was extracted by the feet;27—that instead of the cerebrum being propell’d towards the cerebellum, the cerebellum, on the contrary, was propell’d simply towards the cerebrum where it could do no manner of hurt:—By heavens! cried he, the world is in a conspiracy to drive out what little wit God has given us,—and the professors of the obstetrick art are lifted 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 assimulates 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 phænomenon 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 observation of drivellers and monstrous heads,—shewing, a priori, it could not be otherwise,—unless **** I don’t know what. It wonderfully explain’d and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatick 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 sun-shine, &c.—which, for aught he knew, might as well rarify 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;—shew’d that, in warmer