ANIMALS. 4! 7 



to receive in some measure their wounds, and take part in their 

 sufferings. Experience tells us, that if we look attentively on 

 any person severely beaten, or sorely wounded, the spirits im- 

 mediately flow into those parts of the body which correspond to 

 those we see in pain. The more delicate the constitution, 

 the more it is thus affected ; the spirits making a stronger im- 

 pression on the fibres of a weakly habit than of a robust one. 

 Strong vigorous men see an execution without much concern, 

 while women of nicer texture are struck witii horror and con- 

 cern. This sensibility in them must, of consequence, be com- 

 miuiicated to all parts of their body ; and as the fibres of the 

 child in the womb are incomparably finer than those of the 

 mother, the course of the animal spirits must consequently 

 produce greater alterations. Hence every stroke given to 

 the criminal forcibly struck the imagination of the woman ; 

 and by a kind of counter-stroke, the delicate tender frame of the 

 child. 



Such is the reasoning of an ingenious man upon a fact, the 

 veracity of which many have since called in question.' They 

 have allowed, indeed, that such a child might have been pro- 

 duced, but have denied the cause of its deformity. " How could 

 the imagination of the mother," say they, " produce such dreadful 

 effects upon her child ? She has no communication with the in- 

 fant; she scarcely touches it in any part; quite unaffected with 

 her concerns, it sleeps in security, in a manner secluded by a 

 fluid in which it swims, from her that bears it. With what a 

 variety of deformities," say they, " would all mankind be mark- 

 ed, if all the vain and capricious desires of the mother were thus 

 readily WTitten upon the body of the child !" Yet notwithstand- 

 ing this plausible way of reasoning, I cannot avoid giving some 

 credit to the variety of instances I have either read or seen upon 

 this subject. If it be a prejudice, it is as old as the days of 

 Aristotle, and to this day as strongly believed by the generality of 

 mankind as ever. It does not admit of a reason ; and, indeed, 

 I can give none, even why the child should, in any respect, re- 

 semble the father or the mother. The fact we generally find 

 to be so. But why it should take the particuhu- print of the 

 father's features in the womb is as hard to conceive, as whv it 



1 Uultim, vol iv. 0. 3 



