VOL. XLI.3 I'HILOSOPHICAL TRAKSACTIONb. 387 



2. That they are not produced but by accident. It may be concluded from 

 what he had said about double monsters, that he believed them accidental ; and 

 he believes, rigorously speaking, they are so, whatever they be; for supposing 

 every animalculum to be an embryo created, he cannot imagine them to be 

 created imperfect. Their imperfection, their deformity, may proceed from a 

 thousand accidents, either in the reservoirs where they are contained, or in the 

 different routes they are obliged to take, going from father to son. In this case 

 it may easily happen, that tliey are monsters, even in the moment of concep- 

 tion, though they be such by accident. To how many accidents are they not 

 subject afterwards in the venter of the females ? A fall of the mother, a strong 

 pressure, a contusion, &c. may disorder the nice and tender structure of that 

 little creature so far, that a great many of its parts do not unfold themselves 

 any longer, are destroyed, or have their order and natural situation quite 

 changed. 



The disturbed and disordered imagination of the females ought also to be 

 ranged among the accidental causes of monsters. He had seen in a sow, just 

 slaughtered, 7 pigs, which all had the bloody mark of the knife about their 

 necks. About 20 years ago, a cloth-shearer, in Holland, had the misfortune 

 to fall into the hands of some drunken young fellows, who murdered him, and 

 stabbed him with more than 20 wounds with their swords. He was to be 

 married that very week; his intended bride saw his corpse naked with all those 

 wounds, and was 2 days after delivered of a dead child, which had the marks 

 of the wounds in the same places of its body, where the mother had observed 

 them on her dead lover. 



He very well knew, that these sorts of instances, of which one might allege 

 some hundreds, would not go down with certain people, who deny the effect 

 of the mother's imagination on the foetus. They lay stress on two principal 

 reasons: 1. It is pretended, that the foetus has no immediate connexion with 

 the mother who carries it. But this is ridiculous, f©r it cannot be denied, that 

 the secundines are closely united to the matrix, and receive from the mother a 

 humour, or a liquid, which by the navel-string it remits to the foetus. It is by 

 that way it receives its nourishment, that is, the mutter necessary for its increase. 

 Accordingly one may say, that the foetus owes part of its being to the mother; 

 and that the liquid which runs in the vessels of the mother, runs likewise in the 

 vessels of the foetus. 2. It is said, that it is incomprehensible, how the soul of 

 the mother can have an effect on the child. He owns he does not comprehend 

 it neither. It does not follow from thence, that we ought to reject as false all 

 that our reason cannot penetrate into. When once the existence and the na- 

 ture of the soul has been demonstrated, when once we have a perfect know- 



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