What is our real nature, and what sort of a curious and contemptible understanding do we possess? A man may, it appears, draw the most correct and luminous conclusions, and yet be destitute of common sense. This is, in fact, too true. The Athenian fool, who believed that all the vessels which came into the port belonged to him, could calculate to a nicety what the cargoes of those vessels were worth, and within how many days they would arrive from Smyrna at the Pir?us.

We have seen idiots who could calculate and reason in a still more extraordinary manner. They were not idiots, then, you tell me. I ask your pardon — they certainly were. They rested their whole superstructure on an absurd principle; they regularly strung together chimeras. A man may walk well, and go astray at the same time; and, then, the better he walks the farther astray he goes.

The Fo of the Indians was son of an elephant, who condescended to produce offspring by an Indian princess, who, in consequence of this species of left-handed union, was brought to bed of the god Fo. This princess was sister to an emperor of the Indies. Fo, then, was the nephew of that emperor, and the grandson of the elephant and the monarch were cousins-german; therefore, according to the laws of the state, the race of the emperor being extinct, the descendants of the elephant become the rightful successors. Admit the principle, and the conclusion is perfectly correct.

It is said that the divine elephant was nine standard feet in height. You reasonably suppose that the gate of his stable should be above nine feet in height, in order to admit his entering with ease. He consumed twenty pounds of rice every day, and twenty pounds of sugar, and drank twenty-five pounds of water. You find, by using your arithmetic, that he swallows thirty-six thousand five hundred pounds weight in the course of a year; it is impossible to reckon more correctly. But did your elephant ever, in fact, exist? Was he the emperor’s brother-in-law? Had his wife a child by this left-handed union? This is the matter to be investigated. Twenty di............