XXVI
Mirzoza’s Metaphysics
The Souls
While Mangogul was interrogating the Toys of Haria, the widows, and Fatme, Mirzoza had full time to prepare her philosophical lecture. One evening, that the Manimonbanda was performing her devotions, that there was neither play nor drawing room at court, and that the favorite was almost certain of a visit from the Sultan; she took two black petticoats, put one on in the usual manner, and the other over her shoulders, passed her hands through the two slits, put on the peruke of Mangogul’s Seneschal, and his chaplain’s square cap; and thought herself equipped as a philosopher, whereas she had disguised herself into a bat.
In this masquerade dress, she walked up and down her apartments, as a professor of the royal college waiting for his scholars. She affected even to the gloomy pensive physiognomy of a learned man in meditation. Mirzoza did not hold this forced gravity long. The Sultan entered with some of his courtiers, and made a low bow to the new philosopher; whose gravity disconcerted her audience, and was in its turn disconcerted by the loud laughter it occasioned. “Madam,” said Mangogul, “have you not advantage enough by your wit and figure, without taking the robe to your aid? without which your words would have all the weight that you could have desired.”
“It seems to me, sir,” answered Mirzoza, “that you do not much respect this robe, and that a disciple should pay more regard to what constitutes half the merit at least of his master.”
“I perceive,” replied the Sultan, “that you have already acquired the spirit and tone of your new condition. I make no doubt at present, but your capacity answers to the dignity of your dress, and I impatiently expect a proof of it.”
“You shall be satisfied this minute,” said Mirzoza, sitting down in the center of a large carpet. The Sultan and courtiers placed themselves around her, and she began. “Have the philosophers, who presided over your highness’s education, ever entertain’d you on the nature of the soul?”
“Oh! very often,” said Mangogul; “but all their systems had no other end, but giving me uncertain notions of it; and were it not for an inward sentiment, which seems to suggest to me, that it is a substance different from matter, I should either have denied its existence, or confounded it with the body. Would you undertake to clear up this chaos?”
“So far from it,” replied Mirzoza, “that I am not farther advanced on that head than your pedagogues. The only difference between them and me, is that I suppose the existence of a substance different from matter, and that they hold it demonstrated. But this substance, if it exists, must be lodged somewhere. Have they not preached many extravagances to you on that article?”
“No,” said Mangogul: “they all pretty generally agreed, that it resides in the head; and this opinion to me seemed probable. ’Tis the head that thinks, imagines, reflects, judges, disposes, commands; and we say every day of a man who does not think, that he has no brains, or that he wants a head.”
“Well then,” replied the Sultana, “the result of your long studies and of all your philosophy, is, to suppose a fact, and to ground it on popular expressions. Prince, what would you say of your first geographer, if he presented your highness with a map of your dominions, in which he had put the east in the west, and the north in the south?”
“That is too gross an error,” answered Mangogul, “for any geographer to have ever committed.”
“That may be,” continued the favorite; “and in the case before us, your philosophers are greater bunglers, than the most bungling geographer can be. They had not a vast empire to survey; the business was not to fix the limits of the four parts of the world: all they had to do, was to enter into themselves, and there mark the true seat of their soul. Yet they have placed the east in the west, and the south in the north. They have pronounced that the soul is in the head, whereas the greatest part of mankind die, without it’s ever inhabiting that apartment; and its first residence is in the feet.”
“In the feet!” interrupted the Sultan. “That is the most empty notion that I have ever heard.”
“Yes, in the feet,” replied Mirzoza, “and this opinion, which to you seems so silly, will, upon thoroughly examining it, become rational; contrary to all those, which you allow as true, and which upon a thorough examination are found to be false. Your highness agreed with me just now, that the existence of our soul was founded on the interior testimony alone, which it bore to itself; and I will now demonstrate, that all the proofs imaginable of sense concur to fix the soul in the seat which I have assigned it.”
“There we expect you,” said Mangogul.
“I desire no favor,” continued she; “and I invite ye all to propose your difficulties. Well then, I was saying that the soul takes up its first residence in the feet, that there it begins to exist, and from the feet it advances into the body. To experience I appeal for this fact; and perhaps I am going to lay the first foundations of experimental metaphysics.
“We have all experienced in our infancy, that the benumbed soul remains whole months in a state of sleepiness. At that time the eyes open without seeing, the mouth without speaking, and the ears without hearing. ’Tis elsewhere that the soul endeavours to stretch itself and awake; ’tis in other members that she practises her first functions. ’Tis by the feet that a child gives notice of his formation. His body, head and arms are immoveable in the
