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UPON this Chapter^[48]Pliny has most elegantly express’d the Artifice of Nature, together with all the Reasons and Causes of Similitude, to this Purpose; viz. “The Cogitations of the Mind make much for the Similitudes and Resemblances of Children: As many other accidental Occurrences are thought to be very efficacious in the same, and that whether they come by Sight, Hearing, or calling to Remembrance; or by Imaginations conceiv’d, and deeply apprehended in the very Act of Generation, or the very Instant of Conception: The inconstant Mind, and wandering Thought, of either Parent, is justly suppos’d to be one Cause.”

HENCE it is, that some Children favour and resemble their Fathers, some their Mothers, some their Grandfathers, or Mothers, and some their Kinsmen: And hence also it is, that there is more Difference and Diversity in the Rational Kind, than in all other Creatures; because the Velocity of their Thoughts, the Celerity of their Minds, and the Variety of their Dispositions, impress a far greater Diversity of various peculiar MARKS: While the rest of irrational Creatures have their Minds continually fixed (in a manner) immoveable, steady, and alike: every One of them in its own peculiar Kind, and specifick Nature.