Page:Crotchet Castle - Peacock (1831).djvu/81

 to say, precisely alike in all localities. I hold that every river has its own breed, with essential differences; in flavor especially. And as for the human mind, I deny that it is the same in all men. I hold that there is every variety of natural capacity from the idiot to Newton and Shakspeare; the mass of mankind, midway between these extremes, being blockheads of different degrees; education leaving them pretty nearly as it found them, with this single difference, that it gives a fixed direction to their stupidity, a sort of incurable wry neck to the thing they call their understanding. So one nose points always east, and another always west, and each is ready to swear that it points due north.

If that be the point of truth, very few intellectual noses point due north.