“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.”