“Drop your sages and their lofty expressions,” answered Mirzoza; “and as to nature, let us consider her with the eyes of experience only, and we shall learn from her, that she has placed the soul in the body of man, as in a spacious palace, of which she does not always occupy the most beautiful apartment. The head and heart are principally destined for her, as the center of virtue, and the residence of truth: but most commonly she stops on the road, and prefers a garret, a suspicious place, a miserable inn, where she drops asleep in perpetual drunkenness. Ah! If I were allowed for twenty-four hours only, to settle the world according to my fancy, I would divert you with a very strange sight: in a moment I would deprive each soul of the superfluous parts of its habitation; and you would see each individual characterised by the part left him. Thus dancers would be reduced to two feet, or two legs at most; singers to a throat; most women to a Toy; heroes and prizefighters to an armed hand; certain learned men to a skull without brains; a female gamester should be stinted to two hands incessantly shuffling the cards; a glutton to two jaws always in motion; a coquet to two eyes; a rake to the sole instrument of his passion; the ignorant and lazy to nothing.”