the fable of the mountain which, after alarming the whole neighborhood with its outcries in labor, was ridiculed by all present when it became delivered of a mouse, is at once ancient and universal. the company, however, who thus gave way to ridicule were not a company of philosophers. those who mocked should in reality have admired. a mountain’s being delivered of a mouse was an event as extraordinary, and as worthy of admiration, as a mouse’s being delivered of a mountain. a rock’s producing a rat is a case absolutely prodigious, and the world never beheld anything approaching to such a miracle. all the worlds in the universe could not originate a fly. thus, in cases where the vulgar mock, the philosopher admires; and where the vulgar strain their eyes in stupid astonishment, he often smiles.