REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Sir, I will take a glass of Hock with you.

MR. MAC QUEDY. With all my heart, sir. There are several
varieties of the salmon genus: but the common salmon, the salmo
salar, is only one species, one and the same everywhere, just like
the human mind. Locality and education make all the difference.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Education! Well, sir, I have no doubt schools
for all are just as fit for the species salmo salar as for the
genus homo. But you must allow that the specimen before us has
finished his education in a manner that does honour to his college.
However, I doubt that the salmo salar is only one species, that is
to say, precisely alike in all localities. I hold that every river
has its own breed, with essential differences; in flavour
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 Shakespeare; 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.

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

MR. MAC QUEDY. Only those that point to the Modern Athens.