620 Slide – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

588 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

‘We passed on to Aristotle; but with all his form and his
substance, his matter and his motion, his cause and his effect,
he could not inform us how, without violating probability,
the black man could get the white child; and therefore, as
we gained no light, we had no need of any photo-meter to
measure how much. Fearing to trast myself longer in the
dark, T passed on to the next topic, recolleeting an old maxim:

Desperes tractata niitescore posse relinquas.

But I had the consolation to think, that for all that had yet
passed between them, nobody was a bit the wiser.

The albinos, with their blood-shot eyes and white hair,
with the arctic owls, Swedish sparrows, and white birds of
Canada, J leave to the curious in wild fowl

‘The strength of the adversary’s ease I take to be this:
that at a critical moment, after Mr. Whistleo and Misa Wil-
Hiams had been just long enough in bed together to be draw-
ing towards a perfect understanding of the businesa which
brought them there, the lady saw, or thought she saw, an ap-
perition of a white man making towards her with his eocked
pistol in his hand; and the true point now is, whether that
apparition did of itself beget the child, or only change it
from black to white after it was begotten, by acting upon
the nervous system of the mothert The counsel showed 8
skill more than professional, which convinced me that he had
gone deep into this subject, and probed it suceesafully. He
understands the doctrine of animal appetencies, if not of
chemical affinities,

Tt is curious to see how the learned will differ. Professor
Roederer denies the effect of maternal imagination in chang-
ing the form or color of the foetus; and for so doing he gains
the prize medal of the University of Gittingen. Doctor
Mitchi!l maintains the effect of maternal imagination with all
his might. And another profound and ingenious philosopher,
Dr. Erasmus Darwin, denies this power in the female imag-
ination; but demonstrates its existence in the male, and says