624 Page – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

Here is the translated text as follows:

592 X, AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

According to Censorinus, supported by the single argument of an egg, the ancients argued that no egg could be produced without a bird, and no bird without an egg. As it could never be shown which was first formed, it followed that the world had no beginning. We might have shown, upon the authority of Aristophanes, how the world was produced by divine love, and divine love from the egg of night, hatched by chaos. If we had been prepared to go into eternity, there would have been a range! There was a subject fit for philosophy—one never to be determined.

Touching the old cow that was killed, I can only say that whatever Doctor Mitchill says he saw, I believe as if I had seen it myself. I therefore believe he saw a cripple playing with a cooper's knife, and playing with it between his toes. I believe, also, that the neighboring gossips told him the story of the dead cow; but I am not bound to believe all they said. When such facts occur, it is so natural to run the back scent, and if memory does not furnish something, invention will. I once, however, saw a man who was born without arms, but his father had killed no cow.

It is a good rule, that golden rule of King Charles, to believe the half of what we hear. It is a good rule of jurisprudence to reject all hearsay evidence; and it is a good rule to reject a great deal more. A man made a fortune by wagering to the contrary of what everybody said. If his maxim was true in common life, how much more so in philosophy?

The attorney's case in Haddington's poems, with the difference only between black and white, is a case in point. He was an awkward fellow to upset his ink in his wife's lap. It was such an ill-natured return for her caresses, ingratitude of so black a dye, that he deserved his fate.

The world has been in ignorance on another subject which this trial has promulgated. First, all negroes were supposed to be black. In process of time, it was discovered that some were white—and now it appears that others are piebald.

*Negant omnina posse reperiri avem ante an ova generata sint. Cum et ovum sine ave et avis sine ovo gigni non possit.*

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