Chapter 11 Smart heads don't grow hair (1)

Judge Methuen had a very special theory: In the human body, the mind is located somewhere near the center of gravity.In my opinion, this is a creed of Buddhism.For a long time I avoided such lofty arguments (as one avoids baseness as much as one can) lest I be classified (even in the slightest degree) with any belief other than Congregationalism. or sect. But I have noticed that whenever I feel fear, joy, or other such emotional feelings, I always have a dull pain in my chest. It is really like the center of my body system is also the center of my neuro-intellectual system. The emotional feeling focused on this, with the help of twisted information channels, quickly spreads from a certain part of the body to the whole body.

I have spoken of this state of affairs to Judge Methuen, and he seems quite pleased with it. "My friend," said he, "you have, I implore you, a peculiarly sensitive mind, which is the finest example of a bookish mind. Its quick comprehension means that it is capable of responding to fleeting impressions and passions. Reflexes alert and sensitive. What you have just told me has convinced me that you are born to be a successful collector of books on science and art. You will soon be bald—perhaps with Thomas Hobbes [Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), a political thinker during the British bourgeois revolution, served as Bacon's secretary. His main works include "On Citizens", "Leviathan", etc.] as bald— —Because an alert and active mind is always bald. The mind and the brain are so closely connected that the damage done to the development and functioning of the mind is what humans have inherited from wild animals (our prehistoric ancestors) Those residual features will be further degraded."

It follows that Judge Methuen recognized that baldness is a striking sign of intellect and spirituality.He collected a large amount of literature on this topic, and promised the Academy of Sciences that he would submit a paper on this research to demonstrate that the scarcity of hair on the skull (especially in the high area of ​​​​the forehead and the part of the parietal bone) was originally a result of human animality. A sign of a departure from instinct and habit is at the same time a clear sign of mental development. It reminds me that, long ago, Judge Methuen set out to compile a list of famous bald men in the history of human society, and the list has grown until it now includes thousands of people, covering every trade and profession.Homer, Socrates, Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Pliny, Mycenae, Julius Caesar, Horace, Shakespeare, Bacon, Napoleon Bonaparte, but Dean, Pope, Cobb, Goldsmith, Israel Putnam, John Quincy Adams, Patrick Henry—these geniuses were all bald.But the baldest among them is the philosopher Hobbes. For this dear friend, the respected John Aubrey . ] There is such a record: "He is very bald, but he always likes to sit in the room with his head bare and immerse himself in research. He also said that he has never caught a cold because of his bald head, but the biggest trouble is that the flies cannot get close. It's really hard for them to stand on such a bald head."

In all the portraits and drawings of Napoleon that I have seen, one of the most striking features of this man is that a lock of curly and matted hair falls over his royal forehead, making his face vivid and attractive.However, this is a vain and ridiculous practice.Napoleon began to bald in his early years, which made him very troubled. He had to find a way to overcome this change. The way to improve his appearance is to let the hair on the back of his head grow long enough, and then Go around for a considerable distance and droop to the forehead.This ingenious method would rightly serve his purpose: to give him curls like Hyperion's, and thereby acquire youthful pride.However, even such a lock of hair fell out prematurely before the destruction of time.

As for myself, I don't know whether I have ever shared the ridiculous notion that a bald head is a mindless habit.No, on the contrary, I have always respected this mark of wisdom, and fully agree with my friend Judge Methuen, whose sad episode is recorded in the second chapter.Kings should serve this honorable purpose, which is to point out to mankind that baldness is rightly preferred because of divine approval and protection. In my own case, I attribute my premature baldness to intellectual and spiritual growth resulting from my love and addiction to books.Miss Susan (that is, my sister), attributed it to other reasons.She claimed that the first of these was because I had a perverted habit of reading while lying down; the second was because of my habit of eating Welsh rabbits in the middle of the night.There was a gas lamp head above my bed, so my head completely blocked the light from the lamp, which focused downward and reflected onto the book I was reading.

Miss Susan insisted that with such a strong light and its heat attacking my head, it was impossible not to dry out the scalp and those hair follicles would die from lack of natural nourishment.Besides that, she thinks: the Welsh rabbit I always eat at eleven o'clock at night also breeds poisonous vapors and a slight melancholy in my stomach, which goes its way up naturally to my brain, generating heat inside that evaporates the fluid in the skull that is needed for the healthy growth of capillaries in the extracranial cortex that borders it. Well, Miss Susan's solemn statement just gave me a strong argument in defense of my habits.Why, then, do other means, which necessarily produce fever, such as colds, tonsillitis, asthma, and countless other evils, not produce baldness?According to Lawrence Stern [Lawrence Stern (1713-1768), a British novelist, whose famous works include "The Biography of Shandy" and so on. 】The saying is also out of benevolent providence, and treating the weak well is precisely to prevent baldness.If I hadn't been in love with books, the mind in my diaphragm wouldn't have killed the capillaries on my scalp, relics of my ape ancestors, which flourished in my scalp earlier; if I hadn't been bald Therefore, the joy of lying down and reading will not come to my destiny.