BOOK II PART I
father’s name, and are esteemed to be of no-
bler or baser birth, according to his family. And
though the mother should be possest of a supe-
rior spirit and genius to the father, as often hap-
pens, the general rule prevails, notwithstand-
ing the exceprion, according to the doctrine
above-explained. Nay even when a superior-
ity of any kind is so great, or when any other
reasons have such an effect, as to make the
children rather represent: the mother’s family
than the father’s, the general rule still retains
such an efficacy that it weakens the relation,
and makes a kind of break in the line of ances-
tors. The imagination runs not along them with
facility, nor is able to transfer the honour and
credit of the ancestors to their posterity of the
same name and family so readily, as when the
transition is conformable to the general rules,
and passes from father to son, or from brother