Pascal
In a company, or at table, he always required a rampart of chairs or else some one close to him at the left, to prevent his seeing horrible abysses into which (in spite of his understanding these illusions) he sometimes feared that he might fall. What a frightful result of imagination, or of the peculiar circulation in a lobe of the brain! Great man one side of his nature, on the other he was half-mad. Madness and wisdom, each had its compartment, or its lobe, the two separated by a fissure. Which was the side by which he was so strongly attracted to Messieurs of Port Royal? (I have read this in extract from the treatise on vertigo by M. de la Mettrie.) [J. M.] [Compare the current vulgar beliefs about
the right and left hemispheres. CRS]