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By superfoetation is meant the conception, by a woman already pregnant, of a second embryo, resulting in the birth of two children at the same time, differing much in their degree of maturity, or in two separate births, with a considerable interval between.
It has been maintained that this superfoetation, this teeming of the press in modern times, is prejudicial to good literature, because it obliges us to read so much of what is of inferiour value, in order to be in the fashion; so that better works are neglected for want of time, because a man will have more gratification of his vanity in conversation, from having read modern books, than from having read the best works of antiquity.
But Tommy had not brains to work off an overnight's surfeit by ten o'clock next morning, and unfortunately, in he wandered the other morning drunk with last night and with a superfoetation of drink taken in since he set out from bed.
The thoughtful youth laments the superfoetation of nature. "Generous and handsome," he says, "is your hero; but look at yonder poor Paddy, whose country is his wheelbarrow; look at his whole nation of Paddies." Why are the masses, from the dawn of history down, food for knives and powder?
Yet if, on the other hand, we assume God to have thought in advance of every POSSIBLE flight of human fancy in these directions, his mind becomes too much like a Hindoo idol with three heads, eight arms and six breasts, too much made up of superfoetation and redundancy for us to wish to copy it, and the whole notion of copying tends to evaporate from these sciences.
Whatever it is, it is within his desert, for what is observed of some creatures that at the same time they trade in productions three stories high, suckling the first, big with the second, and clicketing for the third: a committee-man is the counterpoint, his mischief is superfoetation, a certain scale of destruction, for he ruins the father, beggars the son, and strangles the hope of all posterity.
SUPERFOETATION. A second conception some time after a prior one, by which two foetuses of different age exist together in the same female. Often used figuratively. TIC. A nervous affection of the muscles; a twitching. By Preston W. Search, Honorary Fellow in Clark University. With an Introduction by Pres. G. Stanley Hall. Vol. 52. 12mo. Cloth, $1.20 net.
This is that better purity established by mothers in the plastic heart, before the superfoetation of precept is possible, or even before the "soul takes flight in language"; it is perhaps pre-natal or hereditary.
The rubbish in its mind would thus appear easily to outweigh in amount the more desirable material. One would expect it fairly to burst with such an obesity, plethora, and superfoetation of useless information. I will spare you further objections.
It has been maintained that this superfoetation, this teeming of the press in modern times, is prejudicial to good literature, because it obliges us to read so much of what is of inferiour value, in order to be in the fashion; so that better works are neglected for want of time, because a man will have more gratification of his vanity in conversation, from having read modern books, than from having read the best works of antiquity.
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