马修（Matthew）知道伪造学是胡说八道，但是几年后，他发现自己做出了与父亲做出的判断。湿滑的人看上去很滑。他们确实做到了。以及我们如何变得像父母一样！他们的蔑视建议 - 基于我们的优越性，偏见和混乱的民间智慧，我们的意见随后是如何被我们自己的发现和世界的意识所证明的。随着这种情况的发生，我们意识到越来越多的恐怖，我们以前永远不会娱乐的主张：我们的母亲是对的！
(Matthew knew that phrenology was nonsense, and yet, years later, he found himself making judgments similar to those made by his father; slippery people looked slippery; they really did. And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice - based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudiced and muddled folk wisdom - how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right!)
Matthew认识到阶梯学是一门缺陷的科学，但是随着时间的流逝，他发现自己对父亲的判断做出了类似的判断。他注意到，看上去很滑的人似乎确实具有这种品质，这使他反思了父母信仰对自己的观点的影响。意识到他的意识是，尽管驳斥了他们的观点，但他在自己的生活中慢慢地反映了他们。
这种反思使人们对我们如何经常继承父母的观点有了更深入的了解，即使我们最初认为自己超出了这种偏见。随着时间的流逝，我们曾经拒绝的轻蔑建议可以变成自己的信念，我们开始在经验中看到父母智慧的证据。这最终在令人不安的认识中，我们以前在以前嘲笑的观念可能拥有真理。