the last book I ever read (The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War, excerpt three)

from The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War by Manuel Rivas:

“Is it true what I read in the bishop’s newsletter, Da Barca?” Casal intervened ironically. “That at a conference you said man hankered after his tail.”

Everyone laughed, beginning with the doctor, who picked up the thread. “That’s right. Apparently I also said the soul is in the thyroid gland! But now that we’re about it, let me tell you something. In surgery we come across cases of dizziness and vertigo that occur when a human suddenly stands up, traces of the functional disorder brought about by the adoption of a vertical position. You see, what we humans suffer from is a kind of horizontal nostalgia. As for the tail, let’s just call it a peculiarity, a biological deficiency, that man does not have one, or he does, but it’s been trimmed, so to speak. The absence of a tail is a factor worth bearing in mind when discussing the origins of speech.”