ii4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



or a forest while in its midst. The near is indefinite and unsym- 

 metrical. It presents a multitude of dissimilar, heterogeneous objects. 

 They appear to be without order. To see order in them they must be 

 seen from a distance. Beauty is almost a synonym of order. A land- 

 scape is beautiful because distance has reduced its chaos of details 

 into order. A mountain seen at a distance is a symmetrical object of 

 rare beauty, but when one is climbing it the rocks and crags, the 

 ridges and gulches, the trees and prostrate logs, the brush and briars, 

 constitute a disordered mass to which the term beauty does not apply. 

 It is much the same with social phenomena. They must be seen, as it 

 were, at long range, which brings groups of facts into relief and shows 

 their relations. 



What Dr. Edward B. Tylor has called e ethnographic parallels/ viz., 

 the occurrence of the same or similar customs, practices, ceremonies, 

 arts, beliefs, and even games, symbols and patterns, in peoples of nearly 

 the same culture at widely separated regions of the globe, proves, 

 except in a few cases of known derivation through migration, that 

 there is a uniform law in the psychic and social development of man- 

 kind at all times and under all circumstances working the same results. 

 The details will vary with the climate and physical conditions, but if 

 we continue to rise in the process of generalization we shall ultimately 

 reach a plane on which all mankind are alike. 



Even in civilized races there are certain things absolutely common 

 to all. The great primary wants are everywhere the same, and they 

 are supplied in substantially the same way the world over. Forms of 

 government seem greatly to differ, but all governments aim to attain 

 the same end. Political parties are bitterly opposed, but there is much 

 more on which all agree than on which they differ. Creeds, cults and 

 sects multiply and seem to present the utmost heterogeneity, but there 

 is a common basis even of belief, and on certain occasions all may and 

 sometimes do unite in a common cause. 



. Not only are the common wants of men the same, but their passions 

 are also the same, and those acts growing out of them which are re- 

 garded as destructive of the social order and are condemned by law and 

 public opinion, are committed in the face of these restraining influences 

 with astonishing regularity. This is not seen by the ordinary observer, 

 and every crime or breach of order is commonly looked upon as 

 exceptional. But when accurate statistics are brought to bear upon this 

 class of social phenomena they prove to be quite as uniform, though 

 not quite so frequent, as the normal operations of life. 



The ordinary events of life go unnoticed, but there are certain 

 events that are popularly regarded as extraordinary, notwithstanding 

 the fact that the newspapers every day devote more than half their 

 space to them. One would suppose that people would some time learn 



