346 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



equal — the hydrocephalous infant is not to be confounded with the 

 normal child, nor the Bushman's baby with the offspring of the Anglo- 

 Saxon. 



But, it may be objected with impatience, why all this insistence 

 upon what is so perfectly evident? Why whisper around the secret 

 of all the world — the very first thing that our common experience of 

 mankind brings to our notice? We do not have to wait for science 

 to tell us that men are not so outrageously free and so ridiculously 

 equal. Science corroborates what common experience reveals, of 

 course; but does not every one know of himself that when we warm 

 up over the subject of the rights of man, and grow pardonably orator- 

 ical, we never intend to be understood with a literal exactness ? 



Yes, everybody knows, under normal circumstances, that men are 

 not alike, and that it would be the very height of all that is unreason- 

 able to expect all to act in the same way. No man of sense goes to the 

 thistle for figs, or to the penitentiary for saints. And as human beings 

 differ, and may reasonably be expected to find the attainment of the 

 halo difficult in varying degrees, and the descent to Avernus easy, 

 easier or easiest, according to their proclivities and to the help fur- 

 nished them by their environment, everybody knows that there is no 

 sense in treating all men alike, if our object is, as it ought to be, the 

 betterment of society. One man does not need special inducements 

 to be good; one has to have a cake dangled before him; one would be 

 cut to the quick if the cake were merely hinted at. One man needs a 

 gentle admonition, as his feet begin to move on the above-mentioned 

 slope; a second must have a pretty sharp jerk, if he is to be stopped in 

 his downward career; a third whizes by with such an impetus that to 

 lay hands suddenly upon him is to endanger his comfort and happiness. 

 Shall we treat them all alike, and call it even-handed justice ? 



Everybody, I say, knows, under normal circumstances, that it is 

 folly to expect men to act alike, when they are not alike; to look to 

 see them influenced in the same way by the same object of desire or 

 aversion ; to hope to make them better by offering the same rewards or 

 by holding up the same threats of punishment. The same heavy 

 dumpling that will lure the hungry schoolboy to the paths of virtue, 

 will drive the aged dyspeptic to the vice of imprecation. 



But men only know this, be it marked, under normal circumstances. 

 We must recognize the fact that men — not stupid men, or ignorant 

 men, but men of the highest intelligence and of much learning — are 

 capable of putting all this resolutely behind them, and of knowing 

 nothing save that all men are free and equal, when they fall into the 

 clutches of a certain strange metaphysical theory. 



It is wonderful what abstract metaphysical reasonings will do. They 

 have smothered the voice of seemingly indubitable fact, and have led 



