

MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 255 



sible that anything so subtle and aberrant could be part of a 

 system, the main features of which are regularity and precision. 

 But the irregularity of mental phenomena is only in appear- 

 ance. When we give up the individual, and take the mass, 

 we find as much uniformity of result as in any other class of 

 natural phenomena. The irregularity is exactly of the same 

 kind as that of the weather. JSTo man can say what may be 

 the weather of to-morrow ; but the quantity of rain which falls 

 in any particular place in any five years is precisely the same 

 as the quantity which falls in any other five years at the same 

 place. Thus, while it is absolutely impossible to predict of 

 any one Frenchman that during next year he will commit a 

 crime, it is quite certain that about one in every six hundred 

 and fifty of the French people will do so, because in past years 

 the proportion has generally been about that amount, the ten- 

 dencies to crime in relation to the temptations being every- 

 where invariable over a sufficiently wide range of time. So 

 also, the number of persons taken in charge by the police in 

 London for being drunk and disorderly in the streets, is, week 

 by week, a nearly uniform quantity, showing that the inclina- 

 tion to drink to excess is always in the mass about the same, 

 regard being had to the existing temptations or stimulations 

 to this vice. Even mistakes and oversights are of regular 

 recurrence, for it is found, in the post-offices of large cities, 

 that the number of letters put in without addresses is year by 

 year the same. Statistics has ascertained an equally distinct 

 regularity in a wide range, with regard to many other things 

 concerning the mind, and the doctrine founded upon it has 

 lately produced a scheme which may well strike the ignorant 

 with surprise. It was proposed to establish in London a 

 society for ensuring the integrity of clerks, secretaries, collectors, 

 and all such functionaries as are usually obliged to find secu- 

 rity for money passing through their hands in the course of 

 business. A gentleman of the highest character as an actuary 

 spoke of the plan, in the following terms : " If a thousand 

 bankers' clerks were to club together to indemnify their secu- 

 rities, by the payment of one pound a year each, and if each 

 had given security for 500Z., it is obvious that two in each 

 year might become defaulters to that amount, four to half the 

 amount, and so on, without rendering the guarantee-fund in- 

 solvent. If it be tolerably well ascertained that the instances 

 of dishonesty (yearly) among such persons amount to one in 

 five hundred, this club would continue to exist, subject to 



