110 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is therefore wrong ; while, on the contrary, conduct which tends to 

 increase relatively the number of those who are considerate of the 

 welfare of others, is beneficial to the community, tends to increase the 

 happiness of the greater number, and is therefore right. If, there- 

 fore, it can be shown that the principle adopted by Class A, however 

 self-sacrificing, must tend to work far wider mischief in encouraging 

 the development of selfishness and wrong-doing than it can possibly 

 effect in the way of good (the good being local and casual, the evil 

 systematic and wide-spread), then will it become clear that the prin- 

 cij^le adopted by Class B, which equally seeks the good of others, but 

 entirely avoids the risk of encouraging the selfish and the evil-disposed, 

 is that which can alone lead to permanent improvement and happiness 

 in the social body. 



This, as we shall next proceed to show, is unquestionably the case. 

 — Knowledge. 



WAS HE AK IDIOT? 



Bt Eev. W. a. CEAM. 



IN the quiet little town of Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, there 

 has lately died a man whose life appears to the writer to present 

 a psychological study of marked interest. Nature, in what are called 

 bar freaks, or abnormal products, oft-times gives us hints of powers 

 altogether beyond the ordinary, but destined, it may be, through the 

 development of the race, to become common possessions of mankind. 

 This man furnishes a case in point. 



The subject of our paper was about five feet six inches in height, 

 when standing upright, but he stooped veiy much as he walked, 

 his hands hanging far forward. His body was long, his legs very 

 short, so that in walking he made the lifting, jerking movement in his 

 step characteristic of quadrupeds trained to walk upright. His fore- 

 head, to the eye of a phrenologist, was very fully and finely developed. 

 His occiput rose in a high point, but on each side there was a very 

 deep depression. Phrenolcgically speaking, his head would have been 

 considered well formed, save for these two depressions at the back. 



His education, if so we may call it, was limited to learning the let- 

 ters of the alphabet, so as to know them singly at sight, but he was 

 unable to combine them into syllables or words. He could count as 

 far as five or six, bxit beyond that became confused. He had a decided 

 literary taste, judging from his interest in books and papers, in pe- 

 rusing which he spent much of his time, and apparently found much 

 enjoyment. He did not hold the paper with column perpendicular, 

 but horizontal, reading always from right to left. If any one gave 

 him a book or paper, with page or column perpendicular, he at once 



