196 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ceit. Bruisers are attracted by Mignons, liglit-weigiit dandies bj two- 

 liundred-pound peasant girls, stoics by slirews, polyhistors by un- 

 sophisticated Gretcliens, saints by flirts, metaphysicians by tomboys, 

 grimy Vulcan by Venus, moral or physical anomalies by their oppo- 

 site extremes. One-sided men, as it were, instinctively seek their 

 complement in the interest of the next generation, and it so happens 

 that nearly all great men are one-sided — one or two of their faculties 

 having been phenomenally developed at the expense of the rest. 



And to complete the explanation, moral and intellectual pre- 

 eminence are frequently attained at the cost of the physical organism : 



" The restless spirit, working out its way, 

 Fretted the feeble body to decay ; " 



and Marcus Aurelius, yielding to instinct, selects a Faustina whose 

 vital vigor gives her a superior chance to transmit her physical and 

 moral characteristics. 



Hence the portent of disparity, the toto-coelo contrast between 

 legitimate sons and such fathers as Cromwell, Bonaparte, Humboldt, 

 Goethe, and Dante. Hence, also, the phenomenon of atavism: the 

 necessity of neutralizing anomalies by an alliance of opposite ex- 

 tremes tends to repeat itself in successive generations, and two inver- 

 sions may thus result in the re-establishment of a strange ances- 

 tral type. 



VEKACITY. 



By WILLIAM HENEY HUDSON, 



PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY. 



IT is worth our while at times to turn aside from the investigation 

 of the newer theories and problems of conduct, to examine a little 

 carefully some of the older but not less weighty matters of the law. 

 Familiarity is said to breed contempt in social and domestic inter- 

 course; it certainly has its peculiar dangers in the domain of thought. 

 We may grow so accustomed to a fact that it gradually loses its 

 meaning for us; we may live so long in intimate association with a 

 life-giving idea that little by little it lapses into dry and sterile com- 

 monplace. When this happens, it is well to force such fact or idea 

 out again into the current of freshening inquiry, that the mind may 

 play actively about it for a season, and its full significance be thus 

 revealed. 



If this general doctrine be recognized as sound, it may be re- 

 garded as not altogether waste of time to consider briefly the ancient 

 and well-established ethical principle of truthfulness, or veracity. 



