644 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



remained sound and intact. But even here the question is legitimate 

 as to how much greater heroes they might have been had the weak- 

 nesses of the flesh not weighed so heavily. Such a statement, too, is 

 apt to call up another and quite a different company of people, rosy- 

 cheeked and bright-eyed, and as stupid as they make them. George 

 Eliot's heroines, when tliey are beautiful, nearly all come to some 

 bad end; and when they are plain, end by making you love them, 

 Charlotte Bronte is given to the same association between outer ugli- 

 ness and inner beauty. Even the genial Thackeray makes Amelia 

 somewhat empty-headed. You may also be led to reflect that college 

 athletes are not always the intellectual giants of later life. The 

 honors still fall in part to the shabby, ill-favored men. 



It would be easy to multiply this contradictory evidence, but my 

 sole purpose is to make it clear that the problem is double-faced. 

 How shall we get at the truth ? 



A. favorite maxim of mine applies here very well. It is this, that 

 what is true at all, is true in the extreme. It is a convenient practical 

 process for testing all sorts of conclusions, and I recommend it to 

 those who may, like myself, have little skill for more subtle pro- 

 cesses. Applied to the case in hand, it would lead us to pass from the 

 normal to both extremes of society. Let us then ask what is the 

 motor sensibility of the beautiful but empty-headed heroines : do they 

 play music that any one cares to hear; do they paint pictures that any 

 one cares to look at; do they make fancy work that any one cares to 

 receive; in a word, do they show any quickness of motion, do they 

 do anything that would lead you to suspect a high degree of organiza- 

 tion along with the anatomical perfectness? If your experience has 

 been like mine, you have found them statuesque and clumsy. They 

 make beautiful photographs, for it is perfectly natural for them to 

 sit still. And you can quite as readily recall a series of men, hand- 

 some and dull, a delight to look at and a bore to talk to. 



But going a step further from the normal, let us inquire into the 

 mental capacity of rickety children. The testimony here is very 

 sad. The inco-ordinated movements of the body are not a physical 

 defect alone. They are a mental defect. There is the same lack 

 of co-ordination in their mental processes. You know what secrets 

 are let out in a simple handshake — the firm, strong grasp of the 

 strong; the weak, flabby, repulsive touch of the weak. There are 

 few teachers who have not wept bitter tears in spirit, if not in fact, 

 over the little people whom they have come to care for, but in whom 

 they have had to recognize that a deficient organism would forever 

 bar the way to the highest achievements — children for whom there 

 seemed but this one hope, that they might one day be born over 

 again. I have known with some degree of intimacy about fifteen 



