8i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



liced. There are, however, a few criteria within our reach by means 

 of which we are enabled to judge with some approach to exactness of 

 the extent of the range within which the average standards of these 

 qualities vary. The criteria are afforded by intellectual defects and 

 aberrations, such as insanity, idiocy, the mental disorders arising from 

 certain physical diseases, criminality, and the propensity to suicide. 

 The information given by the statistics of the circulation of news- 

 papers, letters, and telegi-ams ; the results of the examinations of 

 schools and for the military service ; and even the statistics of mis- 

 directed letters, are all made of service in this investigation. They 

 exhibit a tendency to uniformity which, although it does not always 

 appear as marked as in respect to some of the qualities that have been 

 considered, is nevertheless real. It is particularly striking in the case 

 of suicides, concerning which Morselli has published very complete 

 and minute statistics. 



There need be no real difficulty in showing that the freedom of will 

 and action Avhich we accord to human beings and societies is consist- 

 ent with subjection to the laws of social physiology. While we have 

 not sufficient physical vigor to live more than a certain number of dec- 

 ades ; while we are restricted in our scientific and artistic efforts by 

 the capacity of our brain and nervous system ; while we are prepon- 

 derantly subject to the influence of the intellectual, political, and so- 

 cial currents of the age ; while we are dependent on our geographical 

 situation, on climate, soil, and the 2:)rice of food — it is not yet necessary 

 that we should be deprived of the attribute of free will. The laws of 

 social physiology, although they have been deduced by observation as 

 laws of Nature, and have suffered modification only through a short 

 evolutionary epoch as compared with that through which the laws of 

 Nature have subsisted, give nevertheless sufficient room for individual 

 development. Because in the whole social body only the final results 

 appear of the endless diversities existing within it, the freedom of in- 

 dividuals is consistent with the regularity of the whole. This whole, 

 moreover, is itself not a stationary or rigid body, but an organism that 

 is giving itself specific cultivation, and is continually suffering change, 

 metamorphosis, and further development. An entire civic society can, 

 by its collective will, modify, within the limits imposed by natural 

 laws, all those properties and laws which we have discovered in the 

 domain of social physiology. — Translated and condensed from the 

 Deutsche Rundschau. 



Dk. Alfred Russel "Wallace acknowledges that the Americans possess, in 

 respect to etlucational institutions, some special advantages over his own coun- 

 trymen. They are comparatively free from Old-World establishments and cus- 

 toms ; are not afraid of experiments ; and seek, in whatever they undertake, to 

 have "the biggest thing attainable." These features are manifested in some of 

 the great American museums, " wiiich rival, in certain special departments, tlie 

 long-estabhslied national museums." 



