EULOGY ON QUETELET. 179 



institution was restored, the number of tlie condemuecl was reduced to 

 that of France. Tlie author then gives a table indicating the number 

 of crimes committed at different ages, and also giving the amount of 

 what he calls the tendency to crime. 



" What is very remarkable," he observes, " is the frightful regularity 

 with which crimes are repeated. Year after year are recorded the same 

 crimes, in the same order, with the same punishments ; in the same pro- 

 l)ortions. Sorrowful condition of the human race ! The number con- 

 demned to the prison, irons, and the scaffold is as certain as the revenue 

 of the state. We can tell in advance how many individuals will poison 

 their fellows, how many will stain their hands with human blood, how 

 many will be forgers, as surely as we can predict the number of births 

 and of deaths. 



During the years 1831 and 1832 Quetelet devoted most of his time to 

 statistical researches, and the five following memoirs were the fruit of; 

 his labors: Upon the law of the fjrowth of man; Upon the tendency to- 

 crime at different arjes; Upon the iceight of man at different ages; Upon 

 reproduction and mortality; and Statistics of the courts of justice of Belgium 

 from the years 182G to 1831. The researches in regard to the size and 

 weight of man were new at the time. Quetelet found that the law of 

 growth, at least from birth until the thirteenth year, could be repre- 

 sented by a hyperbola. Twenty years later MM. Bravais and Martins 

 adopted a hyperbola as the curve of the diametrical increase of the 

 Norway pine, which is at least a singular coincidence. In the memoir 

 upon the tendency to crime, he enlarges upon the ideas already given, 

 passes in review the different causes which lead to the development or 

 suppression of this tendency, and denies the favorable influence ordi- 

 narily attributed to education. "We too often," he says, "confound 

 moral instruction with the merely learning to read and write, which in 

 many instances only provides new instruments for the commission of 

 crime. On the other hand, as to the injurious moral effects of poverty, 

 some of the provinces of France reputed to be jDoorest are also the 

 most virtuous. 



In connection with these two memoirs he says : " Man, without know- 

 ing it, and supposing that he acts of his own free will, is governed by 

 certain laws from which he cannot escape. We may say that the human 

 species, considered as a whole, belongs to the order of physical phenom- 

 ena. The greater the number, the more the individual will is subordi- 

 nated to the series of general results which i)roceed from general causes . 

 that control the social condition. These causes ought to be sought out, 

 and only observation can discover them." Man, as the author considers 

 him, is analogous to the center of gravity in a body. "If the average 

 man were determined for a nation, he would represent the type of that, 

 nation ; if he could be determined for an assembly of all men, he would 

 represent the type of an entire human species. Although his will is 

 restrained within very narrow limits, man contains within him moral 

 forces which distinguish him from the animal, and by which he can, to 



