THE QUARTERLY 
FOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
OCTOBER, 1873. 
I. ANIMAL DEPRAVITY. 
‘*Selten habt ihr mich verstanden, 
Selter auch verstand ich euch; 
Nur wenn wir im Koth uns fanden 
Da erkannten wir uns gleich.” 
HEINE; 
whom we had been discussing the subject ;—‘“‘ If you 
wish to establish man’s kinship with brutes, you must 
prove that they, too, are capable of vice, his imagined 
prerogative.” We could not deny that this was sound 
counsel. In sermons and platform-orations and in leading 
articles man declaims, indeed, in favour of ‘‘ virtue.” But 
listen to him in his more confidential moments when he 
flings aside his disguises. You will find that he then pro- 
nounces such of his own species as make some apparent 
approach to this official standard “‘ nincompoops or hypo- 
crites.” The faint praise with which he damns goodness 
but half hides the underlying sneer. Scarcely can you, in 
the German language, speak of a man in terms which convey 
a lower estimate of his abilities or his energies than when 
you call him “eine gute Haut,” or “eine gute Seele.”” On 
the contrary ‘‘ein boser Kerl” is always understood to be 
clever and plucky. Even the virtuous English, senior 
wranglers in the school of hypocrisy, have similar idioms. 
** A good boy,” “fa moral young man,” “a very good sort of 
fellow,” ‘‘a man with no harm in him,” are terms used by 
no means in a complimentary sense. Of all the literary 
diseases of the day ‘‘ goody-goodyism” is the one most 
despised by cultivated men of the world. On the other 
hand, when a woman is particularly well pleased with her 
lover does she not always call him a “‘ naughty man?” Do 
all these phrases spring from a secret conviction that human 
vices are restrained less. by conscience and high principle 
than by weakness or cowardice? Does the world suspect 
that the good man has often merely ‘‘ nothing in him?” 
VOL. VI. (N.S.) 3G 
ee 
ole is of no use to talk about reason,” said a friend with 
