50 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 



desire for personal notoriety. A singular incident is 

 recorded of Socrates. One morning, in a public place, 

 he struck an attitude of profound reverie as if a new 

 problem had just presented itself to him. This attitude 

 he maintained all day and all night a whole twenty- 

 four hours when he offered a prayer to the sun-god 

 and went his way. At noon public attention was 

 excited; the crowd grew, and a band of observers 

 remained out all night to watch him. Now no human 

 strength can endure for twenty-four hours one position 

 of abstract thought without movement, or food, or 

 drink. Socrates was not solving a problem. Was he 

 not seeking distinction by conscious and more or less 

 painful effort ? The great moralist little thought that he 

 was revealing to a distant generation the story of his 

 body, his inheritance, and his physiological proclivities. 

 Let us consider for a moment another notable figure of 

 another race whose life and passions show that he was 

 emphatically the reverse of shrewish King David. In 

 conformation of skeleton, in nervous organization and 

 in hair-growth, we may picture for ourselves the 

 differences between them. 



Fable and legend bequeath to us isolated incidents 

 which attain significance as time goes on and know- 

 ledge grows. The legend of Lady Godiva, for example, 

 is a lesson in physiology. Two facts are recorded of 

 her recorded by those who saw, and foresaw, no 

 connecting link between, them : Godiva's hair was a 

 marvel ; Godiva's compassion has become a proverb. 

 It was scarcely necessary to tell us of the Queen's 

 luxuriant hair. Pity deep enough, passion deep 

 enough to throw convention and custom, and it may 

 be wisdom, to the winds are not independent of 

 anatomic form. We may be quite sure that Godiva's 



