SECT. 14.] Arrangement and Formation of the Series. 43 



mine it by experience has not been made sufficiently often to 

 enable us to ascertain it ; but upon general grounds it seems 

 by no means certain that it would follow the so-called ex 

 ponential law. Be this however as it may, it is rather a 

 licence of language to talk as if nature had been at work in 

 the same way as one of us ; aiming (ineffectually for the most 

 part) at a given result, that is at producing a man endowed 

 with a certain stature, proportions, and so on, who might 

 therefore be regarded as the typical man. 



14. Stated as above, namely, that there is a fixed 

 invariable human type to which all individual specimens of 

 humanity may be regarded as having been meant to attain, 

 but from which they have deviated in one direction or 

 another, according to a law of deviation capable of ci priori 

 determination, the doctrine is little else than absurd. But 

 if we look somewhat closer at the facts of the case, and the 

 probable explanation of these facts, we may see our way to 

 an important truth. The facts, on the authority of Quetelet s 

 statistics (the great interest and value of which must be 

 frankly admitted), are very briefly as follows : if we take any 

 element of our physical frame which admits of accurate 

 measurement, say the height, and determine this measure in 

 a great number of different individuals belonging to any 

 tolerably homogeneous class of people, we shall find that 

 these heights do admit of an orderly arrangement about a 

 mean, after the fashion which has been already repeatedly 

 mentioned. What is meant by a homogeneous class ? is a 

 pertinent and significant enquiry, but applying this condition 

 to any simple cases its meaning is readily stated. It implies 

 that the mean in question will be different according to the 

 nationality of the persons under measurement. According to 

 Quetelet 1 , in the case of Englishmen the mean is about 

 1 He scarcely, however, professes to give these as an accurate measure 



