SOCIOLOGY AND HERO-WORSHIP 



individual varies slightly in one characteristic or 

 another from a certain type which expresses the 

 average among all the individuals of the species. 

 Thus, if one inch be the average length of the 

 proboscis of a certain species of moth, it may 

 well be that of the million individuals which 

 make up the species the great majority have the 

 proboscis a little shorter or a little longer than 

 an inch : in most instances the deviation may 

 not exceed a hundredth or a thousandth part of 

 an inch ; but there may be half a dozen indi- 

 viduals in the species which have the proboscis 

 as long as two inches or as short as half an 

 inch. So, the average height of men in the 

 United States may be about five feet and eight 

 inches, very few men being shorter than five 

 feet and four inches, or taller than six feet ; yet 

 in the side-tents which accompany that " great 

 moral exhibition," the circus, one may, for a 

 quarter of a dollar, see giants eight feet in 

 height, or dwarfs like General Tom Thumb. It 

 is just the same with men's intellectual capaci- 

 ties as with their physical dimensions, though 

 the one cannot exactly, like the other, be mea- 

 sured with a foot-rule. In every community of 

 men and women there is a certain average stan- 

 dard of mental capacity ; which, in the case of 

 a progressive race like ours, may be roughly 

 described as that degree of ability to meet the 

 complicated exigencies of civilized life which 

 159 



