[Ado AND SYMBOLS. 5 



adapt themselves to anything is an error arising from a want of 

 observation. There is a sphere for every man ; and as a rule, the 

 removal of him when he is fairly acclimatised either renders him 

 useless altogether, or makes it necessary that he shall be sustained 

 by artificial inventions, and in that case he cannot lead that natural 

 life -which is necessary to the full development of his powers. It 

 will also be found that these difficulties in adapting men to 

 great changes of position increase with their age. 8. 



The Love of Admiration. 



Man is an animal possessed of a powerful instinct to orna- 

 ment himself, and to attract the attention of his fellows by 

 various external decorations. This is a passion strong in every 

 one of us : whether in the savage, who prides himself on his 

 tattooing ; or the !New Zealand chief, who disfigures his face 

 with linear incisions ; or the Red Indian, who considers the 

 ring in his nose as the symbol of nobility ; or the military, 

 arrayed in all the glories of feathers and gold lace ; or the fine 

 lady, in the fantastic creations of Parisian millinery. It is the 

 love of admiration that gives the common impulse to all. This 

 is the reason why the savage barters his gold for beads and 

 ostrich feathers, and why the soldier sheds his blood like water 

 for an iron cross or a silver medal. It is this which makes the 

 courtier sigh for a ribbon, or a star, or a garter ; and the citizen 

 gaze with admiration and awe at the cocked hat of the sheriff, 

 and the gilded coach of the lord mayor. s. 



Adoration Premeditating the Destruction of its Object. 



Every reader of newspapers is familiar with the recurring in- 

 cident of an inquest held over a person who has been killed by 

 another, on the avowed ground that he had for the deceased a 

 passionate adoration. The alliance between the deep feeling of 

 adoration, or even passionate love, and the determination of the 

 will to accomplish the destruction of the object which has called 

 forth the feeling, is one of those paradoxes which, though forced 

 on us, we cannot solve, unless, indeed, we accept as an explana- 

 tion that ready verdict of " insanity," which is an easy mode 



