Soc] AND SYMBOLS. 327 



walls, but soon fall to the ground exhausted and motionless. 

 Lord Bacon says of little men in high places, that they resemble 

 small busts on tall pedestals, and are the more ridiculous on 

 account of their elevation. So they are. But they are also like 

 these cats and dogs on the mountain heights, quite out of their 

 sphere ; and the attempt to elevate them, however well intended, 

 is often a fatal blunder. Keep the cats and dogs of society 

 where they can live. vi. 



Social Gullibility. 



There is in society a gullible class a people who will snatch 

 at any absurdity and swallow any nonsense. If only a pro- 

 posal or an institution assume a phase resembling a thing which 

 they approve, they mistake the resemblance for the thing, and 

 are ready to act upon their mistake even at the cost of the 

 greatest inconvenience. There are many animals in the world 

 like them. The trout and salmon rise at an artificial fly, and 

 the pike snaps greedily at the glittering metallic bait. The 

 deer, deceived by a pair of horns held above a bush which the 

 Indian hunter carries before him, allows him to approach within 

 shot of the arrows. The edible frog, which rejects dead food, 

 seizes a dead mouse if it be moved gently to give it the appear- 

 ance of life; and the little green tree-frog, so abundant in 

 Germany, may be fed with dead flies throughout the winter by 

 a similar deception. Birds are scared away from fruit trees and 

 fresh-sown land by figures representing a human form, and are 

 again decoyed by pipes imitating their own peculiar cries. And 

 in this manner many animals mistake the representation of an 

 object for the object itself, the drawing for the original. But 

 they are not like men in the frequency with which they make 

 the mistake. p. 



The Perils of Social Isolation. 



The sun is necessary to health. Important changes take 

 place in the constitution of the blood in consequence of the 

 cutaneous vessels on the surface of the body not being freely 



