BIOLOGICAL TBAINING AND STUDIES. 867 



' The human, like other highly organised types of life, admits of 

 great variety; aberrant forms arise, even in our own species, 

 under conditions of the greatest uniformity possible to humanity : 

 amongst savages great variety exists (see Bates, " Naturalist on the 

 Amazons," ii. p. 129), even though they all of them may live the 

 same " dull grey life " and die the same " apathetic end ; " and conse- 

 quently it may never, except in the case of Australian or Esquimaux, 

 and perhaps a few other crania, be quite safe to pledge one's-self as 

 to the nationality of a single skull. Still there is such a thing as 

 craniographical type ; and if half a dozen sets, consisting of ten 

 crania apiece, each assortment having been taken from the cemeteries 

 of some well-marked nationality, were set before me, I would venture 

 to say, after consultation and comparison, that it might be possible 

 to show that unassisted cranioscopy, if not invariably right, even 

 under such favourable circumstances, was nevertheless not wrong 

 in a very large number of cases.' If it is true on the one hand that 

 in genpralibus latet error ^ it is true on the other that security is given 

 us by the examination of large numbers for the accuracy and 

 reliability of our averages, a principle which Gratiolet informs us 

 is thoroughly recognised in Chinese metaphysics, and which he has 

 formulated in the following words : — ' L'invariabilite dans le milieu 

 s'applique a tout. La v^rite n'est point dans un seul fait mais dans 

 tons les faits ; elle est dans les moyennes, c'est-a-dire dans une 

 suite d'abstractions formulees apres le plus grand nombre d'observa- 

 tions possibles.' (' M^moire sur les Plis cerebraux,' p. 93.) The 

 natural history sciences do not usually admit of the strictness which 

 says that an exception, so far from proving a rule, proves it to be a 

 bad one ; rather are we wise in saying that in them at least the 

 universality of assertion is in an inverse ratio to that of knowledge, 

 and that the sweex-)ing statements dear, as Aristotle long ago 

 remarked ('Rhetoric,' ii. 1\. 9 and 10; ii. 22. i), to a class which 

 he contrasts with the educated, are abhorrent to the mind of 

 organic nature. It is true enough, as is sometimes said, that when 

 opinions and assertions are always hedged in by qualifications, the 

 style becomes embarrassed, and the meaning occasionally hard to be 

 understood ; but this difficulty is one which lies in the very nature 

 of the case, and the real excellence of style does not consist in 

 its lulling the attention and relieving the memory by throwing 

 an alliterative ring on the ear, but in the furnishing a closely 



3K2 



