242, VESriGES OF THE 



and impulsive ! It seemed impossible that anything so 

 8u]:)tle and aberrant could be part of a system, the main 

 features of which are regularity and precision. But the 

 irregularity of mental phenomena is only in appearance. 

 When we give up the individual, and take the mass, we 

 find as much uniformity of result as in any other class of 

 natural phenomena. The irregularity is exactly of the 

 same kind as that of the weather. No man can say what 

 may be the weather of to-morrow ; but the quantity of 

 rain which falls in any particular place in any five years, 

 is precisely the same as the quantity which falls in 

 any other five years at the same place. Thus, while it 

 is absolutely impossible to predict of any one French- 

 man that during next year he will commit a crime, it is 

 quite certain that about one in every six hundred and 

 fifty of the French people will do so, because in past 

 years the proportion has generally been about that 

 amount, the tendencies to crime in relation to the tempta- 

 tions being everywhere invariable ovei- a sufliciently wide 

 range of time. So also^ the number of persons taken in 

 charge by the police in London for being drunk and dis- 

 orderly in the streets is, week by week, a nearly uniform 

 quantity, showing that the inclination to drink to excess 

 is always in the mass about the same, regard being had 

 to the existing temptations or stimulations to this vice. 

 Even mistakes and oversights are of regular recurrence, 

 for it is found in the post-offices of large cities, that the 

 number of letters put in without addresses is year by 

 year the same. Statistics has made out an equally dis- 

 tinct regularity in a wide range, with regard to many 

 other things concerning the mind, and the doctrine 

 founded upon it has lately produced a scheme which may 

 well strike the ignorant with surprise. It was proposed 

 to establish in London a society for ensuring the integrity 



