36o 



NATURE 



\Mar. 7, 1872 



amount of criminality in a country bears a relation, 

 indirect and as yet obscure, but unmistakeable, to its edu- 

 cation, or rather, to its want of education. In France, in 

 1S28-31, the constant percentage of accused persons was 

 about as follows : could not read or write, sixty-one ; im- 

 perfectly, twenty-seven ; well, twelve. The comparison 

 of this group of numbers with those taken lately in England 

 shows a great change of proportion— evidently resulting 

 from the wider diffusion of education ; but the limitation of 

 crime to the less-educated classes is even more striking : 

 cannot read or write, thirty-six ; imperfectly, sixty-one ; 

 well, three. Again, for an example of connection of 

 physical conditions with moral actions, we may notice a 

 table, showing how the hours of the day influence people 

 who hang themselves. (Phys. Soc. ii. 240.) The 

 maximum of such cases, 135, occurred between six and 

 eight in the morning ; the number decreased slightly till 

 noon, and then suddenly dropped to the minimum ; there 

 being 123 cases between ten and twelve o'clock, against 

 only 32 between twelve and two o'clock. The num- 

 ber rose in the afternoon to 104 cases between four 

 and six, dropping to an average of about ^o through 

 the night, the second minimum, 45, being between two 

 and four o'clock in the morning. Here it is impossible 

 to mistake the influences of the periods of the day ; we 

 can fancy we see the poor wretches rising in the morning 

 to a life of which the misery is beyond bearing, or can 

 only be borne till evening closes in ; while the temporary 

 relief of the midnight sleep and the midday meal are 

 marked in holding back the longing to self-destruction. 

 Madness varies with the season of the year : the 

 maximum being in summer, and the minimum in 

 winter (p. 187) ; a state of things which seems intelli- 

 gible enough. Again, it is well known in current 

 opinion that more children are born in the night 

 than in the day ; in fact, there are about five night-born 

 against four day-born, the maximum being about mid- 

 night, the minimum a little before noon (i. p. 208). Why 

 this is no one yet knows ; it is a case of unexplained law. 

 But another not less curious law relating to births seems 

 to have been at last successfully unravelled. In Europe 

 about 106 boys are born to every 100 girls. The expla- 

 nation appears to depend on the husband being older than 

 the wife ; which difference again is regulated by pruden- 

 tial considerations, a man not marrying till he can main- 

 tain a wife. In connection with this argument it must be 

 noticed that illegitimate births show a much less excess 

 of male children (p. 168). Here, then (if this explanation 

 may be accepted), it appears that a law which has been 

 supposed to be due to purely physiological causes is trace- 

 able to an ultimate origin in political economy. 



The examples brought forward by Ouetelet, which thus 

 show the intimate relation bet.veen biological and ethical 

 phenomena, should be pondered by all who take an in- 

 terest in that great movement of our time — the introduc- 

 tion of scientific evidence into problems over which 

 theologians and moralists have long claimed exclusive 

 jurisdiction. This scientific invasion consists mainly in 

 application of exact evidence in place of inexact evidence, 

 and of proof in place of sentiment and authority. Already 

 the result of the introduction of statistics into inquiries of 

 this kind appears in new adjustments of the frontier line 

 between right and wrong, as measvured under our modern 



social conditions. Take, for instance, the case of found- 

 ling hospitals, which provide a " tour," or other means for 

 the secret reception of infants abandoned by their parents. 

 It has seemed and still seems to many estimable persons 

 an act of benevolence to found and maintain such institu- 

 tions. But when their operation comes to be studied by 

 statisticians, they are found to produce an enormous in- 

 crease in the number of exposed illegitimate children 

 (Phys. Soc. i. 384). In fact, thus to facilitate the safe 

 and secret abandonment of children is to set a powerful 

 engine at work to demoralise society. Here, then, a par- 

 ticular class of charitable actions has been removed, by 

 the statistical study of its effects, from the category of 

 virtuous into that of vicious actions. An even more im- 

 portant transition of the same kind is taking place in the 

 estimation of almsgiving from the ethical point of view. 

 Until modern ages, through all the countries of higher 

 civilisation, men have been urged by their teachers of 

 morality to give to the poor, worthy or unworthy ; the 

 state of public opinion being well exemplified by the nar- 

 rowing of the word " charity " from its original sense to 

 denote the distribution of doles. Yet, when the statistics 

 of pauperism were collected and studied, it was shown 

 that indiscriminate almsgiving is an action rather evil 

 than good, its tendency being not only to maintain, but 

 actually to produce, idle and miserable paupers. In our 

 time a large proportion of the public and private funds 

 distributed among the poor is spent in actually diminish- 

 ing their industry, frugality, and self-reliance. Yet the 

 evil of indiscriminate almsgiving is diminishing under the 

 influence of sounder knowledge of social laws, and genuine 

 charity is more and more directed by careful study of the 

 means by which wealth may be spent for the distinct 

 benefit of society. .Such examples as these show clearly 

 the im.perfection and untrustworthiness of traditional, or 

 what is called intuitive morality, in deciding on questionj 

 of right and wrong, and the necessity of appealing in all 

 cases to the best attainable information of social science 

 to decide what actions are really for or against the general 

 good, and are therefore to be classed as virtuous or 

 vicious. 



Moreover, it is not too much to say that the com- 

 paratively small advance which moral science has made 

 since barbaric ages has been due to the repugnance 

 of moralists to admit, in human action, the regular 

 causality which is the admitted principle of other parts of 

 the action of the universe. The idea of the influence of 

 arbitrary will in the individual man has checked and 

 opposed the calculations which now display the para- 

 mount action of society as an organised whole. One 

 point in M. Ouetelet's doctrine of society requires a men- 

 tion for its practical bearing on morals. There has seemed 

 to some to be an immoral tendency in his principle that 

 virtuous and vicious acts are products, not merely of the 

 individual who does them, but of the society in which 

 they take place, as though the tendency of this view were 

 to weaken individual responsibility, and to discourage 

 individual effort. Yet, when properly understood, this 

 principle offers a more strong and definite impulse to the 

 effort of society for good and against evil, than the theory 

 which refers the individual's action more exclusively to 

 himself M. Ouetelet's inference from the regular pro- 

 duction of a certain amount of crime year by year from 



