MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 16ft 



ferent the manifestations in different beings ! how unsta- 

 ble in all ! — at one time so calm, at another so wild and 

 impulsive ! It seemed impossible that anything so subtle 

 and aberrant could be part of a system, the main features 

 of which are regularity and precision. But the irregu- 

 larity 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 im- 

 possible to predict of any one Frenchman 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 temptations being everywhere 

 invariable over a sufficiently wide range of time. So 

 also, the number of persons taken in charge by the police 

 in London for being drunk and disorderly on the streets, 

 *s, week by week, a nearly uniform quantity, showing 

 i.hat 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 

 m the post-offices of large cities that the number of let- 

 ters put in without addresses is year by year the same. 

 Statistics has made out an equally distinct 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 of clerks, secretaries, 

 collectors, and all such functionaries as are usually 

 cblrged to find security for money passing through their 

 hands in the course of business. A gentleman of the 

 highest character as an actuary spoke of the plan in the 

 fallowing terms : " If a thousand bankers' clerks were to 

 club together to indemnify their securities, by the pay- 

 ment of one pound a year each, and if each had given 

 security for 500/., it is obvious that two in each year 

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