Diaries

July 2.—He is uncleanly (emissions of fæces and urine). Does not know how to behave at table; when he eats he spills his food over his clothing. Is gluttonous but not voracious; he does not steal the food of his companions, but he protests when he sees food given to others and not to him. Is mistrustful, hides his bread for fear that it will be taken from him; and if any one takes notice of this, he utters a cry of rage. He is affectionate, very timid, jealous, obstinate, grumbling, somewhat sullen, seldom laughs. Although weak, he fights his companions and frequently falls into fits of anger; then he flings himself on the floor and beats his head against the furniture. He sways his body forward and backward. His power of speech is limited to three words: papa, mamma, and no. He is able to make himself understood when he wants anything.

August-September.—Two slight attacks of ophthalmia. The child has now learned to walk.

January-March, 1885.—Otitis (Inflammation of the ear).

August.—The ability to speak is developing progressively. He has begun to give notice of his natural necessities; is seldom uncleanly, so that it is now possible to let him wear trousers. The habit of balancing his body back and forth is tending to disappear. The accesses of anger have become rarer. He is less jealous and plays indiscriminately with his companions.

January, 1886.—The improvement continues. D—— is now very attentive in school. When out walking he takes an interest in the things he sees and asks for explanations. Is doing well in the first gymnastic exercises. Makes a good appearance.

March.—D—— has now become altogether cleanly. Furthermore, he knows how to wash, dress and undress himself alone. At table, can handle his spoon and fork quite properly, but cannot yet manage his knife. Is less gluttonous; his speech is fully developed. Although he cannot keep still in school and constantly changes his position, he has succeeded in learning to know his letters, the different colours, etc., can count up to 50, and can name the greater part of the objects contained in the boxes used for object lessons. The balancing of the body has completely disappeared. D—— has a tendency toward onanism. Accesses of anger an still noted, during which he is very vulgar.

December.—Condition stationary. Misconduct in class, frequent fits of anger, during which he abuses everyone and strikes his smaller comrades.

March, 1887.—D—— is calmer and does better work. Can count up to sixty. His general knowledge has increased. Can tell his age, his name, the name of his parents, what their employment is, where they live, etc.

April, 1888.—The improvement continues. His behavior is better. Has learned the names of materials, of plane surfaces, of solids; can distinguish vowels from consonants. It has been impossible to induce him to trace simple strokes even upon the blackboard.

December.—Is more diligent and has taken a fancy to writing.

January-June, 1889.—Is in the infirmary on account of anal ulcers.

December.—Notable improvement in general knowledge. Has begun to write certain letters in his copybook.

December, 1890.—D——'s conduct is good. He is no longer disorderly; and if at times it is necessary to reprove him, he recognises his fault, cries, and promises to do better. He fears above all that his misconduct will be reported to his mother. Has a fairly accurate notion of right and wrong, is no longer so extremely jealous and shows affection for his comrades. Has learned to write syllables well; is able to copy short paragraphs; can do simple sums in addition; gives clear answers to questions. Walking, running, jumping, going up and down stairs have become easy for him. The child uses his fork and knife at table; chews his food well, does not suffer from any digestive disturbance. Is orderly, and attends to himself in all details of his toilet.

April 21, 1891: Objective Examination.—The child's face has a uniformly ruddy complexion; lips full-blooded; skin smooth, without scars or eruptions, excepting a slight scaliness due to eczema. Two small ganglia in the left submaxillary region, but no others in any other locality. Cranium symmetrical; volume and form normal. Frontal and parietal nodules slightly prominent; occipital nodule quite prominent (pentagonoid cranium). Hair light blonde, abundant, fine, growing low upon the forehead. Posterior vortex normal, forehead wide, but not high. Visage oval; with a slight depression of the nostril and corner of the mouth on the right side; has on the whole an intelligent expression; it is mobile and reflects the moods and feelings natural to boyhood. The superciliary arches are only slightly arched. The eyebrows are chestnut in colour and scanty; the lashes are abundant and long. Iris dark blue; pupils equal in size and react under the influence of light. No functional disturbance, and no lesion in regard to the eyes. Field of vision normal. D—— recognises all the colours. Nose small, and straight, with a pronounced aperture of the nostrils. Zygomata regular, without exaggerated prominences; naso-labial furrows barely indicated. Aperture of mouth very wide and habitually half open. Lips thick and slightly drooping. Tongue normal. Palatine vault distinctly ogival. Tonsils enlarged; the boy is subject to tonsillitis. All these parts show quite a blunted sensibility, which permits of an examination of the pharynx, without causing nausea. Chin rounded, without indentation. Ears long and thick, the outer edge is normal, including the fold of the helix; the ears protrude conspicuously from the cranium and are very peculiar in shape; namely, the upper two-thirds of the external ear form with the lower one-third an obtuse angle of such nature that the concha or shell really represents the outline of a very deep and almost hemispherical sea-shell. The lobule is thick, regular, and notably detached. The ear is the seat of frequent attacks of erythema, complicated by swelling. Neck rather short and quite stout; circumference 26 centimetres. The lobes of the thyroid glands are plainly palpable to the touch.

Thorax and Abdomen.—No notable peculiarities. Auscultation and percussion show that the internal organs are normal. Body is hairless. Genital organs are normal. The upper and lower limbs are normal in all their segments.

Icthyosis of the skin on thighs and knees. General sensibility normal; usual physiological reflex actions.

Treatment.—Regular application of the medico-pedagogical method: tonics during the winter; hydrotherapy annually, from the first of April to the first of November.

April 24.—The mother, finding the child much improved, takes him home on leave (March) and later (end of April) requests his dismissal, which is granted reluctantly, in the fear that the boy may lose part of what he has so laboriously gained.

May 19, 1892.—The boy, having become insubordinate and not making satisfactory progress in the public school (to which he was sent, so that he would not be present at the scenes between the mother and the father, who is habitually intoxicated), has been sent back to the asylum.

June.—The physical evolution continues. The child is very timid and sensitive, cannot bear to be reproved and cries when he is corrected. Reads fluently, but without expression. Has begun to write familiar words from dictation. During his absence from the asylum he learned to know the numbers and to do simple examples in addition and subtraction.

Treatment: School work; gymnastics; hydrotherapy.

July.—D—— is at present conducting himself in a way difficult to control; he plays ill-natured jests upon his companions; places needles and tacks in seats; during the assembly he amuses himself by sticking little pins into the backs of the girls who sit in front of him.

December.—The boy is very lazy, and often refuses to read or to do his tasks; he grins and sneers if he is corrected. But he carries out very well all the movements in the lower gymnastic course. Has been sent to the tailor's work-shop and seems to have taken a fancy to the trade.

April, 1893.—D—— has become quite reasonable, does good work in school, does not like to be inactive, has ceased to grin and sneer. His writing has improved; his reasoning power is good; he is careful of his clothes to the point of vanity; eats with propriety, has ceased to bolt his food; yet it is still noticed that he has a tendency to appropriate the wine of his companions.

June.—D—— is passing through a bad period; he laughs at everything that is said to him, is very obstinate, annoys his comrades, tears up copy-books, breaks pens, etc. Is careless regarding his clothing; makes a disturbance at night in the dormitory.

December.—Same state. Tries to smoke; is unwilling to do any work; laughs at everybody; dresses with great carelessness; it is necessary to compel him to wash his hands and face. No sign of puberty.

December, 1894.—Notable improvement; D—— reads quite readily, writes quite well, recognises all ordinary objects, their use, and their colour; has a conception of time. Is docile, neat, industrious in school work, is attentive to explanations and understands them. In the work-shop he continues to show progress.

January-June, 1895.—The improvement continues; D—— has begun to learn the multiplication table; he is well-mannered and scrupulous in his behaviour; excellent in gymnastics. In the tailor's work-shop he makes marked progress; he has already learned to put together an entire garment by himself, and he knows how to use the machine. From time to time he has periods of indolence; and this happens more often in the work-shop than in the class.

Puberty.—A slight down has begun to appear upon his upper lip.

July 8.—According to the night nurse, D—— had an attack of epilepsy during the night; he never had one before, and he has not had one since.

July 10.—Troubled sleep, nightmare, unintelligible and threatening words.

January, 1896.—Very notable improvement in class. The boy profited above all from the lessons about natural objects, in which he takes much interest. From time to time he shows a tendency to dissipation and gambling. Is docile, cleanly, and neat in personal appearance to the point of vanity. The master of the work-shop is very much pleased with him; he works well with the machine. Is doing well in gymnastics and in singing.

Puberty.—His beard has begun to grow even on his cheeks.

June.—Hand-writing, far from improving, seems to be growing worse. On the contrary, it is noticed that he has made progress in arithmetic. Can perform all four primary operations and has begun to solve easy problems. His general knowledge has improved. Has become a good tailor's workman.

January-June, 1897.—The boy prefers the work-shop to the school and for some time the mistake has been made of leaving him wholly in the work-shop.

December.—Same state from point of view of his studies; character docile, conduct good, personal care and neatness satisfactory. Works well and rapidly in the work-shop; can make complete suits of clothing; uses the machine dexterously; is beginning to cut out garments.

Puberty complete, no onanism. The right eyelids are less widely open than the left by nearly a quarter. The patient says that he does not see so well with the right eye as with the left, and cannot distinguish with it even large letters unless they are very near.

TABLE OF WEIGHT AND STATURE

Measurements189018941895189618971898
JanuaryJanuaryJulyJanuaryJulyJanuaryJulyJanuaryJulyJanuary
Weight in kilograms.2534.70035.2003537.80039.80044465153.700
Stature in metres.1.221.391.421.421.501.531.581.611.661.69

MEASUREMENTS OF THE HEAD IN CENTIMETRES

1891189318941895189618971898
JanuaryJanuaryJanuaryJanuaryJulyJanuaryJulyJanuaryJulyJanuary
Maximum horizontal circumference.50.250.250.252525252525254
Anterior semi-circumference.33333333333333333334
Distance from the occipito-allantoid articulation to the root of nose.36363636363636363637
Maximum antero-posterior diameter.17.517.817.818181818191919
Maximum biauricular diameter.11121212.512.512.512.212.512.513
Maximum biparietal diameter.13.5141414.514.514.514.514.514.514.5
Maximum bitemporal diameter.————11111111.511.512
Medial height of forehead.5555555566

In the antecedents of this patient, the only suggestions of degeneration are the alcoholism of the father and the fact that conception took place in a state of intoxication. The mother's migraine might also be considered as a nervous malady amounting to a family taint, but cannot be held responsible for so grave an abnormality as idiocy.

Consequently, it remains beyond doubt that the most interesting antecedent fact to be considered in this case is the conception during alcoholic intoxication.

The individual we are studying is a sick person; this is shown by ptosis (drooping eye-lid), the recurrent periods of agitation, the epileptic convulsion in the night detected by the night nurse.

It is interesting to observe in the photographs of the child, the alteration of expression between the periods of calm and those of agitation; in the latter the face is asymmetrical and shows contractions in the left facial region, while the right side is paretic; the paresis is also manifested by ptosis (drooping lids). During the periods of calm, on the contrary, the left side also is atonic.

In the course of the history the differences in the child's conduct in the two states are well described.

During the periods of calm, the child is attentive, docile, careful of his dress, timid, and makes progress in his studies; during the periods of agitation he is unstable, rebellious, careless, unkind to his comrades, and makes no progress whatever. At the beginning, there were no periods of calm at all; furthermore, the child had every appearance of being an idiot; medico-pedagogic treatment rendered longer and more frequent, and finally permanent, these periods of calm, during which the child's intellectual redemption became possible. The treatment did not consist solely in the education of an idiot, but also in the cure of a sick child. "At the time of admission," according to the observations in the record, "the diagnosis was retarded mentality, and that only in relation to primary instruction, because in regard to matters of common knowledge and manual work, the patient comes very near to a normal lad of average intelligence."

Such a surprising transformation of an individual is certainly deserving of admiration; but this diligently compiled study is not yet quite completed. As a matter of fact, when the education of D—— was begun, observations regarding types of stature were not yet made; but his photographs show that he was an exaggerated macroscelous type. The trade adopted by D—— which will oblige him to sit with his chest bowed over the machine, or in a kneeling position while he sews, will in all probability drive him straight along the road to tuberculosis, a malady to which his organism has singularly predisposed him. It would be interesting to follow further the history of this patient, who has been transformed from an idiot into a skilful and industrious workman.

The society, which under the guidance of science, achieved his difficult redemption, has perhaps at the same time condemned him to death.

The modern standards of pedagogical anthropology would have furnished a more far-sighted guidance in the choice of a vocation.

Meanwhile, however, this history reported by Thulié is a luminous demonstration of the folly of rewards and punishments; the only forms of intervention during the periods of agitation, which lasted for entire months, during which the boy was continually unruly, impulsive, malicious, reckless, and incapable of work, were tonics, hydrotherapy and kindly treatment.

"Punishments" would have cruelly wrecked the life of a human being who was naturally gentle, affectionate, and capable of diligent work and permanent improvement.

Something similar ought to be attempted in the reformatories. The boys who are regarded as incorrigible are frequently sick boys, with an hereditary degenerative taint, and need to live in a tranquil environment and to receive medical treatment.

The biographic charts of the reformatories give no evidence that this educative movement has as yet been understood. They show that punishments are still regarded as possessing a corrective efficacy, because the conception that the so-called delinquent children may be a pathological product and a result of disastrous family and social conditions, has not yet penetrated with sufficient clearness.

But progress along this path is surely bound to come as a result of the experience which this principle of reform has made possible.

The biographic charts have unquestionably laid the foundations of a new edifice in pedagogy.

Scientific Pedagogical Advantages of Biographic Histories:

  1. The biographic chart takes the place of the report cards and records of the relative marks of merit and demerit; for while these records and reports constituted a statement of effects, altogether empirical, the biographic chart investigates the causes and in this way furnishes pedagogy with a scientific basis. There is no need of further demonstration. The principal consequences of the above indicated progress are two in number.
  2. The biographic chart, replacing the earlier classifications, raises the teacher's standard of culture by directing him along a scientific path, associates the teacher's work with that of the physician, and makes the teacher a far-sighted director of the development and perfectioning of the new generations.
  3. The biographic chart includes a new educative movement which abolishes rewards and punishments.

On this third point much might be said, since it touches upon one of the fundamental doctrines of pedagogical progress. But since this is not a treatise upon scientific pedagogy, it is necessary to limit the exposition to a few fundamental points.

In fact, it will be sufficient to speak of cases in which education is most difficult and where the rewards and punishments are unavailing—for these will include all simpler cases. A luminous example is furnished by the education of new-born infants. Of all human beings they used to be the most troublesome because of the impossibility of educating them by the old-fashioned methods. They cried at all hours of the day and night, making a slave of the mother or whoever took her place.

To-day, babies are quiet; it is marvelous to go through the infant ward in the Obstetrical Clinic of Rome; absolute silence reigns there, and yet if we lift up the white curtains of the cribs, we see the little ones lying with their eyes wide open. A deeper knowledge than was formerly had of the hygiene of the child has enabled us to interpret his needs, and when these are satisfied, the child is tranquil. Bodily cleanliness, liberty of movement, prolonged repose in the crib, and rational feeding have obtained this remarkable result of silencing the baby, of rendering it more robust and of liberating the mother from the slavery of her mission. The classic cry of the child in swaddling bands was a protest against the suffering which ignorance imposed upon him. To-day the little one, lying tranquilly in his crib, begins to exercise his senses earlier and more easily, a ray of light strikes him and attracts his attention, and with this his education has begun, while formerly the suffering due to indigestion kept him for a much longer time a stranger to the external world.

The same thing may be repeated for every year of childhood. Often what we call naughtiness on the part of the individual child is rebellion against our own mistakes in educating him. The coercive means which we adopt toward children are what destroy their natural tranquility. A healthy child, in his moments of freedom, succeeds in escaping from the toys inflicted upon him by his parents, and in securing some object which arouses the investigating instinct of his mind; a worm, an insect, some pebbles, etc.; he is silent, tranquil and attentive. If the child is not well, or if his mother obliges him to remain seated in a chair, playing with a doll, he becomes restless, cries, or gives way to convulsive outbursts ("bad temper"). The mother believes that educating her child means forcing him to do what is pleasing to her, however far she may be from knowing what the child's real needs are, and unfortunately we must make the same statement regarding the school-teachers! Then, in order to make him yield to coercion, she punishes the child when he rebels and rewards him when he is obedient. By this method we drive a child by force along paths that are not natural to him. In the same way, absolute governments employed public entertainments and the gallows, in order to compel the people to act and think according to the will of their sovereign; indeed, they were considered as indispensable means of good government. To-day we have come to realise that such means are more or less adapted to the successful crushing of a people's spirit, but not to governing them well. The reign of liberty, which leaves men the opportunity to give expression to their own powers and above all to their own thoughts, is doing away with festivals and executions; and it is not until this is accomplished that men can be really well governed.

Something similar is going to take place in the schools. But here, since the children are incapable of understanding what they ought to do for their own best good, science studies them in order to assist their natural needs.

I believe that we must greatly modify our ideas regarding infant psychology, as soon as trained psychologists begin to observe the spontaneous manifestations of children, to the end of encouraging their tendencies.

Having applied scientific methods in the "Children's Houses," we were amazed at the behaviour of those little children; for instance, they showed contempt for toys, while they loved objects on which they could exercise their free powers of reason.

Intellectual exercise is the most pleasing of all to the small child if he is in good health. Indeed, we already know that children break their toys in order to see how they are made inside; this shows that the exercise of their intellect interests them more than playing with an object that is often irrational. But children are not, as is generally believed, naturally destructive; on the contrary, their instinct is to preserve. This is seen in the way in which they save little objects that they have acquired by themselves; and in the "Children's Houses," we have also seen it in the way that they preserve unharmed even the most trivial scrap of paper, although free to tear it up, so long as that scrap of paper helps them to exercise their thoughts.

Here we see the great difference between the healthy, normal child who employs himself in the way that pleases him, and is attentive and tranquil; and another child who, equally healthy and normal, is obliged to do what other people wish him to do, and is restless, and troublesome and cries.

To aid the physical development of the child under the guidance of natural laws is to favour his health and his growth; to aid his natural psychic tendencies is to render him more intelligent.

This principle has been intuitively recognised by all pedagogists, but the practical application of it was not possible, excepting under the guidance of scientific pedagogy, founded upon a direct knowledge of the human individual.

To-day it is possible for us to establish a régime of liberty in our schools, and consequently it is our duty to do so.

Whenever a child exhibits anomalies of character that do not signify rebellion against irrational methods of education, and are not expressions of a struggle for liberty, he represents the unhappy effect of some pathological cause, or of some social error, that has only too fatally accomplished its corruptive task.

This is what the biographic history will reveal!

As a general rule, a bad child should be taken to see a physician, because it is almost certain that he is a sick child.

But the treatment of such maladies is very often mainly pedagogical; curative pedagogy, however, must absolutely abolish punishment.

We now know as a fact absolutely established in sociology that the fear of punishment, of torture and even of death does not avail to diminish crime, nor the imperious manifestation of human passions.

Brigandage is not repressed by cutting off heads, but by civilisation in all its forms of industry, intercommunication, etc.

And this principle is especially true in the case of children; harshness of methods and severity of punishment will not avail to inculcate, and still less to create, goodness. Man is conquered through kindness and gentleness; among all the beatitudes, that of inheriting the earth (i.e., of winning over their fellowmen) is given to the meek: blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

We know that hypocrisy, adulation and seduction are criminal means by which man seeks to deceive his fellow men to his own profit; but they are based upon gentleness; it would never occur to anyone to seduce and to conquer hypocritically, with the help of violence. Because the weak point in man, that to which he is most susceptible, is gentleness, praise, caresses. We have seen that the psychic stimulus needed to augment human activity, to arouse an apathetic person to action, and even to produce a condition of flourishing growth in a child, is the pleasant stimulus of kindness and caresses. The mother's caress, like the mother's milk, is a means of stimulating the child to a more complete nutrition and vitality. And the entire category of physiological weaklings, such as the defectives, epileptics and criminals, have a proportionately greater need of such stimulus than normal individuals; consequently, how can coercion ever be expected to restore such unbalanced personalities to their proper equilibrium? Those whom we have been in the habit of oppressing with severity and punishment are the very ones most in need of the stimulus of affection. Indeed, it is only the strong man and the hero who can pass unscathed through persecution; the weak are left broken, down-trodden, or slain.

Sursum Corda.—Always strive to uplift, never to depress.

A beautiful theory and a humane idea. But is it practicable, and to what extent? In short, what can be done practically, for instance, in the exceedingly difficult case of juvenile delinquents, in order to correct their evil tendencies and save them from their waywardness, without coercion?

But what are evil tendencies of the mind? With that one phrase we are trying to embrace and ostensibly bind together a quantity of widely different effects.

The study of the individual should suggest to us the particular method of education required by him. Meanwhile, in regard to the question of juvenile delinquents, a wide road leading straight back to first causes, has been opened by the pathological factor. Who, for instance, does not know that the conduct and the sentiments of an individual may become unbalanced through the effects of poison or disease? This takes us at once into the field of nervous or mental pathology: the first symptom of paralytic dementia is not the trembling, or alteration of speech, or interruption of certain reflex actions, or muscular weakness, nor the real and actual delirium. The symptom which first manifests itself as an indication of profound disturbance in the personality of the unfortunate victim of this cruel disease is an almost unheralded alteration of the natural character and conduct. The man who hitherto has been a good husband and father, becomes a profligate, spendthrift and gambler; the man who has hitherto been most scrupulous in his language and in his sexual conduct becomes foul-mouthed and obscene; the man who was a kind and affectionate husband becomes violent and aggressive toward his wife. Anyone wishing to consider these preliminary symptoms of paralytic dementia as evil tendencies of the mind, would strive in vain with appropriate sermons, reproofs and punishments to make the sick man repent and come back to his former state!

Let us pass on to another example. There is no one who is not aware of the effects of alcohol. There are persons who, when in a state of intoxication, commit actions that are worse than reprehensible, even criminal; actions which the individual himself deplores as soon as the poisonous effects have passed away. Kind-hearted persons go so far as to maltreat their own children, even when they are little babies; they commit violent and degrading acts that often make them shed tears of repentance as soon as they become aware of them. Well, if we should try to make such a person understand, while he is still in a state of intoxication, that his actions are improper, it would be wasted effort. It is better to let the matter pass, or else to give him treatment for his alcoholic condition, which is the cause of his misconduct.

And passing on to another class of cases, does not everyone know that when people are afflicted with a diseased liver, their character alters, they become jealous, quarrelsome, hypochondriac, melancholy? It would be useless to tell such persons that they were formerly more tractable and morally superior; they are already sufficiently afflicted without having us, who are in good health, aggravate them with our useless preaching. And analogously, it is well known that when hysteria attacks a woman it may transform her from a virtuous and modest person to an unhappy creature, compelled by her physical condition to forget herself and compromise the unquestioned propriety of her past life; or again, it may change her from a gentle soul to an insupportable fury, or it may actually develop into such pronounced delirium as to necessitate her confinement in an insane asylum. In this case also, it is the malady that demands treatment, since it is the sole cause of the sad manifestations of a change in character.

Now, the pathological cause most frequently associated with criminal manifestations, is undoubtedly epilepsy. Lombroso himself attributed a vast influence to this etiological factor of criminality; and every day this far-sighted intuition of the master is confirmed and made clearer. The epileptic is not always a criminal, nor does the criminal always show the classic convulsive symptoms. There are cases of epilepsy in which the symptoms are attenuated or latent or replaced by different but equivalent symptoms. It is frequently necessary to diagnose an epileptic character from impulsive tendencies and from long protracted nocturnal enuresis in childhood. De Sanctis has lately been able to prove in his hospital practice that there are many children who have unmistakable epilepsy of the classic type, with violent accesses, but without criminal tendencies; at a certain age the convulsions cease, the patient is apparently cured: but he has become a criminal. On the other hand, there are children with immoral tendencies, destructive, violent, incorrigible; one would say that these were clear cases of predisposition to crime; all at once a genuine epileptic attack occurs, followed by other repeated attacks; the criminal tendencies disappear; the patient is simply an epileptic. In these cases, we have successive forms of epileptic equivalence. In the majority of cases, therefore, the proper course would be to treat the patient for epilepsy, as being the cause of the apparent "evil tendencies of mind." And hence one notable side of the great problem of the moral education of juvenile criminals is transformed fundamentally into this other problem: "Can epilepsy be treated and cured?"

Up to the present, the treatment of epilepsy is a problem. While therapeutics prescribe bromides and warm baths, pedagogy is to-day following a very different course with a combined treatment of hygiene and education. Benedickt, and following him, the principal authorities among medical specialists, are at present condemning the use of depressing bromides, which hide the attacks as an anesthetic hides pain, but do not cure them. The cure, says Benedickt, depends upon hygienic life in the open air in order to absorb the poisons, and upon graded work, provided, however, that the malady is still recent and has not assumed a chronic form. Two principles of much importance: the malady must be of recent occurrence! Consequently, it is only in the period of childhood that we can attempt the treatment of the great majority of those predisposed to crime, with any hope of effecting a cure! A declaration of tremendous interest for the defense of society. But the treatment must be pedagogic. Accordingly, we have returned to the point of departure. We began by asking: "How are we to educate them"? A course of reasoning led us along this different road, "it is necessary to give them treatment." But the treatment consists in educating them. Well, from all this we can so far extract one unassailable principle; in their education all coercive measures must be absolutely abolished, because nervous and convulsive maladies are most successfully treated with gentleness and quiet; it is evident that all emotion, all fear, all nervous exhaustion, all punishment in short, no matter how mild or just it may be, would seem to be prohibited in pedagogic treatment.

Accordingly, it is necessary to approach the question anew; what is needed is to set the nervous system in order, to calm it, to restore its equilibrium. Benedickt says: this is to be achieved through work, rationally measured and graded; hence, manual training, as organised, for example, in the Reformatory of San Michele, constitutes of itself a moral cure; it concurs in readjusting the nervous system by reinforcing it.

However, we must not generalise over such complex questions; if the pathological factor, and more especially epilepsy, constitutes a great centre of biologic causes producing individuals predisposed to crime, we cannot conclude that there is a constant correspondence between epilepsy and criminality. But there is no doubt that among these predisposed we shall almost always find some who are suffering from a taint, or from dystrophy, due to tuberculosis or syphilis; in short, the minus habens, the physiological proletariat.

The benefit wrought by education consists not only in contributing to the real and actual cure, as in the case of epilepsy; but also in the corrective, as well as curative, effect upon the personality. The abnormal mentality which generally accompanies degenerate or epileptic conditions requires special methods of education, which in many cases must absolutely exclude all forms of coercion. Mental hygiene, an abundance of psychic stimulus, partly intellectual (chiefly through objective demonstration) and partly moral (in the form of praise and gentle caressing treatment), are indispensable accompaniments of such education. An abnormal mentality almost always accompanies defects of the mind; from the hypochondriac or the epileptic to the imbecile and the idiot, the abnormal mentality builds itself up from inaccurate perceptions, and hence more or less from illusions; a deficiency of reasoning power or a half delirious condition completes the fatal organisation of a mode of thought which renders such an individual unfitted for his environment. We have seen an example of this in the boy whose clinical history was read in class; his perceptions were inexact, consequently colours, odours, and sounds reached him in a manner somewhat different from our perception of them; his mental world must therefore be differently constructed from ours. Defectives frequently pass by objects without obtaining any impression of them, or else transform what impression they do get into a false idea. Even their sensations of touch and pain are different from the normal. Hence, they do not feel as we do, and are often inaccessible to the anguish of pain which refines human nature by sometimes raising it to the point of heroism. And because we have learned through our own sufferings to understand the meaning of pity, altruism and solidarity, these unhappy beings differ from us even in their relation to society. Their scanty powers of logic lead them to fall openly into errors, which provoke vindictive retaliation on our part that tends in the ultimate analysis to isolate these unfit beings from social intercourse.

To us, their whole conversation is a series of falsehoods, because it does not correspond to what we ourselves see and feel. An understanding between them and us becomes steadily more difficult, in proportion as we continue to perfect ourselves in our individual evolution, while their unhappy state is steadily aggravated through the formidable struggles and persecutions which they meet in an environment to which they are unadaptable. For instance, we saw that one of the boys who has been studied in class, had committed his most reprehensible acts as a result of false logic. "Why do you kill all the pigeons?" "To make them keep still." "Why do you beat your little sister?" "Because she won't work like the others." (The sister in question was only eighteen months old!) Well, he showed in this way that he had learned something from the corrections that he had received. They had punished him so much for being restless, and so much because he did not want to work, that he finally applied his acquired zeal to correcting others in the way that his defective logic dictated. And similarly, after seeing how they weigh objects with a steel-yard—also a form of work—it occurred to him to stick the hook into his little sister, in order to weigh her; and having learned that useful work is paid for in money, which serves to buy the necessities of life, he stole all the money that he could find at home, and gave it to the motormen on the tram-cars, who in his opinion perform the most useful work in the world.

I once had occasion to study a paranoiac patient in the asylum for the criminal insane, who had spent twenty years in prison before his insanity became so pronounced as to cause his removal from one place of restraint to the other. He had killed his betrothed, out of jealousy, so he said, but he narrated the tragic deed with a fullness of detail and a readiness of phrase—his lurking in ambush, the unfortunate girl's approach, her fall under the blows of the cobbler's knife—that proved the cold-blooded calculation with which the crime was committed.

This man was convinced that he possessed such oratorical gifts that if he had pleaded his own case in place of his attorney, the persuasive magic of his eloquence would have resulted in his acquittal. The lawyer had advised him not to speak and the prisoner was sentenced to a term of thirty years. The appeal to the Court of Cassation was denied. The result was that in his desperation at the failure of his defence, and more particularly because he had lost the chance of showing his oratorical powers in public, he conceived the idea that the only way by which he could come into court again, and speak for himself, and force them to acquit him, was to commit another murder. And he actually sprang at his lawyer's throat, armed with a nail, meaning to kill him. Thus we see how paranoiac delirium, and defective reasoning powers, sad evidences of pathological conditions, combined to create the most cynical and repellant of all criminal types.

Accordingly the treatment of the pathological condition, and the education of the mentality in children who are thus predisposed, constitute a great work on behalf of the defence of society.

Well, this is precisely what scientific pedagogy is trying to do, through a rational education of the senses: to correct false perceptions and straighten out the warped and twisted mentality of abnormal children; and little by little, through repetition of the same lessons under different forms, and the establishment of a cooperation of all the senses, the perception of objects tends to approach nearer and nearer to the normal. Meanwhile, hygienic or medical treatment may be used to correct the accompanying physical defects.

Accordingly, we are able to modify an abnormal personality by means of rational medico-pedagogic treatment; and it is by this means alone, and not through destructive coercion, that we may hope to approach the greatly desired goal.

Lastly, it is also necessary, in the etiology of crime, to take into consideration the environment, the bad example, the brutality, the absence of affection, all of which are things which might well pervert the mind of even a normal individual; and when such conditions exist, the removal of the transgressor to a different environment where he may have the benefit of physical, intellectual and moral hygiene, may result in completely transforming him. In these sad cases nothing short of the profoundest love will serve to redeem and even transform into a hero the man who has fallen into evil ways through misfortune.

No one can any longer believe that coercive measures should be added to the cruelty of the environment which oppresses the transgressor. If he has gone astray in the midst of sorrow it will be only through consolation that he can be born again to a new life; if he lost the straight path amid arid wastes, nothing short of a purifying and assuaging spiritual water will enable him to recover his path. As a sign of our humanity let us keep a smile upon our lips and our hearts free of all harshness of offense or defense; our weapons are intelligence and love and it is only by these weapons that we can become conquerors.

But, it may be answered, granted that the education of abnormal persons, and more especially juvenile delinquents, constitutes a complex work in which medicine, a special environment, and the methods of scientific pedagogy contribute harmoniously through diverse ways to the ultimate goal: yet in actual practice how are we to intervene to render docile these rebels whom society itself, with all the forces at its disposal, recognises as dangerous and condemns to isolation? In short, it is argued, a more direct method will be required for their moral education; a clear-cut method to offset that equally direct form consisting of coercion and punishment that are now the consequence of the reprehensible act. Under all the conditions to be considered in regard to the biopathological factors and the social environment, there still remains another element and the most evident of all, namely, the immediate and practical influence exerted directly upon the minds of wayward children. We may say quite truly that beneath the pathological facts and the social injustices, there exists something more profound which, for the sake of simplicity we may call the soul of humanity. Something which responds from soul to soul, which may be aroused from the depths of subconsciousness like a surprise, which may be touched and reveal itself in an outburst of affection previously hidden and unsuspected. Unknown profundities of the spirit, that seem to merge into the eternity of the universe itself and unexpectedly produce new forms as in a chemical reaction. And this is what we really mean by "moral education."

Well, in order to accomplish such a lofty work, we do not need to find a method. Method is always more or less mechanical. Here, on the contrary, is the supreme expression of human life—an evocation of the superman. What we need to find is not a method, but a Master.

Séguin, in his glorious treatise on scientific pedagogy, dedicates a chapter to the training of the teacher of defective children. The teacher of abnormal pupils is not an educator, he is a creator; he must have been born with special gifts, as well as to have perfected himself for this high task. He ought, says Séguin, to be handsome in person, and strong as well, so that he may attract and yet command; his glance should be serene, like that of one who has gained victories through faith and has attained enduring peace; his manner should be imperturbable as that of one not easily persuaded to change his mind. In short, he ought to feel beneath him the solid rock, the foundation of granite on which his feet are planted and his steps assured. From this solid base, he should rise commandingly, like a magician. His voice should be gentle, melodious, and flexible, with bursts of silvery and resounding eloquence, but always without harshness. Séguin describes the methods by which the teacher should educate his own voice, speech and gesture; he should take a course in facial expression and declamation, like a great actor who is preparing to win favor of the select and critical public of the proudest capital.

For, as a matter of fact, he must attract the minds and souls of human beings who are almost inaccessible, beings who form whole armies in the world, entire peoples, they are so numerous; powerful human armies that threaten society with terrible punishment and bring about cruel executions.

But the perfect teacher must possess something more than physical beauty and acquired art; he must have the loftiness of a soul ardent for its mission; yet even this may be cultivated and perfected. The teacher must "perfect himself" in his moral nature. There are men, who from the moment they make their appearance, exert a sort of fascination; everyone else becomes silent in their presence. It is almost as though some natural fluid emanated from them and spread to the others, so profoundly does everyone feel the attraction. When such a man speaks, the words seem, as if by magic, to touch the profoundest recesses of the heart. Hypnotists and magicians! Conquerors of souls! Valiant souls themselves; souls with a great mission!

Well, this is more or less what is demanded of the teacher of abnormal children. He ought to be conscious of his personal dignity and human virtue, and of a sincere love for the children whom it is his task to redeem; his own greatness must overcome their wretchedness. And if he continues to perfect himself and to mount toward the moral altitudes, cultivating at the same time a love for his own mission, he will, as if by magic, become an educator; he will feel that a magic power of suggestion goes forth from him and conquers; the work of redemption will then seem to accomplish itself like a conflagration which has been kindled from some central point and spreads in rolling flames through the dried undergrowth.

Undoubtedly, the guidance of science is not everything to a teacher; the better part is given him through his own moral perfectionment.

4. The biographic history completes the individual study of the pupil and prepares for his diagnosis: combining, to this end, the work of the school with that of the home.

Sergi, in his memorable work, First Steps in Scientific Pedagogy, expresses himself as follows: "the biographic chart is a methodical means for learning to know the body and spirit of the pupil through direct observations.... And, since pupils may be classified according to tendencies, character and intelligence, the master may rationally divide them into various groups, to which he will give varied treatment, according to the direction in which each group shows the greatest need of education.... And he will place himself in closer association with the pupils' families, who should communicate to him their earliest observations regarding the physical and psychological nature of their children."

As a matter of fact, the anthropological movement, through the inquiries necessitated by the compilation of biographic charts, often proves illuminating to the members of the family, in regard to facts and conditions of which they had hitherto remained ignorant (sexual hygiene); in regard to the view they should take of their own children (those who had been regarded as "bad," and who were really ill), in regard to the way they should watch over them and take care of them, etc. Hence it has made a beginning of the practical application of a pedagogic principal that hitherto has only been abstractly visioned, of coordinating the educative work of the family with that of the school. A pedagogic institution which practically realizes this conception, which was hitherto only a utopian dream of pedagogy, is the "Children's House;" because by having school in the home and by having teachers and mothers living together, it results in harmonizing the environment of the family with that of the school, for the furtherance of the great mission of education.

5. The biographic chart will furnish everyone with a document capable of guiding him in his own subsequent self-education.

Sergi says further in the work above quoted:

"The biographic chart should become a precious document to every man, if the sort of record of which I speak were continued through a series of years, from the kindergartens upward through the entire course of the secondary schools, because it would contain, in compact and methodical form, the history of his physical and mental life, and he would find it of inestimable advantage both in practical life and in his various social relations."

6. "Lastly, the biographic chart with its gathering of positive data, prepares a great body of scientific material which will be useful, not alone to pedagogy, but also to sociology, medicine, and jurisprudence."

And in the same aforesaid work, Sergi adds: "If, for example, we should gather" (under the guidance of his biographic chart) "biographic notes in the city of Rome alone and in the elementary schools for both sexes, we should have for a single year, an average of fifty thousand observations, taken on entering and leaving school; if we could have them throughout the whole course of elementary instruction, the number of observations would amount to two hundred and fifty thousand.

"Then we should be able to see in every social class all the individual variations in physical and physiological condition which contribute to the development of the intelligence and to the manifestations of sentiments which play an active part in practical life. And all this would have a value of a sociological character."

This conception of Sergi's is precisely one of the scientific aspects of biographic histories that is of the highest importance, provided that they could be recorded in so simple a manner as to render the researches practically possible, and provided, also, that they could be gathered with a scientific uniformity of method designed to render international researches harmonious. We are certainly still very far removed from the time when international pedagogical congresses will be held for the purpose of establishing a single model form of biographic chart for each of the various grades in school; and also an agreement as to the technical method of taking the anthropological measurements! Before arriving at this point it will be necessary to make many tentative efforts and experiments.

But a truly scientific sociology, as well as pedagogy, ought to emanate from such a study of human beings in the course of formation, because such an enormously large number of observations as could be gathered in school, will reveal to us the biologico-social mechanism through which those activities are formed that are destined to promote the progress of humanity and civilisation (the new generations).

Medicine and the biological sciences in general entered upon a new era of exceedingly rapid progress when the microscope made possible the study of histology and bacteriology; well, the researches in regard to the individual constitute the histology and bacteriology of social science! When Le Play, in his great work, Les Ouvriers Européens, instituted the "family monograph," i.e., the study of household accounts as a basis for "positive sociology," he was considered as the founder of a true social science. Because the true needs of men, the mechanism through which are determined the various personalities that afterward react upon society as creative or destructive forces, can be discovered only through studying minutely such needs and mechanisms, individual by individual, family by family. If Le Play's method, and consequently positive social science, have not as yet made much progress, this is because of the difficulty of penetrating within the family in order to study it.

From the bio-psychological point of view, if not from that of the family account book, the biographic chart of the schools is nevertheless a practical means of contributing to social histology; it is a field open to research and one which must be crossed by every one of the individuals who constitute society. Furthermore, it constitutes a foundation for social embryogeny; because in the school we may study the genesis of separate individuals; the causes which molded their congenital personality, and those which brought about its definitive formation. In the words of Le Play, indorsed by Bodio, this is the only positive material from which the legislator may draw his inspiration in order to become a true dispenser of justice to the people and to conduct the far-sighted reforms that are really necessary for the welfare of society.

Consequently, the anthropologic movement in pedagogy marks an aspect of scientific reform which is universal.

A direct contribution to pedagogy and at the same time to scientific sociology is given by the biographic charts in the "Children's Houses." Since this is a case of school within the home, where the mistress, being domiciled with her scholars, has them under her charge from the age of two or three years, and where there is a permanent resident physician to aid in the compilation of the biographic charts, it is evident that there is a chance of practically applying both the pedagogic plans for studying the pupil, and the social plans of Le Play, who by means of family monographs based upon the family account book, proposed to obtain nothing more nor less than an index of morality, culture, and individual needs! And as a matter of fact, the manner of spending the salary, the savings, the squanderings, the purpose for which money is spent, whether it is for low vices, or for vanity, or for æsthetic or intellectual pleasures in general, etc., reveal the state of civilisation and morality in which people live. In the "Children's Houses" such a study of the family is easy because it is revealed of its own accord, since the families are in contact with the school; consequently, these "Children's Houses" may serve to lay a true and practical foundation for embryogenesis and social histology. In short, the importance of research regarding the individual goes far beyond the school; it leads the way to every kind of social reform.

Even medicine, like every other science, is going to build up a firmer scientific basis through the help of the biographic charts of the schools: Professor De Sanctis has drawn up models for examinations, mainly of a medical nature, to be used in his asylum-schools for defectives; and by thus following the development of the pupils, he has succeeded in throwing positive light upon the biopathological mechanism through which an abnormal psychopathic or neuropathic personality develops; while psychiatry or neuropathology formerly recorded nothing more of such an abnormal personality than the episode of the moment at which the adult patient presented himself at the clinic. Even the individual criminal has now come to be studied in relation to his genesis, and jurists who are seeking a scientific basis for their enactments, should not neglect the individual studies that are being compiled in the schools for defectives. The biographic chart introduced into the government reformatories in Italy will also furnish a direct contribution to social histology, in regard to the genesis of criminal personalities.

Consequently, the reform which has begun with the introduction of an anthropological movement into the school and the establishment of biographic charts, is nothing less than a reform of science as a whole. Medicine, jurisprudence, and sociology as well as pedagogy, are laying new foundations upon it.

CHAPTER X
THE APPLICATION OF BIOMETRY TO ANTHROPOLOGY FOR THE PURPOSE OF DETERMINING THE MEDIAL MEN

Theory of the Medial Man.—Measurements are used not only in anthropology but in zoology and botany as well; that is, they are applied to all living creatures; therefore anthropometry might to-day be regarded as a branch of biometry. The measurements obtained from living beings, and the statistical and mathematical studies based upon them, tend to determine the normality of characteristics; and when the biometric method is applied to man, it leads to a determination of the normal dimensions, and hence of the normal forms, and to a reconstruction of the medial man that must be regarded as the man of perfect development, from whom all men actually existing must differ to a greater or less extent, through their infinite normal and pathological variations.

This sort of touch-stone is of indisputable scientific utility, since we cannot judge of deviations from the norm, so long as normality is unknown to us. In fact, when we speak of normality and of anomalies, we are using language that is far from exact, and to which there are no clear and positive corresponding ideas.

Whatever has been accomplished in anthropology up to the present time in the study of the morphology of degenerates and abnormals, has served only to illustrate this principle very vaguely—that the form undergoes alteration in the case of pathological individuals. It is only now that we are beginning to give definite meaning to this principle, by seeking to determine what the form is, when it has not undergone any alteration at all. From this fundamental point a new beginning must be made, on more certain and positive bases, of the study of deviations from normality and their etiology.

As far back as 1835, Quétélet, in his great philosophical and statistical work, Social Physics or the Development of the Faculties of Man, for the first time expounded the theory of the "medial man," founded on statistical studies and on the mathematical laws of errors. He reached some very exact concepts of the morphology of the medial man, based upon measurements, and also of the intellectual and moral qualities of the medial man, expounding an interesting theory regarding genius.

But inasmuch as Quétélet's homme moyen was, so to speak, at once a mathematical and philosophical reconstruction of the non-existent perfect man, who furthermore could not possibly exist, this classical and masterly study by the great statistician was strenuously combatted and then forgotten, so far as its fundamental concepts were concerned, and remembered only as a scientific absurdity. The thought of that period was too analytical to linger over the great, the supreme synthesis expounded by Quétélet.

Mankind must needs grow weary of anatomising bodies and tracing back to origins, before returning to an observation of the whole rather than the parts, and to a contemplation of the future. In fact, the thought of the nineteenth century was so imbued with the evolutionary theories as set forth by Charles Darwin, that it believed the reconstruction of the Pithecanthropus erectus from a doubtful bone a more positive achievement than that of the medial man from the study of millions of living men.

But to-day the researches that we have accomplished in the biological field regarding evolution, regarding natural heredity, regarding individual variability, are leading biology as a whole toward eminently synthetic conclusions; and studies which remained neglected or which were combatted in the past, are beginning to be brought into notice and properly appreciated: such studies, for instance, as Mendel's theory and that of Quétélet. Galton, Pearson, Davenport, Dunker, Heinke, Ludwig, and above all others De Vries, are in the advance guard of modern biological thought. But beyond all these scientists, there is one who has an interest for us not only because he is an Italian, but because he has reestablished Quétélet's ancient theory of the medial man, under the present-day guidance of biometry: I mean Prof. Giacinto Viola.

The Importance of Seriation.—Under the statistical method, the basis of biometry is furnished by a regrouping of measurements in the form of series. We have seen that Quétélet's binomial curve represents the symmetrical distribution of subjects in relation to some one central anthropometric measurement.

Let us suppose, for instance, that the curve here described represents the distribution of the stature. If we mark upon the abscissæ the progressive measurements, 1.55; 1.56; 1.57; 1.58; 1.59; 1.60, etc.... 1.75; 1.76; 1.77; 1.78; 1.79; 1.80, and on the axis of the ordinates the number of individuals having a determined stature, the path of the curve will show that there is a majority of individuals possessing a mean central measurement; and that the number of individuals diminishes gradually and symmetrically above and below, becoming extremely few at the extremes (exceptionally tall and low statures). When the total number of individuals is sufficiently large, the curve is perfect (curve of errors): Fig. 156.

Fig. 156.—The highest part of this curve corresponds to the medial centre of density.

In such a case, the general mean coincides with the median, that is, with the number situated at the centre of the basal line, because, since all the other measurements, above and below, are perfectly symmetrical, in calculating the mean average they cancel out. There is still another centre corresponding to the mean: the centre of density of the individuals grouped there, because the maximum number corresponds to that measurement. Accordingly, if, for example, in place of half a million men whose measurements of stature, when placed in seriation, produced a perfect binomial curve, we had selected only ten men or even fewer from those corresponding to the median line; the general mean stature obtained from those half million men and that obtained from the ten individuals would be identical. For we would have selected ten individuals possessing that mean average stature which seems to represent a biological tendency, from which many persons deviate to a greater or less extent, as though they were erroneous, aberrant, for a great variety of causes; but these aberrant statures are still such that by their excess and their deficiency they perfectly compensate for each other; so that the mean average stature precisely reproduces this tendency, this centre actually attained by the maximum number of individuals. Supposing that we could see together all these individuals: those who belong at the centre being numerically most prevalent, will give a definite intonation to the whole mass. Anyone having an eye well trained to distinguish differences of stature could mentally separate those prevalent individuals and estimate them, saying that they are of mean average stature. This curve is the mathematical curve of errors; and it corresponds to that constructed upon the exponents of Newton's binomial theorem and to the calculation of probability. It corresponds to the curve of errors in mathematics: for example, to the errors committed in measuring a line; or in measuring the distance of a star, etc. Whoever takes measurements (we have already seen this in anthropometrical technique and in the calculation of personal error) commits errors, notwithstanding that the object to be measured and the individual making the measurements remain the same. But the most diverse causes; nerves, the weather, weariness, etc., causes not always determinable and perhaps actually more numerous than could be discovered or imagined, all have their share in producing errors of too much and too little, which are distributed in gradations around the real measurement of the object. But since among all these measurements taken in the same identical way we do not know which is the true one; the seriation of errors will reveal it to us, for it causes a maximum number of some one definite measurement (the true one) to fall in the centre of the aberrations that symmetrically grade off from the centre itself.

Viola gives some very enlightening examples in regard to errors. Suppose, for instance, that an artist skilled in modeling wished to reproduce in plaster a number of copies of a leaf, which he has before his eyes as a model.

The well-trained eye and hand will at one time cause him to take exactly the right quantity of plaster needed to reproduce the actual dimensions of the leaf; at another, on the contrary, he will take more and at another less than required.

By measuring or superimposing the real leaf upon the plaster copies, the sculptor will be able to satisfy himself at once which of his copies have proved successful.

But supposing, on the contrary, that the real leaf has disappeared and that a stranger wishes to discover from the plaster copies which ones faithfully reproduce the dimensions of the leaf? They will be those that are numerically most prevalent.

The same thing holds true for any attempt whatever to attain a predetermined object. For example, shooting at a mark. A skilful marksman will place the maximum number of shots in the centre, or at points quite near to the centre; he will often go astray, but the number of errors will steadily decrease in proportion as the shots are more aberrant, i.e., further from the centre. If a marksman wished to practise in like manner against some wall, for example, on which he has chosen a point that is not marked, and hence not recognisable by others, this point thought of by the marksman, may be determined by studying the cluster of shots left upon the wall.

In the same way an observer could determine the hour fixed for a collective appointment, such as a walking trip, by the manner in which the various individuals arrive in groups; some one will come much ahead of time because he has finished some task which he had expected would keep him busy up to the hour of appointment; then in increasing numbers the persons who come a few minutes ahead of time because they are provident and prompt; then a great number of people who have calculated their affairs so well as to arrive precisely on time; a few minutes later come those who are naturally improvident and a little lazy; and lastly come the exceptional procrastinators who at the moment of setting forth were delayed by some unexpected occurrence.

Causes of error in the individual and in the environment interfere in like manner with the astronomer who wishes to estimate the distance of the stars and it is necessary for him to repeat his measurements and calculations on the basis of those which show the greatest probability of being exact.

Accordingly, such distribution of errors is independent of the causes which produce them and which, whatever they are, remain practically the same at any given time, and consequently produce constant effects and symmetrical errors; but it is dependent upon the fact of the existence of some pre-established thing (a measurement, the dimensions of an object to be copied, an appointed hour, the centre of a target, etc.). In short, whenever a tendency is established the errors group themselves around the objective point of this tendency.

In the case of anthropometry, as for instance, in the curve of stature given above, we find that the resulting medial stature was predetermined, e.g., for a given race; but many individuals, for various causes, either failed to attain it or surpassed it to a greater or less extent; and therefore in the course of their development they have acquired an erroneous stature.

Consequently, this medial stature which still corresponds to the mean average of a very large number of persons, is the stature that is biographically pre-established, the normal stature of the race.

If we select individuals presumably of the same race and in sound health, the serial curve of their statures ought to be very high and with a narrow base, because these individuals are uniform. When a binomial curve has a very wide basis of oscillations in measurements, it evidently contains elements that are not uniform; thus, for example, if we should measure the statures of men and women together, we should of course obtain a curve, but it would be very broad at the base and quite low at the centre of density; and a similar result would follow if we measured the statures of the rich and the poor without distinguishing between them. Since normal stature, including individual variations, has an exceedingly wide limit of oscillation (from 1.25 m. to 1.99 m.), if we should measure all the men on earth, we should obtain a very wide base for our binomial curve, which nevertheless would have a centre of density corresponding to the median line and to the general mean average.

Now this mean stature, according to Quétélet, is the mean stature of the European; and it is that of the medial man. But if we should take the races separately, each one of them would have its own binomial curve, which would reveal the respective mean stature for each race. In the same way, if we took the complex curve of all the individuals of a single race, and separated the men from the women, the two resulting groups would reveal the mean average male stature and the mean average female stature of the race in question. An analogous result would follow if we separated the poor from the rich, etc.

Every time that we draw new distinctions, the base of the curves, or in other words the limits of oscillation of measurements, will contract, and the centre of density will rise; while the intermediate gradations (due, for example, to the intermixture of tall women and short men; or to the overlapping standards of stature of various kindred races, etc.), will diminish. In short, if we construct the binomial curve from individuals who are uniform in sex, race, age, health, etc., it not only remains symmetrical around a centre but the eccentric progression of its groups is steadily determined in closer accordance with the order and progression of the exponents Of Newton's binomial.

However, a symmetrical grading off from the centre is not the same thing as a symmetrical grading off from the centre in a predetermined mode, i.e., that of the binomial exponents. The binomial symmetry is obtained through calculations of mathematical combinations. Now, if the fact of the centrality of a prevailing measurement is to be proved in relation to the predetermination of the measurement itself: for example, in regard to racial heredity, and hence is a fact that reveals normality, the manner of distribution of errors—namely, in accordance with calculations of probability—might very well be explained by Mendel's laws of heredity, which serve precisely to show how the prevailing characteristics are distributed according to the mathematical calculation of probabilities.

Accordingly, the normal characteristic of race would coincide with the dominant characteristic of Mendel's hereditary powers. The characteristic which has been shown as the stronger and more potent is victorious over the recessive characteristics that are latent in the germ. Meanwhile, however, there are various errors which, artificially or pathologically, cause a characteristic, which would naturally have been recessive, to become dominant, or, in other words, most prevalent.

Fig. 157.—The shaded portion represents the eccentricity of the curve, due to the presence of cretins.

Whenever a binomial curve constructed from a large number of individuals is found to be eccentric; and shows, e.g., in the case of stature, a deviation toward the low statures, it reveals (see De Helguero's curves) the presence of a heterogeneous intermixture of subjects, for example, of children among adults, or, as in the case demonstrated by De Helguero, an intermixture of pathological individuals with normal persons (Fig. 157).

The binomial curve obtained by De Helguero from the inhabitants of Piedmont included, as a matter of fact, a great number of cretins; they formed within the great normal mass of men, a little mass of individuals having a stature notably inferior to the normal.

By correcting the eccentric curve on the left of the accompanying figure, and by tracing a dotted line equal and symmetrical to the right side, we obtain a normal binomial curve; well, this curve will actually be reproduced if we subtract all the cretins from the whole mass of individuals.

The section distinguished by parallel lines represents that portion of the curve which departs from the normal toward the low statures, and is due to the cretins; it may be transformed into a small dotted binomial curve at the base, which is constructed from the statures of the cretins alone.

Accordingly, the symmetrical binomial curve gives us a mean average value in relation to a specified measurement.

What has been said regarding stature serves as an example; but it may be repeated for all the anthropometric measurements, as Viola has proved by actual experiment.

The sitting stature, the thoracic perimeter, the dimensions of an entire limb or of each and every segment of it; every particular which it has seemed worth while to take into consideration, comports itself in the same manner; and this is also true of all the measurements of the head and face.

That is to say, if we make a seriation of measurements relating to the sitting stature of an indeterminate number of individuals, we find a numerical prevalence of those corresponding to the medial measurement marked upon the axis of the abscissæ; and the number of individuals will continue to decrease with perceptible symmetry on each side of the centre, i.e., toward the higher and lower statures. If we take into consideration the significance of the sitting stature, this binomial curve relates to individuals who possess a normal physiological mass (the bust; centre of density) and to individuals who fall below or exceed that mass. We have already, in speaking of the types of stature, taken the bust under consideration in relation to the limbs, in order to judge the more or less favourable reciprocal development; but here we obtain an absolute datum of normality, independent of proportional relations to the body as a whole; in other words, there exists a physiological mass for the human body which is normal in itself. The individuals whose sitting stature corresponds to the medial measure of the binomial curve, are precisely those who have the normal development of bust.

The same thing repeats itself in the case of the thoracic perimeter, or the weight, or the length of the leg, or the cranial circumference, etc.

Hence we have a means of obtaining the normal medial measurements by the seriation of a number of measurements actually obtained from living individuals the number of whom should be sufficiently large to enable us to construct a perceptibly symmetrical and regular binomial curve.

Such medial measurements, although they correspond to the true mean average (as we have already seen), are not for this reason unreal, like arithmetical means which represent a synthetic entirety that does not correspond to the single individuals actually existing; the medial measurements obtained by seriation are, on the contrary, measurements that really belong to living individuals; namely, to that group of individuals that possess this particular measurement. Therefore, it is not a combination, or fusion, or abstraction.

But individuals who have one medial measurement, do not necessarily have all the other medial measurements; that is to say, the individuals who find that they belong on the medial abscissæ in relation to stature, do not find themselves similarly placed in relation to the sitting stature, or the thoracic perimeter, or the weight, or the cranial circumference, etc. Indeed, it is impossible that all the bodily measurements of the same individual should be medial measurements: or, to express it better, there has not been found up to the present among living individuals, in the whole wide world, a man so constructed.

Such a man would represent anthropologically the medial man.

It is also very rare to find a man quite lacking in medial measurements: everyone has a few central measurements and certain others that are eccentric.

At the same time it must be admitted that there are men who have many, and even a large majority, of the central measurements; while the rest of their measurements are eccentric or paracentral.

One of the objections which used to be made was that if we should wish to unite all the medial measurements, they would not fit together, or rather, that a man could not be constructed from them; but that the result would be a monstrosity. Nevertheless, this assertion or objection has proved to be absolutely fantastic and contrary to the actual fact.

Professor Viola has observed that men who have a very large number of medial measurements are singularly handsome.

More than that: the medial man reconstructed from medial measurements really gathered from living persons, has the identical proportions of the famous statues of Greek art.

Here, for example, in Figs. 158 and 159, facing page ([464]), we have the medial man and the Apollo; even to the eye of the observer, they show a marked similarity in proportions. The medial man is very nearly the portrait of an exceedingly handsome young Roman, studied by Viola; this person possessed a great majority of the mean average measurements; but some of his measurements did not correspond to the normal averages, and accordingly Viola had them corrected by an artist under the guidance of anthropological biometry; and the figure thus corrected is represented in the drawing here given. Well, this drawing corresponds perfectly to the proportions of the Apollo.

Consequently, the mean average measurements do not pass unnoticed; it is not alone the anthropological instrument or mathematical reconstruction that reveals them; when presented to the eye of the intelligent man, they notify him that they exist, they arouse in him an æsthetic emotion, they give him the alluring impression of the beautiful.

When the mean average measurements are found accumulated in large numbers in the same person, they render that person the centre of a mysterious fascination, the admiration of all other men.

Now, this coincidence of the beautiful with the average is equivalent to a coincidence of the beautiful with normality. "This unforeseen demonstration," says Viola, "throws a vivid light upon the hitherto obscure problem of the æsthetic sense.... If a man evolves according to normal laws, his proportions arouse an exceptional æsthetic enjoyment."

Anyone having an eye trained to recognise the beautiful, is able through his æsthetic sensations, to pick out normality from the great crowd of biological errors, which is precisely what the scientist does with great weariness of measurements and calculations. In fact, the great artists recognise the beautiful parts of a number of beautiful individuals, and they unite them all together in a single work of art. The Greeks did this, they reconstructed the medial man, on a basis of actual observation, and by extracting all the normalities, all the measurements most prevalent in individuals, and forming from them a single ideal man. The Greek artists were observers; we might call them the positivists in art. Their art is supreme and immortal, because they simultaneously interpreted what is beautiful and what is true in life.

In short, medial measurements are true measurements, actually existing in individuals. No one can acquire a true æsthetic taste by contemplating works of art. The æsthetic sense is trained and refined by observing the truth in nature and by learning to separate instinctively the normal from the erroneous.

No other form of art reproduces the subject so faithfully as the Greek; medieval and modern artists have incarnated their own personal inspiration, without training themselves to that accurate observation which refines the sense of the beautiful, when we are in the presence of the truth, represented by normality, which is the triumph of life.

Accordingly, we may reconstruct the medial man from the truth as found in nature. Within the wide scale of individual variations we pass from men possessing few medial measurements (ugly men) to men possessing many of them (handsome men), and even a majority of such measurements (extremely handsome). Our sensation in the presence of the ugly man is repulsion, biological pain; in the presence of the handsome man we feel an æsthetic contentment, biological pleasure. In this way we take part in the mysterious failures and triumphs of nature, as children in the great family of life.

Now, as Viola says, the individual variations that group themselves symmetrically around the medial measurement may be divided into groups or types, e.g., central, paracentral and eccentric, both above and below the mean.[49] Such types are considered by Viola chiefly from the pathological point of view, or rather, that of the physical constitution and relative predisposition to disease. It is only the central type that has such perfect harmony of parts as to embody the perfection of strength and physical health; as the type diverges from the centre, it steadily loses its power of resistance and becomes less capable of realising a long life.

Fig. 158.—Viola's medial man.

Fig. 159.—Apollo.

Since the measurements are extremely numerous, it is necessary, in order to proceed to a separation of types, to select some one measurement to be regarded as fundamental, and in respect to which all others have a secondary importance; and such a measurement is found in the one which is associated with the development of the physiological man; namely, the sitting stature. In the centre there is the medial measurement; little by little, as we withdraw from the centre, we approach on the one side toward macroscelia and on the other side toward brachyscelia. It is possible to determine to within a millimetre the normality of any measurement whatever. When this fundamental datum has once been accepted as a basis for the construction of types, let us assume that we next add another and secondary measurement; for instance, that of the lower limbs. By the method of seriation we obtain a measurement that is absolutely normal when considered by itself; it is the central measurement. A perfectly formed and healthy man ought to possess both the medial sitting stature and the medial length of lower limbs; in actual cases, however, it is difficult to find so favourable a union, and the two series of measurements combine in various ways; showing a tendency, however, to unite in such a way that a short bust goes with long legs, and vice versa. The degree to which this rule is carried out produces two types that steadily tend to become more eccentric; they are the macroscelous and brachyscelous types, or, as De Giovanni calls them, morphological combinations. We have only to calculate the type of stature, and that also groups itself according to the binomial curve; and thus gives us a gradation of the combinations of parts. Viola notes that the paracentral individuals show characteristics quite different from those of the eccentrics; their constitution is more favourable, and they differ in respect to their characteristic proportions between thorax and abdomen, and in certain other physiological particulars that are of pathological importance.

In this way a method has been built up for determining mathematically the one absolute normality; as well as the anomalies in all their infinite variety, which may, however, be regrouped under types, on the basis of their eccentricities.

Here then we have, thanks to Viola, and under the guidance of the glorious school of De Giovanni, a pathway indicated, that is exceedingly rich in its opportunities for research, and that may advance the importance of anthropometry side by side with that of biometry, the development of which is to-day so earnestly pursued, especially in England.

One of the objections which may be raised to the theory of the medial man is that there cannot be any one perfect, human model because of the diverse races of mankind, each with its own established biological characteristics.

For instance, I believe that I have proved that what we consider as beautiful is distributed among different races; in other words, perfect beauty of all the separate parts of the body is never found united in any one race, any more than it is in any one person.

The women of Latium who are dark and dolichocephalic have most beautiful faces, but their hands and feet are imperfect; the brachycephalic blondes, on the contrary, are coarse-featured, while their hands and feet are extremely beautiful. The same may be said regarding their breasts and certain other details. Furthermore, the stature of the dolichocephalics is too low as compared with what is shown to be the average stature, while the brachycephalics are similarly too tall. Nevertheless, it is extremely difficult to discover racial types of such comparative purity as to establish these differences: it was by a lucky chance that I succeeded in tracing out, at Castelli Romani and at Orte, certain groups of the races that were very nearly pure. The rest of the population are, for the most part, hybrids showing a confused intermingling of characteristics.

In fact, pure types of race no longer exist, least of all where civilisation is most intense. In order to speak of types of race, it is necessary to go among barbaric tribes; and even this is a relative matter, because all the races on earth are more or less the result of intermixture. Yet in civilised countries an occasional group of pure racial stock may be discovered in isolated localities, as though they had found refuge, so to speak, from the vortex of civilisation which is engulfing the races. Throughout the history of humanity we may watch this absorption of racial and morphological characteristics, and the formation of more and more intimate intermixtures, leading to the final disappearance of the original types of race.

When a primitive race emigrated, when men crossed over from Africa to the European coast of the Mediterranean, or Aryans from oriental Asia traversed the mountains and steppes of Russia and the Balkan countries, they were on their way to conquer territory and to subjugate peoples, but they were also on their way to lose their own type, the characteristics of their race. Yet even this sacrifice of race was not without compensation: indeed, it seems as though the race loses through hybridism a large part of its ugly characteristics, but retains and transmits for the most part the characteristics that are pleasing. Unquestionably, the more civilised peoples are better looking than the barbarians, although the history of emigration would seem to indicate an almost common racial origin.

When we remember that in human hybridism the result is not always a true and complete fusion of characteristics, but for the most part an intermixture of them—so that, for example, the hybrid has the type of cranium belonging to one race, and the stature belonging to another race—we have the explanation of the fact that throughout thousands of years certain morphological characteristics have remained fixed, to such an extent as to permit anthropologists to use them as a basis upon which to trace out the origins of races. But these characteristics, while fixed in themselves, are interchanged among individual hybrids, who form more or less felicitous combinations of characteristics belonging to several races.

When we recall what was said in this regard concerning heredity (general biological section) it is necessary to conclude that Mendel's law must be invoked to explain the phenomenon.

Human hybridism, like all hybridism throughout the whole biological field, falls under this law.

But there is still another phenomenon that should be noted: civilised men, who are the most hybrid of all hybrids upon earth, have formed a new type that is almost unique, the civilised race, in which one and all resemble one another. It is only logical to believe that, in proportion as facilities of travel become easier and intermarriage between foreign countries more widespread, it will become less and less easy to distinguish the Englishman from the Frenchman, or the Russian or the Italian; provided that the various hybridisms in the respective countries have developed an almost uniform local type, so that the general characteristics of French hybridism may be distinguished from those of English hybridism, etc.

Even these local hybrid types, determining, as it were, the physiognomy of a people, will disappear when Europe finally becomes a single country for civilised man.

In short, we are spectators of this tendency: a fusion or intermixture of characteristics that is tending to establish one single human type, which is no longer an original racial type, but the type of civilisation. It is the unique race, the resultant human race, the product of the fusion of races and the triumph of all the elements of beauty over the disappearance of those ugly forms which were characteristic of primitive races.

Are the dominant forces in the human germinative cells those which bring a contribution of beauty? One would say "yes," on the strength of the morphological history of humanity.

There is no intention of implying by this that humanity is tending toward the incarnation of perfectly beautiful human beings, all identical in their beauty; but they will be harmonious in those skeletal proportions that will insure perfect functional action of their organism. Harmony is fundamental; the soft tissues, the colour of hair and eyes, may upon this foundation give us an infinite variety of beauty. "Even in music," says Viola, "so long as the laws of harmony are respected, there are possibilities of melodic thoughts of infinite beauty in gradation and variety; but the first condition is that the aforesaid laws shall be respected."

The soft and plastic tissues are like a garment which may be infinitely varied: because life is richer in normal forms than in abnormal; richer in triumphs than in failures; and hence more impressive in the varieties of its beauties than in its monstrosities.

Such philosophic concepts of the medial man are exceedingly fertile in moral significance. The ugly and imperfect races have gone on through wars, conquests, intellectual and civil advancement unconsciously preparing new intermarriages and higher forms of love, which eliminated all that is harsh and inharmonic, in order to achieve the triumph of human beauty. In fact, quite aside from the heroic deeds of man, the constructor of civilisation, we are witnessing the coming of the unique man, the man of perfect beauty, such as Phidias visioned in a paroxysm of æsthetic emotion.

A living man who incarnates supreme beauty, supreme health, supreme strength: almost as though it were Christ himself whom humanity was striving to emulate, through a most intimate brotherhood of all the peoples on earth.

On the analogy of the medial morphological man, Quétélet also conceived of the medial intellectual man and the medial moral man.

The medial intellectual man is closely bound to the thoughts of his century; he incarnates the prevailing ideas of his time; he vibrates in response to the majority. He is to his nation and century, says Quétélet, "what the centre of gravity is to the body—namely, the one thing to be taken into consideration in order to understand the phenomena of equilibrium and movement." Considered from the ideal side, the medial man ought to centralise in himself and keep in equilibrium the movement of thought of his period, giving it harmonic form, in works of art or of science. And it is the capacity for accomplishing this work of synthesis that constitutes the inborn quality in the man of genius.

He does not create; he reassembles in one organism the scattered members, the medial vibrations of the crowd; he feels and expresses all that is new and beautiful and great that is in process of formation in the men who surround him, who are frequently unconscious of the beauty which is in them, just as they are unconscious of having those normal predetermined measurements of their bodies. But whenever they discover in a creation of thought something of themselves, they are stirred to enthusiasm at recognising this something belonging to them as forming part of a harmonious whole: and they applaud the work of art or of science which has stirred their enthusiasm. The medial intellectual man who has produced it is a beneficent genius to humanity because he aids its upward progress by appealing to the better part in each individual.

Now, there has never existed a medial intellectual man who sums up all the thought of his time: just as there does not exist a living man so beautiful as to incarnate all the medial measurements. But the man of genius is he who does embody the greater part of such ideas: and he produces a masterpiece when he succeeds in shedding his own individuality in order to assume what is given him from without. Goethe said that it was not he who composed Faust, but a spirit which invaded him. And the same thought is expressed in the autobiographies of many men of genius.

A well-known writer told me that it sometimes happened to him, while he was writing, to forget himself completely; at such times he no longer wrote the truth as he saw and felt it consciously, but transmitted pure and unforeseen inspiration.

Such portions, said this author, are judged by the public as containing the greatest degree of beauty and truth.

When a great orator thrills a crowd, he certainly does nothing more than repeat what is already in the thoughts of each member of that crowd; every individual present had, as it were, in his subconsciousness, the same thought that is expressed by the orator, which was taking form within him but had not yet matured and which he would not have had the knowledge or the ability to express. The orator, as it were, matures and extracts from him that new thought which was taking shape within him; his better part, which after light is shed upon it will have the power to elevate him. But no orator could ever persuade a crowd with ideas that do not already exist in that crowd, and which consequently, are not part of the truth of their age.

The orator is like the centre of gravity, inasmuch as he gives form and equilibrium to the scattered and timid thought of the crowd.

Carducci[50] says "the art of the lyric poet consists in this: to express what is common to all in the form in which he has created it anew and specially in his mind; or rather to give to the thought which is peculiar to himself an imprint of universal understanding, so that each one looking into it may recognise himself."

When we think of the brilliant concept of the medial man, we behold a fundamental and profound principle: the necessity of hybridism and consequently of a profound intermixture of races; all of which goes side by side with the spread of civilisation, and the increased facilities of traveling and of communication between different communities. Connected with these material advantages is the moral progress which leads to a realisation of perfect brotherhood between men that is rendered steadily more possible by environment, and is sanctioned little by little by laws and customs; whereas at the start it was only an ethical or mystical theory.

While the physical formations of the races are becoming merged, the racial customs are also blending and disappearing in a single civilisation, in one sole form of thought. If, at one time, the powerful race was the one united to its territory, faithful to its customs, adhering to its moral code and its religion, all this melts away in the presence of universal hybridism which actually means the birth of a new generation of men and a new outlook upon life.

When we contemplate the morphologically medial man, he seems to stand as a symbol of unlimited universal progress. His realisation seems to demand very lofty standards of morality and civilisation.

Whereas, on the contrary, the survival of types and of customs and sentiments peculiar to separate races, is the expression of local conditions that are inferior both in morality and in civil progress. As for the innumerable paracentral errors which form to-day a large proportion of individual varieties, they are due directly to the imperfection of the environment, which does not permit of the natural development of human life, and consequently interferes through a wide range of methods and degrees with the development of ideal normality.

Hence, the extreme eccentric errors are the consequence of diseases and far-reaching social imperfections which lead to genuine deviations from the normal, including pathological and degenerate malformations, and associated with them the lowest forms of individual degradation, both intellectual and moral.

All the paracentral errors and malformations are a physical burden which retards the perfectionment of man. Admitting that hybridism will eventually result in complete beauty, it will be greatly delayed in its attainment through the accumulation of errors that surround the characteristics of race. They form a heavy ballast, if the phrase may be permitted, that impedes the progress of its ascension.

Consequently, the long awaited social progress which is gradually bringing about the "brotherhood of man" is not in itself sufficient for the attainment of the ideal mean.

There are certain errors that must more or less necessarily be encountered along the pathway of humanity; and that act either directly or indirectly upon posterity, deforming and destroying its resistance to life; and it is these that must be taken under consideration, because they delay the normal progress of human society.

They are conscious and well recognised errors; hence up to a certain point the active agency of man may combat them and succeed little by little in mitigating them and overcoming their disastrous influence upon biological humanity.

There are, in general, two influences developing and promoting that improvement which leads toward the medial man: in proportion as the real and practical intermarriage of races approaches its realisation, social errors diminish; and as the brotherhood of humanity is promoted, it leads to social reforms by which the "sins of the world" are little by little overcome.

But these may also be actively combated; and in this direction education has a task of inestimable importance to civilisation. We ought to know not only the thought of our century, which is the luminous torch in the light of which we advance along the path of progress; but also the moral needs of our time, and the errors which may be conquered through our conscious agency.

To know "the faults of our century," which are destined to be conquered in the coming century, and to make preparation for the victory—such is our moral mission. The ethical movement of human society has continued to advance from conquest to conquest, and in looking backward the more civilised part of mankind have been horrified at the conditions that have been outgrown and have called them "barbarous."

Thus, for example, slavery was an unsurmountable obstacle to progress, and had to be crushed out by civilisation; the license to kill is also a form of barbarism which to-day we are boasting of having just outgrown—or, at least, of having reached the final limit of its duration. In early times it was not only permissible to kill, but in many of its forms murder was considered honourable, as, for instance, in wars and in duels; it was also one form of justice to kill for vengeance, either social or individual; the condemnation to death of a criminal, the murder of an adulterous wife, the murder of anyone who has attacked the honour of the family, all this seemed just in the past. Lastly, murder was committed for pure diversion, as in the auto-da-fè and in the games of the circus.

Our civic morality seems to have attained its extreme altitude in having sanctioned the inviolability of human life; and the present-day struggle against the death penalty, against war, against revolutions, against uxoricide, in the case of adultery, and against duelling, shows us the triumph of a new and loftier conception of humanity in the upward progress of man.

The intermixture of races and the intermingling of national interests, have aroused a sort of collective sentiment actually existing as a normal form of conscience, namely, "human solidarity."

But we are still in a state of complete barbarity, still sunk in the most profound unconsciousness, all of us partners in the same great sin that threatens the overthrow of so-called civilised humanity; namely, barbarity toward the species.

We are ignorant, we are almost strangers, in regard to our responsibility toward those who are destined to issue from us as the continuation of humanity downward through the centuries; those who form the ultimate scope of our biological existence, inasmuch as each one of us is merely a connecting link between certain portions of past and future life. We are all so engrossed with the progress of our environment and of the ideas embodied in it, that we have not yet turned our attention inward toward ourselves: toward life.

This solidarity which we recognise as existing among men at the present moment, ought to be extended to the men of the future. And since the species is closely bound up in the individual who is destined to reproduce it, this gives us at once the basis for a code of individual moral conduct, such as would assure to everyone the integrity of the fruit of his own reproduction. Sexual immorality which is the stigma of the barbarity of our times, entails the most ignominious form of slavery; the slavery of women through prostitution. And emanating from this form of barbarity, the slavery has expanded and spread to all women, more or less oppressive, more or less conscious. The wife is a slave, for she has married in ignorance and has neither the knowledge nor the power to avoid being made the instrument for the birth of weakly, diseased or degenerate children; and still more deeply enslaved is the mother who cannot restrain her own son from degradations that she knows are the probable source of ruin of body and soul. We are all silently engaged in an enormous crime against the species and against humanity; and like accomplices we have made a tacit agreement not to speak of it. Indeed, the mysterious silence regarding sexual life is absolute; it is as though we feared to compromise ourselves in the sight of that great and powerful judge, our own posterity; we hide under an equal silence the good and the bad in relation to sexual life. This sort of terror goes by the name of shame and modesty. Such an excuse for silence certainly sounds like pure irony, coming as it does in the full midst of the orgy, at a time when we all know that every man is laden with his sins, and that we are all either accomplices or slaves in the common fault. It would seem that a race so modest as to blush at the mere mention of sexual life ought to be eminently chaste, and far removed from the age of foundling asylums and houses of ill fame; the age in which infanticide exists as proof of absolute impunity in regard to sexual crimes.

What we call shame and modesty, is in reality not shame or modesty in regard to sexual acts and phenomena, but only in regard to sins against them.

These acts and phenomena, being directly related to creation and the eternity of the species, ought to be regarded by men as in the nature of a lofty religious culte, equally, for instance, with that which from the earliest prehistoric times placed the symbol of maternity, the mother and the child, side by side with the scythe, symbol of labour, in places of worship. We cannot admit that love, sung by the poets as a divine sentiment, is the moral exponent of unworthy and shameful acts. It is the error, the perversion of sexual life, the source of degeneration, of degradation and of the death of the species, that makes us keep silent, conceal and blush with shame.

In reality, all this ought to stir us, not to embarrassment and shame, but to a formidable rebellion, a sharp awakening of conscience, a redemption from a state of inferior civilisation.

It was a barbarous sovereign who, in the delusive hope that it would cure him of eczema, caused the throats of little children to be cut, so that he might immerse himself in the warm bath of their blood.

To-day anyone who would sacrifice the lives of children to allay the itching of his own skin, would be in our eyes a monster of criminality.

And yet almost equally criminal are the men of our time, lords, in a barbaric sense, of sexual life; and we silently acquiesce in customs which in the future centuries will perhaps be remembered as a monstrous barbarism.

The whole moral revival which awaits us, revolves around the struggle against the sexual sins. The emancipation of woman, the protection of maternity and of the child, are its most luminous exponents; but no less efficacious evidences of such progress are all the efforts directed against alcoholism and the other vices and diseases which are reflected in their unhappy consequences to posterity. There is just one side of the question that has hitherto been scarcely touched at all, and that is the chastity of man and his responsibility as a father; but even this has already come to be felt as an imperative necessity for progress. In place of reducing other human beings to slavery and prostituting them; instead of betraying them and shattering their lives by seduction and the desertion of their offspring, the man of the future will choose to become chaste. He will feel that otherwise he is dishonoured, morally lost. Man will not be willing to be so weak as to confess himself dragged down to degradation and crime because unable to conquer his own instincts; man who has nothing but victories on the credit side of his history, and who even succeeded in overcoming the greatest of all his irresistible instincts, that of self-preservation, in showing himself capable of going into combat and dying for the ideals of his fatherland.

Man is capable of every great heroism; it was man who found a means of conquering the formidable obstacles of his environment, establishing himself lord of the earth, and laying the foundations of civilisation. He will also teach himself to be chaste, within sufficiently narrow limits to guarantee the dignity of the human race and the health of the species; and in this way he will prescribe the ethics for the centuries of the near future: sexual morality. There are customs and virtues, lofty ethical doctrines that stand in direct accord with the conservation and the progress of life. Bodily cleanliness, temperance in drink, the conquest of personal instincts, human brotherhood in the full extent of the thought, the feeling, and the practice, chastity; all these are just so many forms of the defense of life, both of the individual and of the species. To-day, in hygiene, in pathology and in anthropology, science is showing us the truth through positive proofs, through experiments and statistics. But these virtues which are paths leading to life, are simply being reconfirmed by science; just as they are being little by little attained by civil progress, which prepares their practical elements; but they were always intuitively recognised by the human heart: nothing is older in the ethics of mankind than the principal of brotherhood, of victory over the instincts, of chastity. Only, these virtues, intuitively perceived, could not be universally practised, because universal practice demanded time for preparation. But they survived partly as affirmations of absolute virtue and partly as prophesies of a future age and were considered as constituting the highest good. Just as the æsthetic sense led to the recognition of normality at a time when this scientific concept was very far from being understood as it is to-day; in the same way the ethical and religious sense was able to feel intuitively and to separate from customs and from sentiments belonging to an evanescent form of transitory civilisation or from the temporary racial needs, those others that relate fundamentally to the biological preservation of the individual and the species and the practical attainment of human perfection. And while the medial intellectual man or the artistic genius combines wholly or in part the thoughts of his time, the medial moral or religious man sums up the guiding principles of life which everyone feels profoundly in the depth of his heart; and when he speaks to other men it seems as though he instilled new vigour into the very roots of their existence, and he is believed, when he speaks of a happier future toward which humanity is advancing. If the intellectual genius is almost a reader of contemporaneous thought as it vibrates around him, the religious genius interprets more or less completely and perfectly the universal and eternal spirit of life in humanity.

Accordingly, the medial men incarnate the beautiful, the true, and the good: in other words, the theories of positivism arrive at the selfsame goals as idealism, those of poetry, philosophy and art.

By following the path of observation, we reach a goal analogous to that sought along the path of intuition.

The theory of the medial man constructed fundamentally upon positive bases of measurements and facts, represents the limit[51] of perfection of the human individual associated with the limit of perfection of human society, which is formed in a two-fold way: a close association between all human beings, or the formation of a true social organism (complete hybridism in body; human brotherhood in sentiment), and the steadily progressive emancipation, of every individual member from anxiety concerning the defense of life, in order to enjoy the triumph of the development of life. All that was formerly included under defense will assume collective forms of a high order (repressive justice replaced by more varied forms of prevention: which have for their final goal a widespread education and a gradual amelioration of labour and social conditions); and in this reign of peace there will arise the possibility of developing all the forces of life (biological liberty).

In such a conception, the individual organism depends more and more upon the social organism: just as the cells depend upon the multicellular organism; and we may almost conceive of a new living entity, a super-organism made up of humanity, but in which every component part is allowed the maximum expansion of its personal activity emancipated from all the obstacles that have been successively overcome. This conception of biological liberty, in other words, the triumph of the free and peaceful development of life, through the long series of more or less bitter struggles and defenses of life, constitutes, in my opinion, the very essence of the new pedagogy. And the evolution of modern thought and of the social environment can alone prepare for its advent, perhaps at no distant day.