Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/118

110 is therefore wrong; while, on the contrary, conduct which tends to increase relatively the number of those who are considerate of the welfare of others, is beneficial to the community, tends to increase the happiness of the greater number, and is therefore right. If, therefore, it can be shown that the principle adopted by Class A, however self-sacrificing, must tend to work far wider mischief in encouraging the development of selfishness and wrong-doing than it can possibly effect in the way of good (the good being local and casual, the evil systematic and wide-spread), then will it become clear that the principle adopted by Class B, which equally seeks the good of others, but entirely avoids the risk of encouraging the selfish and the evil-disposed, is that which can alone lead to permanent improvement and happiness in the social body.

This, as we shall next proceed to show, is unquestionably the case.—Knowledge.



N the quiet little town of Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, there has lately died a man whose life appears to the writer to present a psychological study of marked interest. Nature, in what are called her freaks, or abnormal products, oft-times gives us hints of powers altogether beyond the ordinary, but destined, it may be, through the development of the race, to become common possessions of mankind. This man furnishes a case in point.

The subject of our paper was about five feet six inches in height, when standing upright, but he stooped very much as he walked, his hands hanging far forward. His body was long, his legs very short, so that in walking he made the lifting, jerking movement in his step characteristic of quadrupeds trained to walk upright. His forehead, to the eye of a phrenologist, was very fully and finely developed. His occiput rose in a high point, but on each side there was a very deep depression. Phrenologically speaking, his head would have been considered well formed, save for these two depressions at the back.

His education, if so we may call it, was limited to learning the letters of the alphabet, so as to know them singly at sight, but he was unable to combine them into syllables or words. He could count as far as five or six, but beyond that became confused. He had a decided literary taste, judging from his interest in books and papers, in perusing which he spent much of his time, and apparently found much enjoyment. He did not hold the paper with column perpendicular, but horizontal, reading always from right to left. If any one gave him a book or paper, with page or column perpendicular, he at once 