the statement. Thus, let us take from the 'Second Report on Quarantine by the Board of Health' an illustration of the sickness rotation system. "The pond of Lindre Basse, in the department of the Meurthe, affords a curious illustration of the effects of the conditions under which malaria is generated, in modifying diseases arising from paludal infection. This pond, managed according to the triennial rotation system common in Sologne, is two years under water and one year dry. In the first year it is half filled, and gives rise to intermittent fevers ; in the second year it is full, and typhoid fevers prevail; in the third year it is left dry, and cultivated as a field, and in this year carbuncular affections appear. These diseases have succeeded one another as invariably and regularly as the different states of the pond for a period of sixteen years."

It is added in a note that a change in the rotation of 1848-9 altered the rotation of the diseases. To illustrate man's power to suppress disease, let us turn to 'The Results of Sanitary Improvements,' by Dr. Southwood Smith: "There is no typhus fever where there is absolute cleanliness; but it is in our power to make our towns and villages absolutely clean it is therefore in our power to prevent the existence of this plague. Wherever we have drained our marshes, ague or intermittent fever has

disappeared, and when we shall have thoroughly purified our towns, typhus fever will equally cease to exist. By enforcing scrupulous cleanliness we have for some time past banished this disease from our union workhouses and from prisons; and now, by giving to the houses of the industrious classes efficient drainage, the ready means of removing solid refuse, a good supply of water, and water-closets instead of cesspools, we have placed a barrier around those dwellings which this mortal pest of our towns and cities has not been able to pass.

The relation of sanitary conditions to moral habits and states of mind is too important to be overlooked, and affords additional proof of the presence and operation of fixed laws. In large towns the regions of filth and fever are invariably regions of crime; and the introduction of air, light, and cleanliness invariably leads to improvement of character, by removing obstacles to the action of good qualities, and providing an appropriate scene for their employment. Particular physical derangements are likewise associated with, or provide a tendency to particular modes of thought and feeling. Thus the public has become acquainted with "consumptive literature," or the peculiar kind of what is called "religious experience" felt by consumptive

patients; and the connection of hysteria, or morbid state of the solar plexus and uterine nerves, with Irish and other “revivals " is too patent to be gainsayed. Other disorders are associated with totally different states of mind. Speaking of yellow fever, Dr. Fergusson says, "self-possession and courage ordinarily characterize the disease. I have seldom known any one who could not give clear directions in regard to the disposal of their affairs, or fail to conduct themselves with resignation. . . . A gallant officer said to me, 'You see I am posting to the other world, and you cannot prevent it, but I am as easy as if I was in a post-chaise."'" These illustrations prepare the mind to consider aberrations from a just standard of conduct as far from being entirely metaphysical or theological questions. They have, it is seen, their physical conditions, which exert an influence over appetite, emotions, passions, and even speculative thought.

With the growth of the idea of law, or regulated and invariable sequence of events, is intimately associated that of oneness, and a tendency is generated to regard phenomena rather in large aggregates than in isolated details. Society thus viewed is and individual manifestations are seen not to be altogether separate and distinct, but to a large extent the result of forces springing from and

one,

operating upon the mass.

Thus we see dissipated simply an indication of

the notion that crime is personal guilt, and we are prepared to find Quetelet demonstrating, that while the general conditions of society remain the same, crimes are developed and repeated with fearful regularity; nor are we startled when the Belgian philosopher tells us, “Indeed, experience proves as clearly as possible the truth of this opinion, which may at first appear paradoxical, viz., that society prepares crime, and the guilty are only the instruments by which it is executed." The next chapter will be devoted to a consideration of the bearing of these views.

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CHAPTER II.

LAW AND LIBERTY.

MANKIND only seeks for that which it believes to exist and expects to find. It cannot therefore be supposed that the laws of social life will have their students and expositors, unless there is a previous faith that their presence may be traced in all the operations of which the human faculties are capable. This faith to be rational should be founded upon some previous acquaintance with the truths of physical science; and individual minds pass rapidly through the course traced in the last chapter, as that in which the collective mind of humanity moved through a long succession of ages, until it reached the latest epoch of modern civilization, characterized by its expansive benevolence, its energetic cultivation of positive science, and its conviction that the true golden age belongs to the future towards which society is hastening,