A treatise on man and the development of his faculties / by A. Quetelet ; now first translated into English.

Date:
1842
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on man and the development of his faculties / by A. Quetelet ; now first translated into English. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    thum the most petty inferences. Be more consistent willi yourselves. Coukl you possibly be afniid of applying; tbe calcu- lation of diances to moral ijhouomena, anil of the atnicting con.sequenccs which may be inferred from that inquiry, when it is extended to erimes and to (piarters the most disgraceful to .society ? “I slionld ffuard myself,” said a scientific friend, whose philan- thro])ic views I otherwise respect—“ I sliould guard myself, had I arrived at the afflicting results of which yon speak, against grieving others with the relation of them. Draw a veil over the hideous spectacle; and if you believe that you possess the triitli, imitate witli re.spcct to it the sage circumspection of Fonte- lu.'lle.” But is the anatomy of man not a more pain- I'ul science still?—that science which leads us to dip our hands into the blood of our fellow-beings, to pry with impassible curiosity into x>arts and organs which once p.alpitated with life? And yet who dreams at this day of raising his voice against the study ? Who does not applaud, on the contrary, the numerous ad- vantages which it has conferred on humanity? The time is come for studying the moral anatomy of man also, and for uncovering its most afflicting aspects, with the view of providing remedies. This study is a diffleuit one. Speculative philoso- ])hy has long been occupied with it; but there are questions not to be resolved by such means; specula- tion has its limits, as observation also has. Every propensity and every passion, develops itself in a man- ner more or less rapid, attains a degree of maximum intensity, and declines in general by shades not yet fully recognised. It is with the intellectual as with the moral faculties of man ; they both have their laws of development. With regard to some of them, these laws march in a parallel relation; others are interwoven in their growth, or stand in manifest opposition. Now, these are the laws which it is necessary to ascertain and comprehend, not in a vague manner, but with such precision as to enable us to establish numerically tlie degree of intensity for each age. There lay, if I do not deceive myself, the novel feature of my labours; thence sprung, at least, the chief meed of praise, and the criticisms which I have received; and it is this principle which I must strive to justify by my ulterior labours, because I was compelled to limit myself, in a first essaj', to simple indications. The analysis of the moral man through his actions, and of the intellectual man through his productions, seems to me caJculated to form one of the most inte- resting parts of the sciences of observation, applied to anthropologjn It may be seen, in my work, tliat the coui'se which I have adopted is that followed by the natural philosopher, in order to grasp the laws that regulate the material world. By the seizm'e of facts, I seek to rise to an appreciation of the causes whence they spring.* As I could only indicate this course summarily, and the difficulties embarrassing it, I have been desirous to show, by two examples, selected and * Tliis appreciation is in general very difficult, and lias given rise to grave errors. One of the chief causes of these errors seems to me to spring from the incomplete enumerations, made when it is sought to give an account of the causes which have led to any result. Tims, it is recognised that in some locality crimes are very numerous, and an attempt is made to explain that un- favourable state of things. How do most writers and even sta- tisticians proceed in such a case ? In place of passing in review all the causes which can lead to crime, of weighing their in- fluences, and of iiuiuiring into those, above all, which have there acted with the greatest energj-, they only attend, in the prejudiced state of their minds, to one alone, often the le.ost influential of all, to which they ascribe the cllects produced by the whole. Tlicy have been led in this manner to conclude that poinilar instruction ))roduces crime, because, in such and sucli a kingdom, the provinces where it chiefly abounds send the greatest number of children to schools ; ns if thedegreeof instruc- tion, and the kind of instruction, and other elements, did not all enter ciiually into the (lucstion. The true talent of tlio ob- server, it seems to me, whatever be the phenomena of which he treatud iti a suaruliing luaimcv, !iow the course in question sboiild bo followed. 'I'lie one law for its ob- ject the examination of works of literature, pbilosoiib v, .seience, tbe fine arts, &e., and of the ages at wliieli they have been produecd, with tbe results to be de- dueed from tbe wbtilc. The other examjile concerns tbe development of tbe jiropensity to eritne, uiion a scale more extended than I bad yet bad an oiiportuiiity of forming. After these last new researches, I con- ceive I may now confidently say, that tbe tables of criminality for dilferent ages, given in my published treatise, merit at least as much faith as tbe tables of mortality, and verify themselves within perhaps even narrower limits; so that crime pursues its jiatb with even more constancy than death. Twelve years have elapsed since the data furnished by the tri- bunals of justice in France were collected with great care and exactitude, and since the ages of criminals Averc first marked; and, in each succeeding year, they have reckoned from about 7000 to 8000 indivi- duals accused before the courts of assize; and it is still betwixt the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five, that, all things being equal, the greatest number of per- sons are to be found in that position. I have taken, for the same years, and for the city of Paris, the morta- lity of a period of ten years, and have found, that, though my observations included a much larger num- ber of persons, and these pertaining to a much more homogeneous population, the mortality of the capital proceeded ivith less regularity than the crimes of the kingdom, and that each age paid a more uniform and eonstant tribute to the jail than to the tomb. An objection has been made to my views, Avhich appears somewhat valid at a first glance. It has been forcibly reproduced by a ivriter of merit, ivho, while treating my work with liberality, has draivn together all the gravest objections brought forward against it. I shall take leave to cite his words. “ We now reach the most delicate portion of M. Quetelet’s ivork—the deimlopment of the intellectual and moral qualities, the social system. Here the field is not the same; we have no longer to do ivith phenomena vital and regTilar, or with those hnvs to ivliich man is sub- jected along with the brutes, and which operate con- tinually without his inten'ention, or constitute in- stincts in him too powerful to be resisted. We have to consider things w-hich he is at liberty to do or not to do—acts which he may consummate or not consum- mate at choice. We enter into the domain of the human will—free, bold, and independent. Can science follow man in this new route ? Will it be able to ap- preciate, in a manner at once comprehensive and exact, the results of the physiological and moral constitution of the mind and soul ivhich distinguisli him from other animals ? Contented to follow, up to this pomt, the materiid phenomena rei'ealed bj' evident facts, can science sound the heart of man, dive into the mysteries of spiritual being, and tear away for the human race the veil Avhich the moralist can ivitli seeks to c-stiniiite the ciuises, consists in a complete emiineration of these, ami in distinguishing between such ns are entitled to weight, and such ns may be overlooked without inconvenienee. It is this fine insight, this delie.ate taet, principal attributes of superior intelligences, which constitute the great observer, the true philosopher. To wander from this course is to step into error, and to become entangled in those intermin.able dispute.s which altiiet the sciences, and, above all, those whose phenomena are most complex. The medical sciences ofler sad examples of this evil. Jlakidies are in general the re.stdt of an infinity of causes ; and wherefore attribute them, then, to one of these more than to another? It maybe conceived that two physicians, in citing each a different cause ns the origin of one disease, may be both in the right, since caeh may have found the cause stated by liim to have predominated in the c.a.sc under his notice: they only err in neglecting the other inlluentinl ca\iscs which they iiavc not had the ehattee of observing, beca\iso the numl>er of their observation.s was too limited. This is the history of many of the theories and systems, nltcrnatoly adopted .iud rejocte»l in medicine.