But people used always to be terribly frightened by those
irregular vital products which we now call "interesting specimens" and
carefully preserve in jars of alcohol. It took next to nothing to make a
panic; a child was born a few centuries ago with six teeth in its head,
and about that time the Turks began gaining great advantages over the
Christians. Of course there was an intimate connection between the
prodigy and the calamity. So said the wise men of that day.
--All these out-of-the-way cases are studied connectedly now, and are
found to obey very exact rules. With a little management one can even
manufacture living monstrosities. Malformed salmon and other fish can be
supplied in quantity, if anybody happens to want them. Now, what all I
have said is tending to is exactly this, namely, that just as the
celestial movements are regulated by fixed laws, just as bodily
monstrosities are produced according to rule, and with as good reason as
normal shapes, so obliquities of character are to be accounted for on
perfectly natural principles; they are just as capable of classification
as the bodily ones, and they all diverge from a certain average or middle
term which is the type of its kind. If life had been a little longer I
would have written a number of essays for which, as it is, I cannot
expect to have time.
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