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36   NATURAL INHERITANCE.   [CHAP.

proportions of those who had incomes in each and every other degree, up to the huge annual receipts of a few great speculators, manufacturers, and landed proprietors. So in respect to the distribution of any human quality or faculty, a knowledge of mere averages tells but little ; we want to learn how the quality is distributed among the various members of the Fraternity or of the Population, and to express what we know in so compact a form that it can be easily grasped and dealt with. A parade of great accuracy is foolish, because precision is unattainable in biological and social statistics ; their results being never strictly constant. Over-minuteness is mischievous, because it overwhelms the mind with more details than can be compressed into a single view. We require no more than a fairly just and comprehensive method of expressing the way in which each measurable quality is distributed among the members of any group, whether the group consists of brothers or of members of any particular social, local, or other body of persons, or whether it is cogxtensive with an entire nation or race.

A knowledge of the distribution of any quality enables us to ascertain the Rank that each man holds among his fellows, in respect to that quality. This is a valuable piece of knowledge in this struggling and competitive world, where success is to the foremost, and failure to the hindmost, irrespective of absolute efficiency. A blurred vision would be above all price to an individual man in a nation of blind men, though it would hardly enable him to earn his bread elsewhere. When