240 NATURAL INHERITANCE.
already large nation tends to receive larger accessions than a small one under similar circumstances, or when a capital employed in a business increases in proportion to its size. The other category is the influences of circumstances or of '1 milieux " as they are often called, such as a period of plenty in which a larger field or a larger business yields a greater excess over its mean yield than a smaller one. Most of the causes of those differences with which sociology are concerned, and which are not purely vital phenomena, such as those previously discussed, may be classified under one or other of these two categories, or under such- as are in principle almost the same. In short, sociological phenomena, like vital phenomena are, as a general rule, subject to the condition of the geometric mean.
The ordinary law of Frequency of Error, based on the arithmetic mean, corresponds, no doubt, sufficiently well with the observed facts of vital and social phenomena, to be very serviceable to statisticians, but it is far from satisfying their wants, and it may lead to absurdity when applied to wide deviations. It asserts that deviations in excess must be balanced by deviations of equal magnitude in deficiency ; therefore, if the former be greater than the mean itself, the latter must be less than zero, that is, must be negative. This is an impossibility in many cases, to which the law is nevertheless applied by statisticians with no small success, so long as they are content to confine its application within a narrow range of deviation. Thus, in respect of Stature, the law is very correct in respect to ordinary measurement, although it asserts that the existence of giants, whose height is more than double the mean height of their race, implies the possibility of the existence of dwarfs, whose stature is less than nothing at all.
It is therefore an object not only of theoretical interest but of practical use, to thoroughly investigate a Law of Error, based on the geometric mean, even though some of the expected results may perhaps be apparent at first sight. With this view t placed. the fore going remarks in Mr. Donald Macalister's hands, who contributed a memoir that will be found in the Proc. Royal Soc., No. 198, 1879, following my own. It should be referred to by such mathematicians as may read this book.
