by surrounding conditions. Whether there will come the success due to skill and perseverance; whether the circumstances will be such as to give these scope or not; whether accidents will thwart or favor efforts—are wholly unanswerable inquiries. That is to say, the facts we ordinarily class as biographical do not admit of prevision.
If, from quite special facts, we turn to facts of a somewhat less special kind which the life of this infant will present, we find, among those that are quasi-biographical, a certain degree of prevision possible. Though the unfolding of the faculties is variable within limits, going on here precociously and there with unusual slowness, yet there is such order in the unfolding as enables us to say that the child will not be a mathematician or a dramatist at three years old, will not be a psychologist by the time he is ten, will not reach extended political conceptions while his voice is still unbroken. Moreover, of the emotional nature we may make certain predictions of a kindred order. Whether he will marry or not, no one can say; but it is possible to say, if not with certainty still with much probability, that after a certain age an inclination to marry will arise; and though none can tell whether he will have children, yet that, if he has, some amount of the paternal feeling will be manifested, may be concluded as very likely.
But now, if looking at the entire assemblage of facts that will be presented during the life of this infant as it becomes mature, decays, and dies, we pass over the biographical and quasi-biographical, as admitting of either no prevision or but imperfect prevision; we find remaining classes of facts that may be asserted beforehand: some with a high degree of probability, and some with certainty—some with great definiteness and some within moderate limits of variation. I refer to the facts of growth, development, structure, and function.
Along with that love of personalities which exalts every thing inconstant in human life into a matter of interest, there goes the habit of regarding whatever is constant in human life as a matter of no interest; and so, when contemplating the future of the infant, there is a tacit ignoring of all the vital phenomena it will exhibit—phenomena that are alike knowable and important to be known. The anatomy and physiology of Man, comprehending under these names not only the structures and functions of the adult, but the progressive establishment of these structures and functions during individual evolution, form the subject-matter of what every one recognizes as a science. Though there is imperfect exactness in the generalized coexistences and sequences making up this science; though general truths respecting structures are met by occasional exceptions in the way of malformations; though anomalies of function also occur to negative absolute prediction; though there are considerable variations of the limits within which growth and structure may range, and considerable differences between the rates of functions and between the times at which functions are established; yet no one doubts that the biological phe-
