iriUAy*\^ tf *' i ' Mi&gt;M&gt; ^ *** *-. -*** &gt;&gt; .-&lt;w&lt;ltt.- . -***. *.*..*-- .^-.-' ThdTtfionomania of persecution, or more precisely of misinter- pretation, is there to prove that .common sense may become impaired while the reasoning faculties remain intact. The gravity of this malady, its obstinate resistance to all treatment, the fact that the early symptoms are generally to be detected in the remotest past of the sufferer, everything would seem to indicate that we have here a profound congenital psychic insufficiency, and one that is clearly defined. Common sense, then, or as it might be called, social sense, is innate in normal man, like the faculty of speech, which also implies the existence of society and which is none the less prefigured in individual organisms. It is indeed hard to admit that nature, which placed social life at the extremities of the two great lines of evolution ending respectively 4i&gt; the hymenopterae and in man, while regulating beforehand the detailed activity of every ant in the ant-hill, should have neglected to give man any guiding principles, however general, for the co-ordination of his conduct with that of his fellow-men. Human societies doubtless differ from insect societies in that they leave y un- determined the actions of the individual, and indeed those of the collectivity also. But this is equivalent to saying that it is the actions which are preordained in the insect's nature, and that in man it is the faculty alone. The faculty is none the