Swansea and Glamorgan Herald, and South Wales Free Press. — 1864-08-10 (Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales)

MAGAZINES FOR AUGI:6T. Tile CORNHILL MAGAZINE, not so intere,ting this month perhapt as usual, is still a very (hr number. The paper On the Moralty of tne Doctrine. of Averages is a rather curioui one. We mike the following extract fr.,m it:—  Statistics undoubted!y constitute a new instrument of scientific inquiry, and fir the brief modern period in which it has been applied, it has iilronly wirke I wonders By merely naming and nuns ortiir things, and entering them in classified columns, rn at unfir teen results have been arrived at, in addition to the finding out of the totals. Regiatrars-General have, indeed, be. come arithmetical diviiera of a new kind, arca-wizards of a statistical magic,' hich enables them, by simpl witch ing the rate at which events happen, to predict their recurrence, if not separately, at least in averages. M der, it has in this way been disc vered, is, in the gross occurrence, as much a matter of general law as are the fluctuations of heat; and not only are suicides per:ectly uni'Orm in th ir periodic number., but it can he catcal-1 tted in what proportion of instances the knife will ha preferred to the rope, or poison he employed in lieu of either: even in so aptiareetly irregular a matter its the non-directing of letters dropped into the post, the yearly numbers can be reckoned up beforehand $o fat so well. It is a strling veneralisation, and the intellect is tickled with the sense of a great triumph from it. Still, it has always appeared to Us that the doctrine is not exhausted in the Way it is generally expre,scd, and as it is given above. There is another side of ir only mast delicately hinted at, and the details of which ire never gone into; but it ope-s a wide field of inferential conclusions, yet mare startling thin the facts we have mentioned. If the statistics of mutate, for instance, show, and it is argued they do, a calculable average of hate upon the twelvemonth. then, in the same way, the marriage ',turn. must give an annual mean of I ye; how can we contend for constantly-recurring totals of assaults without supposing fixed yearly numbers of embr ices ? It is, indeed, a necessity of the argument, that there is a certain unvarying quantity of kindness in the world just as there is of oxygen. Well, if that be so, it would seem to follow that yon cannot possibly be philanthropic until Nom b ,dy else has done wish the sensation; there must be a rotation of experience, and we have a common ptoperty in feeling, sentiment, and passion, as we mutually breathe tho exchangeable air. The absence of paretital dtry in John is expl lined by the prepontler tile • of affectionate devotion in the ease of ; and i Lucy feels an ebb of her passionat, liking for Ferdinand, at the same moment the fi tw of love rises in the heart of Ellen for Ralph. Should the reader have become slightly uneasy by this time, pray let him (if the average will petmit) consider it as occasioned by the exigencies of the argument, arid not as ari-ing from any wish of ours. We are willing to admit it is not every breast that can endure the thought that the thrill of love it feels for Angelica is but the mean quotient of affection! Most I kely few human bei its would ever comfo,tably entertain the fancy that they elteri•heri their children by the Rule of Three, and alse chastised them arithmetically. Even (awful to say !) we are compelled, in visa' of this idea, to assert that holiness would have to he expressed in an algebrical formula, and men most he considered as lost eternally according to the calculus. Statistics, however, it must always be allowed, are not to be argued against; explain them if you can, but it is of no use ignoring them. At the same time, remembering that a planet in which goodness was cast up in the total from columns of averages, and wicked men; reckoned simply as so much in the hundred, would be a world unhumanised altogether, we at once avow the expectation that this doctrine of Mean numbers, as applied to events, will admit of a qualification somewhere if we can only hit the point. Ora