Already the difficulties of avoiding a collision in a crowd are enough
to tax the sagacity of even a well-educated Square; but if no one
could calculate the Regularity of a single figure in the company,
all would be chaos and confusion, and the slightest panic
would cause serious injuries, or -- if there happened to be
any Women or Soldiers present -- perhaps considerable loss of life.
Expediency therefore concurs with Nature in stamping the seal
of its approval upon Regularity of conformation: nor has the Law
been backward in seconding their efforts. "Irregularity of Figure"
means with us the same as, or more than, a combination of
moral obliquity and criminality with you, and is treated accordingly.
There are not wanting, it is true, some promulgators of paradoxes
who maintain that there is no necessary connection between
geometrical and moral Irregularity. "The Irregular", they say,
"is from his birth scouted by his own parents, derided by
his brothers and sisters, neglected by the domestics,
scorned and suspected by society, and excluded from all posts
of responsibility, trust, and useful activity. His every movement
is jealously watched by the police till he comes of age
and presents himself for inspection; then he is either destroyed,
if he is found to exceed the fixed margin of deviation,
or else immured in a Government Office as a clerk of
the seventh class; prevented from marriage; forced to drudge
at an uninteresting occupation for a miserable stipend;
obliged to live and board at the office, and to take even his vacation
under close supervision; what wonder that human nature,
even in the best and purest, is embittered and perverted
by such surroundings!"
All this very plausible reasoning does not convince me, as it has not
convinced the wisest of our Statesmen, that our ancestors erred
in laying it down as an axiom of policy that the toleration
of Irregularity is incompatible with the safety of the State.
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