t if a man in the
same cloak and mask is found at midnight putting a little soda-water
in the soup, what can we say? Our charge necessarily becomes a more
general one. We can only observe, with a moderation almost amounting
to weakness, "You seem to be the sort of person who will do this sort
of thing." And then we can lock him up. The principle of the
indeterminate sentence is the creation of the indeterminate mind. It
does apply to the incomprehensible creature, the lunatic. And it
applies to nobody else.

The second thing to be noted is this: that it is only by the unanimity
of sane men that we can condemn this man as utterly separate. If he
says a tree is a lamp-post he is mad; but only because all other men
say it is a tree. If some men thought it was a tree with a lamp on it,
and others thought it was a lamp-post wreathed with branches and
vegetation, then it would be a matter of opinion and degree; and he
would not be mad, but merely extreme. Certainly he would not be mad if
nobody but a botanist could see it was a tree. Certainly his enemies
might be madder than he, if nobody but a lamplighter could see it was
not a lamp-post. And similarly a man is not imbecile if only a
Eugenist thinks so. The question then raised would not be his sanity,
but the sanity of one botanist or one lamplighter or one Eugenist.
That which can condemn the abnormally foolish is not the abnormally
clever, which is obviously a matter in dispute. That which can condemn
the abnormally foolish is the normally foolish. It is when he begins
to say and do things that even stupid people do not say or do, that we
have a right to treat him as the exception and not the rule. It is
only because we none of us profess to be anything more than man that
we have authority to treat him as something less.

Now the first principle behind Eugenics becomes plain enough. It is
the proposal that somebody or something should criticise men with the
same superiority with which men criticise madmen. It might exercise
this right with great moderation; but I am not here talking about the
exercise, but about the right. Its _claim_ certainly is to bring all
human life under the Lunacy Laws.

Now this is the first weakness in the case of the Eugenists: that they
cannot define who is to control whom; they cannot say by what
authority they do these things. They cannot see the exception is
different from the rule--even when it is misrule, even when it is an
unruly rul