lood or type is simply the same sort of general view by which men do
marry for love or liking. There is no reason to suppose that Dr. Karl
Pearson is any better judge of a bridegroom than the bridegroom is of
a bride.

An objection may be anticipated here, but it is very easily answered.
It may be said that we do, in fact, call in medical specialists to
settle whether a man is mad; and that these specialists go by
technical and even secret tests that cannot be known to the mass of
men. It is obvious that this is true; it is equally obvious that it
does not affect our argument. When we ask the doctor whether our
grandfather is going mad, we still mean mad by our own common human
definition. We mean, is he going to be a certain sort of person whom
all men recognise when once he exists. That certain specialists can
detect the approach of him, before he exists, does not alter the fact
that it is of the practical and popular madman that we are talking,
and of him alone. The doctor merely sees a certain fact potentially in
the future, while we, with less information, can only see it in the
present; but his fact is our fact and everybody's fact, or we should
not bother about it at all. Here is no question of the doctor bringing
an entirely new sort of person under coercion, as in the
Feeble-Minded Bill. The doctor can say, "Tobacco is death to you,"
because the dislike of death can be taken for granted, being a highly
democratic institution; and it is the same with the dislike of the
indubitable exception called madness. The doctor can say, "Jones has
that twitch in the nerves, and he may burn down the house." But it is
not the medical detail we fear, but the moral upshot. We should say,
"Let him twitch, as long as he doesn't burn down the house." The
doctor may say, "He has that look in the eyes, and he may take the
hatchet and brain you all." But we do not object to the look in the
eyes as such; we object to consequences which, once come, we should
all call insane if there were no doctors in the world. We should say,
"Let him look how he likes; as long as he does not look for the
hatchet."

Now, that specialists are valuable for this particular and practical
purpose, of predicting the approach of enormous and admitted human
calamities, nobody but a fool would deny. But that does not bring us
one inch nearer to allowing them the right to define what is a
calamity; or to call things calamities which common sense does not
ca