Let us take, for example, the average duration of life. This, provided our data are sufficiently extensive, is known to be tolerably regular and uniform. This fact has been already indicated in the preceding sections, and is a truth indeed of which the popular mind has a tolerably clear grasp at the present day. But a very little consideration will show that there may be a superior as well as an inferior limit to the extent within which this uniformity can be observed; in other words whilst we may fall into error by taking too few instances we may also fail in our aim, though in a very different way and from quite different reasons, by taking too many. At the present time the average duration of life in England may be, say, forty years; but a century ago it was decidedly less; several centuries ago it was presumably very much less; whilst if we possessed statistics referring to a still earlier population of the country we should probably find that there has been since that time a still more marked improvement. What may be the future tendency no man can say for certain. It may be, and we hope that it will be the case, that owing to sanitary and other improvements, the duration of life will go on increasing steadily; it is at least conceivable, though doubtless incredible, that it should do so without limit. On the other hand, and with much more likelihood, this duration might gradually tend towards some fixed length. Or, again, it is perfectly possible that future generations might prefer a short and a merry life, and therefore reduce their average longevity. The duration of life cannot but depend to some extent upon the general tastes, habits and employments of the people, that is upon the ideal which they consciously or unconsciously set before them, and he would be a rash man who should undertake to predict what this ideal will be some centuries hence. All that it is here necessary however to indicate is, that this particular uniformity (as we have hitherto called it, in order to mark its relative character) has varied, and, under the influence of future eddies in opinion and practice, may vary still; and this to any extent, and with any degree of irregularity. To borrow a term from Astronomy, we find our uniformity subject to what might be called an irregular _secular_ variation.