13. So much then for the attempt to prove the prevalence, in all cases, of this particular law of divergence. The next point in Quetelet's treatment of the subject which deserves attention as erroneous or confusing, is the doctrine maintained by him and others as to the existence of what he terms a _type_ in the groups of things in question. This is a not unnatural consequence from some of the data and conclusions of the last few paragraphs. Refer back to two of the three classes of things already mentioned in §4. If it really were the case that in arranging in order a series of incorrect observations or attempts of our own, and a collection of natural objects belonging to some one and the same species or class, we found that the law of their divergence was in each case identical in the long run, we should be naturally disposed to apply the same expression 'Law of Error' to both instances alike, though in strictness it could only be appropriate to the former. When we perform an operation ourselves with a clear consciousness of what we are aiming at, we may quite correctly speak of every deviation from this as being an error; but when Nature presents us with a group of objects of any kind, it is using a rather bold metaphor to speak in this case also of a law of error, as if she had been aiming at something all the time, and had like the rest of us missed her mark more or less in almost every instance.[13] Suppose we make a long succession of attempts to measure accurately the precise height of a man, we should from one cause or another seldom or never succeed in doing so with absolute accuracy. But we have no right to assume that these imperfect measurements of ours would be found so to deviate according to one particular law of error as to present the precise counterpart of a series of actual heights of _different_ men, supposing that these latter were assigned with absolute precision. What might be the actual law of error in a series of direct measurements of any given magnitude could hardly be asserted beforehand, and probably the attempt to determine it by experience has not been made sufficiently often to enable us to ascertain it; but upon general grounds it seems by no means certain that it would follow the so-called exponential law. Be this however as it may, it is rather a licence of language to talk as if nature had been at work in the same way as one of us; aiming (ineffectually for the most part) at a given result, that is at producing a man endowed with a certain stature, proportions, and so on, who might therefore be regarded as the typical man.