20. Our examples throughout this chapter have been almost exclusively drawn from physical characteristics, whether of man or of inanimate things; but it need not be supposed that we are necessarily confined to such instances. Mr Galton, for instance, has proposed to extend the same principles of calculation to mental phenomena, with a view to their more accurate determination. The objects to be gained by so doing belong rather to the inferential part of our subject, and will be better indicated further on; but they do not involve any distinct principle. Like other attempts to apply the methods of science in the region of the mind, this proposal has met with some opposition; with very slight reason, as it seems to me. That our mental qualities, if they could be submitted to accurate measurement, would be found to follow the usual Law of Error, may be assumed without much hesitation. The known extent of the correlation of mental and bodily characteristics gives high probability to the supposition that what is proved to prevail, at any rate approximately, amongst most bodily elements which have been submitted to measurement, will prevail also amongst the mental elements. To what extent such measurements could be carried out practically, is another matter. It does not seem to me that it could be done with much success; partly because our mental qualities are so closely connected with, indeed so run into one another, that it is impossible to isolate them for purposes of comparison.[16] This is to some extent indeed a difficulty in bodily measurements, but it is far more so in those of the mind, where we can hardly get beyond what can be called a good guess. The doctrine, therefore, that mental qualities follow the now familiar law of arrangement can scarcely be grounded upon anything more than a strong analogy. Still this analogy is quite strong enough to justify us in accepting the doctrine and all the conclusions which follow from it, in so far as our estimates and measurements can be regarded as trustworthy. There seems therefore nothing unreasonable in the attempt to establish a system of natural classification of mankind by arranging them into a certain number of groups above and below the average, each group being intended to correspond to certain limits of excellency or deficiency.[17] All that is necessary for such a purpose is that the rate of departure from the mean should be tolerably constant under widely different circumstances: in this case throughout all the races of man. Of course if the law of divergence is the same as that which prevails in inanimate nature we have a still wider and more natural system of classification at hand, and one which ought to be familiar, more or less, to every one who has thus to estimate qualities.