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letting my pocket be picked, probably to a still greater extent, by your agencies. Nay, when you have, as you profess, done me justice by giving me a verdict and condemning the scamp to pay costs, I find I may still be ruined by having to pay my own costs if he has no means. To make your system con gruous throughout, it only needs that, when I call him to save me from the foot-pad, your policeman should deal me still heavier blows than the foot-pad did, and empty my purse of what remains in it.''
" Why so impatient? Are we not going to reform it all? Was it not last session proposed to make a Court of Appellate Jurisdiction by appointing four peers with salaries of £7000 each? And has there not been brought forward this ses sion, even quite early, a Government-measure for prevent ing the conflict of Law and Equity, and for facilitating ap peals? " " Thanks in advance for the improvement. When I have failed to ruin myself by a first suit, it wrill be a consolation to think that I can complete my ruin by a second with less delay than heretofore. Meanwhile, instead of facilitating appeals, which you seem to tbink of primary importance, I should be obliged if you would diminish the occasion for appeals, by making your laws such as it is possible for me to know, or at any rate, such as it is possible for your judges to know; and I should be further obliged if you would give me easier reme dies against aggressions, instead of remedies so costly, so de ceptive, so dangerous, that I prefer suffering the aggressions in silence. Daily I experience the futility of your system. I start on a journey expecting that in conformity with the ad vertised times, I shall just be able to reach a certain distant town before night; but the train being an hour late at one of the junctions, I am defeated — am put to the cost of a night spent on the way and lose half the next day. I paid for a first-class seat that I might have space, comfort, and unobjec tionable fellow-travellers; but, stopping at a town where a fair is going on, the guard, on the plea that the third-class carriages are full, thrusts into the compartment more persons than there are places for, who, both by behaviour and odour, are repulsive. Thus in two ways I am defrauded. For part of the fraud I have no remedy; and for the rest my remedy, THE POLITICAL BIAS. 259 doubtful at best, is practically unavailable. Is the reply that against the alleged breach of contract as to time, the com pany has guarded itself, or professes to have guarded itself, by disclaiming responsibility? The allowing such a dis claimer is one of your countless negligences. You do not allow me to plead irresponsibility if I give the company bad money, or if, having bought a ticket for the second class, I travel in the first. On my side you regard the contract as quite definite; but on the other side you practically allow the contract to remain undefined. And now see the general effects of your carelessness. Scarcely any trains keep their times; and the result of chronic unpunctuality is a multiplication of accidents with increased loss of life."
" How about laissez-faire? I thought your notion was that the less Government meddled with these things the better; and now you complain that the law does not secure your comfort in a railway-carriage and see that you are de livered at your journey's end in due time. I suppose you ap proved of the proposal made in the House last session, that companies should be compelled to give foot-warmers to sec ond-class passengers."
" Really you amaze me. I should have thought that not even ordinary intelligence, much less select legislative intelli gence, would have fallen into such a confusion. I am not blaming you for failing to secure me comfort or punctuality. I am blaming you for failing to enforce contracts. Just as strongly as I protest against your neglect in letting a com pany take my money and then not give me all I paid for; so strongly should I protest did you dictate how much conven ience should be given me for so much money. Surely I need not remind you that your civil law in general proceeds on the principle that the goodness or badness of a bargain is the affair of those who make it, not your affair; but that it is your duty to enforce the bargain when made. Only in pro portion as this is done can men's lives in society be main tained. The condition to all life, human or other, is that effort put forth shall bring the means of repairing the parts wasted by effort — shall bring, too, more or less of surplus. A creature that continuously expends energy without return in nutriment dies; and a creature is indirectly killed by any- 260 THE STUDY OP SOCIOLOGY.
thing which, after energies have been expended, habitually intercepts the return. This holds of associated human beings as of all other beings. In a society, most citizens do not ob tain sustenance directly by the powers they exert, but do it indirectly: each gives the produce of his powers exerted in his special way, in exchange for the produce of other men's powers exerted in other ways. The condition under which only this obtaining of sustenance to replace the matter wasted by effort, can be carried on in society, is fulfilment of con tract. Non-fulfilment of contract is letting energy be ex pended in expectation of a return, and then withholding the return. Maintenance of contract, therefore, is maintenance of the fundamental principle of all life, under the form given to it by social arrangements. I blame you because you do not maintain this fundamental principle; and, as a consequence, allow life to be impeded and sacrificed in countless indirect ways. You are, I admit, solicitous about my life as endan gered by my own acts. Though you very inadequately guard me against injuries from others, you seem particularly anx ious that I shall not injure myself. Emulating Sir Peter Laurie, who made himself famous by threatening to 'put down suicide,' you do what you can to prevent me from risk ing my limbs. Your great care of me is shown, for instance, by enforcing a bye-law which forbids me to leave a railway- train in motion; and if I jump out, I find that whether I hurt myself or not, you decide to hurt me — by a fine.11 Not only do you thus punish me when I run the risk of punishing my self; but your amiable anxiety for my welfare shows itself in taking money out of my pocket to provide me with various conveniences— baths and wash-houses, for example, and free access to books. Out of my pocket, did I say? Not always. Sometimes out of the pockets of those least able to afford it; as when, from poor authors who lose by their works, you de mand gratis copies for your public libraries, that I and others may read them for nothing — Dives robbing Lazarus that he may give alms to the well-clad! But these many things you offer are things I do not ask; and you will not effectually provide the one thing I do ask. I do not want you to ascer tain for me the nature of the Sun's corona, or to find a north west passage, or to explore the bottom of the sea; but I do THE POLITICAL BIAS. 261 want you to insure me against aggression, by making the punishment of aggressors, civil as well as criminal, swift, cer tain, and not ruinous to complainants. Instead of doing this, you persist in doing other things. Instead of securing me the bread due to my efforts, you give me a stone — a sculptured block from Ephesus. I am quite content to enjoy only what I get by my own exertions, and to have only that information and those pleasures for which I pay. I am quite content to suffer the evils brought on me by my own defects — believing, indeed, that for me and for all there is no other wholesome discipline. But you fail to do what is needed. You are careless about guaranteeing me the unhindered enjoyment of the benefits my efforts have purchased; and you insist on giving me, at other people's expense, benefits my efforts have not purchased, and on saving me from penalties I de serve."
u You are unreasonable. We are doing our best with the enormous mass of business brought before us: sitting on com mittees, reading evidence and reports, debating till one or two in the morning. Session after session we work hard at all kinds of measures for the public welfare — devising plans for educating the people; enacting better arrangements for the health of towns; making inquiries into the impurity of rivers; deliberating on plans to diminish drunkenness; prescribing modes of building houses that they may not fall; deputing commissioners to facilitate emigration; and so on. You can go to no place that does not show signs of our activity. Here are public gardens formed by our local lieutenants, the mu nicipal bodies; here are lighthouses we have put up to prevent shipwrecks. Everywhere we have appointed inspectors to see that salubrity is maintained; everywhere there are vaccinators to see that due precautions against small-pox are observed; and if, happening to be in a district where our arrangements are in force, your desires are not well controlled, we do our best to insure you a healthy "- " Yes, I know what you would say. It is all of a piece with the rest of your policy. While you fail to protect me against others, you insist on protecting me against myself. And your failure to do the essential thing, results from the absorption of your time in doing non-essential things. Do 262 TEE STUDY OP SOCIOLOGY.
you think that your beneficences make up for the injustices you let me bear? I do not want these sops and gratuities; but I do want security against trespasses, direct and indirect — security that is real and not nominal. See the predica ment in which I am placed. You forbid me (quite rightly I admit) to administer justice on my own behalf; and you profess to administer it for me. I may not take summary measures to resist encroachment, to reclaim my own, or to seize that which I bargained to have for my services: you tell me that I must demand your aid to enforce my claim. But demanding your aid commonly brings such frightful evils that I prefer to bear the wrong done me. So that, practically, having forbidden me to defend myself, you fail to defend me. By this my life is vitiated, along with the lives of citizens in general. All transactions are impeded; time and labour are lost; the prices of commodities are raised. Honest men are defrauded, while rogues thrive. Debtors outwit their cred itors; bankrupts make purses by their failures and recom mence on larger scales; and financial frauds that ruin their thousands go unpunished."
Thus far our impatient friend. And now see how unten able is his position. He actually supposes that it is possible to get government conducted on rational principles! His tacit assumption is that out of a community morally imper fect and intellectually imperfect, there may in some wTay be had legislative regulation that is not proportionately imper fect! He is under a delusion. Not by any kind of govern ment, established after any method, can the thing be done. A good and wise autocrat cannot be chosen or otherwise ob tained by a people not good and wise. Goodness and wisdom will not characterize the successive families of an oligarchy, arising out of a bad and foolish people, any more than they will characterize a line of kings. Nor wTill any system of rep resentation, limited or universal, direct or indirect, do more than represent the average nature of citizens. To dissipate his notion that truly-rational government can be provided for themselves by a people not truly rational, he needs but to read election-speeches and observe how votes are gained by clap-trap appeals to senseless prejudices and by fostering hopes of impossible benefits, while votes are lost by candid THE POLITICAL BIAS. 263 statements of stern truths and endeavours to dissipate ground less expectations. Let him watch the process, and he will see that when the fermenting mass of political passions and beliefs is put into the electoral still, there distils over not the wisdom alone but the folly also — sometimes in the larger proportion. Nay, if he watches closely, he may suspect that not only is the corporate conscience lower than the average individual conscience, but the corporate intelligence too. The minority of the wise in a constituency is liable to be wholly submerged by the majority of the foolish: often foolishness alone gets represented. In the representative assembly, again, the many mediocrities practically rule the few superiorities: the superior are obliged to express those views only which the rest can understand, and must keep to themselves their best and farthest-reaching thoughts as thoughts that would have no weight. He needs but remember that abstract principles are pooh-poohed in the House of Commons, to see at once that while the unwisdom expresses itself abundantly, what of highest wisdom there may be has to keep silence. And if he asks an illustration of the way in which the intelligence of the body of members brings out a result lower than would the intelligence of the average member, he may see one in those muddlings of provisions and confusions of language in Acts of Parliament, which have lately been calling forth pro tests from the judges.
Thus the assumption that it is possible for a nation to get, in the shape of law, something like embodied reason, when it is not itself pervaded by a correlative reasonableness, is im probable a priori and disproved a posteriori. The belief that truly-good legislation and administration can go along with a humanity not truly good, is a chronic delusion. While our own form of government, giving means for expressing and enforcing claims, is the best form yet evolved for pre venting aggressions of class upon class, and of individuals on one another; yet it is hopeless to expect from it, any more than from other forms of government, a capacity and a recti tude greater than that of the society out of which it grows. And criticisms like the foregoing, which imply that its short comings can be set right by expostulating with existing gov erning agents or by appointing others, imply that subtlest 264: THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
kind of political bias which is apt to remain when the stronger kinds have been got rid of.
Second only to the class-bias, we may say that the political bias most seriously distorts sociological conceptions. That this is so with the bias of political party, everyone sees in some measure, though not in full measure. It is manifest to the Radical that the prejudice of the Tory blinds him to a present evil or to a future good. It is manifest to the Tory that the Radical does not see the benefit there is in that which he wishes to destroy, and fails to recognize the mischiefs likely to be done by the institution he would establish. But neither imagines that the other is no less needful than himself. The Radical, with his impracticable ideal, is unaware that his en thusiasm will serve only to advance things a little, but not at all as he expects; and he will not admit that the obstructive- iiess of the Tory is a wholesome check. The Tory, doggedly resisting, cannot perceive that the established order is but relatively good, and that his defence of it is simply a means of preventing premature change; while he fails to recognize in the bitter antagonism and sanguine hopes of the Radical, the agencies without which there could be no progress. Thus neither fully understands his own function or the function of his opponent; and by as much as he falls short of understand ing it, he is disabled from understanding social phenomena.
The more general kinds of political bias distort men's socio logical conceptions in other ways, but quite as seriously. There is this perennial delusion, common to Radical and Tory, that legislation is omnipotent, and that things will get done because laws are passed to do them; there is this confidence in one or other form of government, due to the belief that a government once established will retain its form and work as was intended; there is this hope that by some means the collective wisdom can be separated from the collective folly, and set over it in such way as to guide things aright; — all of them implying that general political bias which inevitably coexists with sub ordination to political agencies. The effect on sociological speculation is to maintain the conception of a society as some thing manufactured by statesmen, and to turn the mind from the phenomena of social evolution. While the regulating THE POLITICAL BIAS. 265 agency occupies the thoughts, scarcely any attention is given to those astounding processes and results due to the energies regulated. The genesis of the vast producing, exchanging, and distributing agencies, which has gone on spontaneously, often hindered, and at best only restrained, by governments, is passed over with unobservant eyes. And thus, by continu ally contemplating the power which keeps in order, and con templating rarely, if at all, the activities kept in order, there is produced an extremely one-sided theory of Society.
Clearly, it is with this kind of bias as it is with the kinds of bias previously considered — the degree of it bears a certain necessary relation to the temporary phase of progress. It can diminish only as fast as Society advances. A well-balanced social self-consciousness, like a well-balanced individual self- consciousness, is the accompaniment of a high evolution.
CHAPTER XII.
THE THEOLOGICAL BIAS.
" WHAT a log for hell-fire! " exclaimed a Wahhabee, on seeing a corpulent Hindu. This illustration, startling by its strength of expression, which Mr. Gifford Palgrave gives * of the belief possessing these Mahommedan fanatics, prepares us for their general mode of thinking about God and man. Here is a sample of it: — '" When 'Abd-el-Lateef, a Wahhabee, was preaching one day to the people of Iliad, he recounted the tradition according to which Mahomet declared that his followers should divide into seventy-three sects, and that seventy-two were destined to hell-fire, and one only to Paradise. ' And what, 0 messenger of God, are the signs of that happy sect to which is ensured the exclusive possession of Paradise? ' Whereto Ma homet had replied, ' It is those who shall be in all conformable to my self and to my companions.' ' And that,' added 'Abd-el-Lateef, low ering his voice to the deep tone of conviction, ' that, by the mercy of God, are we, the people of Riad.' " 2 For present purposes we are not so much concerned to ob serve the parallelism between this conception and the concep tions that have been, and are, current among sects of Chris tians, as to observe the effects produced by such conceptions on men's views of those who have alien beliefs, and on their views of alien societies. What extreme misinterpretations of social facts result from the theological bias, may be seen still better in a case even more remarkable.
By Turner, by Erskiiie, and by the members of the United States' Exploring Expedition, the characters of the Samoans are, as compared with the characters of the uncivilized gener ally, very favourably described. Though, in common with savages at large, they are said to be " indolent, covetous, fickle, THE THEOLOGICAL BIAS. 267 and deceitful," yet they are also said to be " kind, good-hu moured,...desirous of pleasing1, and very hospitable. Both sexes show great regard and love for their children; " and age is much respected. " A man cannot bear to be called stingy or disobliging." The women "are remarkably domestic and virtuous." Infanticide after birth is unknown in Samoa. " The treatment of the sick was...invariably humane and all that could be expected." Observe, now, what is said of their cannibal neighbours, the Fijians. They are indiffer ent to human life; they live in perpetual dread of one an other; and, according to Jackson, treachery is considered by them an accomplishment. " Shedding of blood is to him [the Fijian] no crime but a glory." They kill the decrepit, maimed, and sick. While, on the one hand, infanticide covers nearer two-thirds than one-half of the births, 011 the other hand, " one of the first lessons taught the infant is to strike its mother: " anger and revenge are fostered. Inferiors are killed for neg lecting proper salutes; slaves are buried alive with the posts on which a king's house stands; arid ten or more men are slaughtered on the decks of a newly-launched canoe, to bap tize it with their blood. A chief's wives, courtiers, and aides- de-camp, are strangled at his death — being thereby honoured. Cannibalism is so rampant that a chief, praising his deceased son, ended his eulogy by saying that he would " kill his own wives if they offended him, and eat them afterwards." Vic tims were sometimes roasted alive before being devoured; and Tanoa, one of their chiefs, cut off a cousin's arm, drank the blood, cooked the arm and ate it in presence of the owner, who was then cut to pieces. Their gods, described as having like characters, commit like acts. They live on the souls of those who are devoured by men, having first " roasted " them (the "souls" being simply material duplicates). They "are proud and revengeful, and make war, and kill and eat each other; " and among the names of honour given to them are " the adul terer," "the woman-stealer," "the brain-eater," "the mur derer." Such being the account of the Samoans, and such the account of the Fijians, let us ask what the Fijians think of the Samoans. " The Feegeeans looked upon the Samoans with horror, because they had no religion, no belief in any such deities [as the Feegeean], nor any of the sanguinary rites 268 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
which prevailed in other islands; " — a statement quite in har mony with that made by Jackson, who, having- behaved dis respectfully to one of their gods, was angrily called by them " the white infidel."
Any one may read while running the lesson conveyed; and, without stopping to consider much, may see its applica tion to the beliefs and sentiments of civilized races. The fero cious Fijian doubtless thinks that to devour a human victim in the name of one of his cannibal gods, is a meritorious act; while he thinks that his Samoaii neighbour, who makes no sacrifice to these cannibal gods, but is just and kind to his fel lows, thereby shows that meanness goes along with his shock ing irreligioii. Construing the facts in this way, the Fijian can form no rational conception of Samoan society. With vices and virtues interchanged in conformity with his creed, the benefits of certain social arrangements, if he thinks about them at all, must seem evils and the evils benefits.
Speaking generally, then, each system of dogmatic the ology, with the sentiments that gather round it, becomes an impediment in the way of Social Science. The sympathies drawn out towards one creed and the correlative antipathies aroused by other creeds, distort the interpretations of all the associated facts. On these institutions and their results the eyes are turned with a readiness to observe everything that is good, and on those with a readiness to observe everything that is bad. Let us glance at some of the consequent perversions of opinion.
Already we have seen, by implication, that the theological element of a creed, subordinating the ethical element com pletely in early stages of civilization and very considerably in later stages, maintains a standard of right and wrong, rela tively good perhaps, but perhaps absolutely bad — good, that is, as measured by the requirements of the place and time, bad as measured by the requirements of an ideal society. And sanctifying, as an associated theology thus does, false concep tions of right and wrong, it falsifies the measures by which the effects of institutions are to be estimated. Obviously, the sociological conclusions must be vitiated if beneficial and det rimental effects are not respectively recognized as such. An THE THEOLOGICAL BIAS. 269 illustration enforcing this is worth giving. Here is Mr. Pal- grave's account of Wahhabee morality, as disclosed in answers to his questions: — " ' The first of the great sins is the giving divine honours to a creature.'
" ' Of course,' I replied, ' the enormity of such a sin is beyond all doubt. But if this be the first, there must be a second; what is it? ' " ' Drinking the shameful,' in English, ' smoking tobacco,' was the unhesitating answer.
" ' And murder, and adultery, and false witness?' I suggested.
"'God is merciful and forgiving,' rejoined my friend; 'that is, these are merely little sins.'
" ' Hence two sins alone are great, polytheism and smoking,' I con tinued, though hai'dly able to keep countenance any longer. And 'Abd-el-Kareem, with the. most serious asseveration, replied that such was really the case." 4 Clearly a creed which makes smoking one of the blackest crimes, and has only mild reprobation for the worst acts com mitted by man against man, negatives anything like Social Science. Deeds and habits and laws not being judged by the degrees in which they conduce to temporal welfare, the ideas of better and worse, as applying to social arrangements, cannot exist, and such notions as progress and retrogression are ex cluded. But that which holds so conspicuously in this case holds more or less in all cases. At the present time as in past times, and in our own society as in other societies, public acts are judged by two tests — the test of supposed divine appro bation, and the test of conduciveness to human happiness. Though, as civilization advances, there grows up the belief that the second test is equivalent to the first — though, conse quently, conduciveness to human happiness comes to be more directly considered; yet the test of supposed divine approba tion, as inferred from the particular creed held, continues to be very generally used. The wrongness of conduct is con ceived as consisting in the implied disobedience to the sup posed commands, and not as consisting in its intrinsic character as causing suffering to others or to self. Inevitably the effect on sociological thinking is, that institutions and actions are judged more by their apparent congruity or incongruity with the established cult, than by their tendencies to further or to hinder well-being.
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