16 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
only a cessation from work, which the creed interdicts, but also a cessation from amusement, which it does not interdict; and for an explanation you must go back to successive waves of ascetic fanaticism in generations long dead. And what thus holds of religious ideas and usages, holds of all others, political and social. Even the industrial activities are often permanently turned out of their normal directions by social states that passed away many ages ago:.witness what has hap pened throughout the East, or in Italy, where towns and vil lages are still perched on hills and eminences chosen for de fensive purposes in turbulent times, and where the lives of the inhabitants are now made laborious by having daily to carry themselves and all the necessaries of life from a low level to a high level.
The extreme complexity of social actions, and the tran scendent difficulty which hence arises of counting on special results, will be still better seen if we enumerate the factors which determine one simple phenomenon, as the price of a commodity, — say, cotton. A manufacturer of calicoes has to decide whether he will increase his stock of raw material at its current price. Before doing this, he must ascertain, as well as he can, the following data: — Whether the stocks of calico in the hands of manufacturers and wholesalers at home, are large or small; whether by recent prices retailers have been led to lay in stocks or not; whether the colonial and foreign markets are glutted or otherwise; and what is now, and is likely to be, the production of calico by foreign manufacturers. Having formed some idea of the probable demand for calico, he has to ask what other manufacturers have done, and are doing, as buyers of cotton — whether they have been waiting for the price to fall, or have been buying in anticipation of a rise. From cotton-brokers' circulars he has to judge what is the state of speculation at Liverpool — whether the stocks there are large or small, and whether many or few cargoes >are on their way. The stocks and prices at New Orleans, and at other cotton-ports throughout the world, have also to be taken^note of; and then there come questions respecting forthcoming crops in the Southern States, in India, in Egypt, and else where. Here are sufficiently-numerous factors, but these are by no means all. The consumption of calico, and therefore OUR NEED OF IT. 17 the consumption of cotton, and therefore the price of cotton, depends in part on the supplies and prices of other textile fab rics. If, as happened during the American Civil War, calico rises in price because its raw material becomes scarce, linen comes into more general use, and so a further rise in price is checked. Woollen fabrics, also, may to some extent compete. And, besides the competition caused by relative prices, there is the competition caused by fashion, which may or may not pres ently change. Surely the factors are now all enumerated? By no means. There is the estimation of mercantile opinion. The views of buyers and sellers respecting future prices, never more than approximations to the truth, often diverge from it very widely. Waves of opinion, now in excess now in defect of the fact, rise and fall daily, and larger ones weekly and monthly, tending, every now and then, to run into mania or panic; for it is among men of business as among other men, that they stand hesitating until some one sets the example, and then rush all one way, like a flock of sheep after a leader. These characteristics in human nature, leading to these perturbations, the far-seeing buyer takes into account — judging how far existing influences have made opinion deviate from the truth, and how far im pending influences are likely to do it. Nor has he got to the end of the matter even when he has considered all these things. He has still to ask what are the general mercantile conditions of the country, and what the imm_ediate future of the money market will be; since the course of speculation in every commodity must be affected by the rate of discount. See, then, the enormous complication of causes which deter mine so simple a thing as the rise or fall of a farthing per pound in cotton some months hence!
If the genesis of social phenomena is so involved in cases like this, where the effect produced has no concrete persistence but very soon dissipates, judge what it must be where there is produced something which continues thereafter to be an in creasing agency, capable of self -propagation. Not only has a society as a whole a power of growth and development, but each institution set up in it has the like — draws to itself units of the society and nutriment for them, and tends ever to mul tiply and ramify. Indeed, the instinct of self-preservation in each institution soon becomes dominant over everything else; 3 18 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
and maintains it when it performs some quite other function than that intended, or no function at all. See, for instance, what has come of the " Society of Jesus," Loyola set up; or see what grew out of the company of traders who got a foot ing on the coast of Hiiidostaii.
To such considerations as these, set down to show the in consistency of those who think that prevision of social phenom ena is possible without much study, though much study is needed for prevision of other phenomena, it will doubtless be replied that time does not allow of systematic inquiry. From the scientific, as from the unscientific, there w;ill come the plea that, in his capacity of citizen, each man has to act — must vote, and must decide before he votes — must conclude to the best of his ability on such information as he has.
In this plea there is some truth, mingled with a good deal more that looks like truth. It is a product of that " must-do- something1' impulse which is the origin of much mischief, individual and social. An amiable anxiety to undo or neutral ize an evil, often prompts to rash courses, as you may see in the hurry with which one who has fallen is snatched up by those at hand; just as though there were danger in letting him lie, which there is not, and no danger in incautiously raising him, which there is. Always you find among people in proportion as they are ignorant, a belief in specifics, and a great confidence in pressing the adoption of them. Has some one a pain in the side, or in the chest, or in the bowels? Then, before any careful inquiry as to its probable cause, there comes an urgent recommendation of a never-failing remedy, joined probably with the remark that if it does no good it can do no harm. There still prevails in the average mind a large amount of the fetishistic conception clearly shown by a butler to some friends of mine, who, having been found to drain the half- emptied medicine-bottles, explained that he thought it a pity good physic should be wasted, and that wTIiat benefited his master would benefit him. But as fast as crude conceptions of diseases and remedial measures grow up into Pathology and Therapeutics, we find increasing caution, along with increas ing proof that evil is often done instead of good. This con trast is traceable not only as we pass from popular ignorance OUR NEED OF IT. 19 to professional knowledge, but as we pass from the smaller professional knowledge of early times to the greater pro fessional knowledge of our own. The question with the mod ern physician is not as with the ancient— shall the treatment be blood-letting? shall cathartics, or shall diaphoretics be given? or shall mercurials be administered? But there rises the previous question — shall there be any treatment beyond a wholesome regimen? And even among existing physicians it happens that in proportion as the judgment is most culti vated, there is the least yielding to the " must-do-something " impulse.
Is it not possible, then — is it not even probable, that this supposed necessity for immediate action, which is put in as an excuse for drawing quick conclusions from few data, is the con comitant of deficient knowledge? Is it not probable that as in Biology so in Sociology, the accumulation of more facts, the more critical comparison of them, and the drawing of con clusions on scientific methods, will be accompanied by in creasing doubt about the benefits to be secured, and increasing fear of the mischiefs which may be worked? Is it not prob able that what in the individual organism is improperly, though conveniently, called the vis medicatrix natures, may be found to have its analogue in the social organism? and will there not very likely come along with the recognition of this, the consciousness that in both cases the one thing need ful is to maintain the conditions under which the natural actions have fair play? Such a consciousness, to be antici pated from increased knowledge, will diminish the force of this plea for prompt decision after little inquiry; since it will check this tendency to think of a remedial measure as one that may do good and cannot do harm. Nay more, the study of Sociology, scientifically carried on by tracing back proxi mate causes to remote ones, and tracing down primary effects to secondary and tertiary effects which multiply as they dif fuse, will dissipate the current illusion that social evils admit of radical cures. Given an average defect of nature among the units of a society, and no skilful manipulation of them will prevent that defect from producing its equivalent of bad results. It is possible to change the form of these bad results; it is possible to change the places at which they are 20 THE STUDY OP SOCIOLOGY.
manifested; but it is not possible to get rid of them. The belief that faulty character can so organize itself socially, as to get out of itself a conduct which is not proportionately faulty, is an utterly-baseless belief. You may alter the incidence of the mischief, but the amount of it must inevitably be borne somewhere. Very generally it is simply thrust out of one form into another; as when, in Austria, improvident marriages being prevented, there come more numerous illegitimate chil dren; or as when, to mitigate the misery of foundlings, hos pitals are provided for them, and there is an increase in the number of infants abandoned; or as when, to insure the sta bility of houses, a Building Act prescribes a structure which, making small houses unremunerative, prevents due multipli cation of them, and so causes overcrowding; or as when a Lodging-House Act forbids this overcrowding, and vagrants have to sleep under the Adelphi-arches, or in the Parks, or even, for warmth's sake, 011 the dung-heaps in mews. Where the evil does not, as in cases like these, reappear in another place or form, it is necessarily felt in the shape of a diffused privation. For suppose that by some official instrumentality you actually suppress an evil, instead of thrusting it from one spot into another — suppose you thus successfully deal with a number of such evils by a number of such instrumentalities; do you think these evils have disappeared absolutely? To see that they have not, you have but to ask — Whence comes the official apparatus? What defrays the cost of working it? Who supplies the necessaries of life to its members through all their gradations of rank? There is no other source but the labour of peasants and artisans. When, as in France, the ad ministrative agencies occupy some 600,000 men, who are taken from industrial pursuits, and, with their families, supported in more than average comfort, it becomes clear enough that heavy extra work is entailed on the producing classes. The already-tired labourer has to toil an additional hour; his wife has to help in the fields as well as to suckle her in fant; his children are still more scantily fed than they would otherwise be; and beyond a decreased share of re turns from increased labour, there is a diminished time and energy for such small enjoyments as the life, pitiable at the best, permits. How, then, can it be supposed that the evils OUR NEED OP IT. 21 have been extinguished or escaped? The repressive action has had its corresponding- reaction; and instead of inteiiser miseries here and there, or now and then, you have got a misery that is constant and universal.
When it is thus seen that the evils are not removed, but at best only re-distributed, and that the question in any case is whether re-distribution, even if practicable, is desirable; it will be seen that the " must-do-something " plea is quite in sufficient. There is ample reason to believe that in proportion as scientific men carry into this most-involved class of phe nomena, the methods they have successfully adopted with other classes, they will perceive that, even less in this class than in other classes, are conclusions to be drawn and action to be taken without prolonged and critical investigation.
Still there will recur the same plea under other forms. " Po litical conduct must be matter of compromise." " We must adapt our measures to immediate exigencies, and cannot be deterred by remote considerations." " The data for forming scientific judgments are not to be had: most of them are un recorded, and those which are recorded are difficult to find as well as doubtful when found." "Life is too short, and the demands upon our energies too great, to permit any such elab orate study as seems required. We must, therefore, guide our selves by common sense as best we may."
And then, behind the more scientifically-minded who give this answer, there are those who hold, tacitly or overtly, that guidance of the kind indicated is not possible, even after any amount of inquiry. They do not believe in any ascertainable order among social phenomena— there is no such thing as a social science. This proposition we will discuss in the next chapter.
CHAPTER II.
IS THERE A SOCIAL SCIENCE?
ALMOST every autumn may be heard the remark that a hard winter is coming-, for that the hips and haws are abun dant: the implied belief being that God, intending to send much frost and snow, has provided a large store of food for the birds. Intei'pretations of this kind, tacit or avowed, pre vail widely. Not many weeks since, one who had received the usual amount of culture said in my hearing, that the swarm of lady-birds which overspread the country some sum mers ago, had been providentially designed to save the crop of hops from the destroying aphides. Of course this theory of the divine government, here applied to occurrences bearing but indirectly, if at all, on human welfare, is applied with still greater confidence to occurrences that directly affect us, indi vidually and socially. It is a theory carried out with logical consistency by the Methodist who, before going on a journey or removing to another house, opens his Bible, and in the first passage his eye rests upon, finds an intimation of approval or disapproval from heaven. And in its political applications it yields such appropriate beliefs as that the welfare of England in comparison with Continental States, has been a reward for better observance of the Sunday, or that an invasion of chol era was consequent on the omission of Dei gratia from an issue of coins.
The interpretation of historical events in general after this same method, accompanies such interpretations of ordinary passing events; and, indeed, outlives them. Those to whom the natural genesis of simpler phenomena has been made manifest by increasing knowledge, still believe in the super natural genesis of phenomena that are very much involved, IS THERE A SOCIAL SCIENCE? 23 and cannot have their causes readily traced. The form of mind which, in an official despatch, prompts the statement that " it has pleased Almighty G-od to vouchsafe to the British arms the most successful issue to the extensive combinations rendered necessary for the purpose of effecting1 the passage of the Chenaub," 1 is a form of mind which, in the records of the past, everywhere sees interpositions of the Deity to bring about results that appear to the interpreter the most desirable. Thus, for example, Mr. Schomberg writes: — " It seemed good to the All-beneficent Disposer of human events, to overrule every obstacle; and through His instrument, William of Normandy, to expurgate the evils of the land; and to resuscitate its dying powers." * And elsewhere: — "The time had now arrived when the Almighty Governor, after having severely punished the whole nation, was intending to raise its drooping head — to give a more rapid impulse to its prosperity, and to cause it to stand forth more prominently as an EXEMPLAR STATE. For this end, He raised up an individual eminently fitted for the intended work" [Henry VII.J.3 And again: — " As if to mark this epoch of history with greater distinctness, it Was closed by the death of George III., the GREAT and the GOOD, who had been raised up as the grand instrument of its accomplishment."4 The late catastrophes on the Continent are similarly ex plained by a French writer who, like the English writer just quoted, professes to have looked behind the veil of things; and who tells us what have been the intentions of God in chastising his chosen people, the French. For it is to be ob served in passing that, just as the evangelicals among our selves think we are divinely blessed because we have preserved the purity of the faith, so it is obvious to the author of La Main de VHomme et le Doigt de Dieu, as to other Frenchmen, that France is hereafter still to be, as it has hitherto been, the leader of the world. This writer, in chapters entitled " Causes providentielles de nos malheurs," " Les Prussiens et les fleaux de Dieu," and " Justification de la Providence," carries out his interpretations in ways we need not here follow, and then closes his " Epilogue " with these sentences: — 24 THE STUDY OP SOCIOLOGY.
" La Revolution moderee, habile, sagace, machiavoliqne, diabolique- ment sage, a ete vaincue et confondue par la justice divine dans la personne et dans le gouvernement de Napoleon III.
" La Revolution exaltee, bouillonnante, etourdie, a ete vaincue et confondue par la justice divine dans les personnes et dans les gouverne- ments successifs de Gambetta et de Felix Pyat et compagnie.
" La sagesse humaine, applaudie et trioinphante, personnifiee dans M. Thiers, ne tardera pas a etre vaincue et confondue par cette meme Revolution deux fois humiliee, mais toujours renaissante et agressive."
" Ce n'est pas une prophetic: c'est la prevision de la philosophic et de la foi chretiennes.
" Alors ce sera vraiment le tour du Tres-Haut; car il faut que Dieu et son Pils regneut par son Evangile et par son Eglise.
" Ames frangaises et chretiennes, priez, travaillez, souffrez et ayez confiance! nous somines pres de la fin. C'est quand tout semblera perdu que tout sera vraiment sauvc.
" Si la France avait su profiter des desastres subis, Dieu lui eut rendu ses premieres favours. Elle s'obstine dans 1'erreur et le vice. Croyons que Dieu la sauvera malgre elle, en la regenerant toutefois par 1'eau et par le feu. C'est quand Fimpuissance humaine apparait qu'eclate la sagesse divine. Mais quelles tribulations! quelles an- goisses! Ileureux ceux qui survivront et jouiront du triomphe de Dieu et de son Eglise sainte, catholique, apostolique et romaine." 5 Conceptions of this kind are not limited to historians whose names have dropped out of remembrance, and to men who, while the drama of contemporary revolution is going on, play the part of a Greek chorus, telling the world of spec tators what has been the divine purpose arid what are the di vine intentions; but we have lately had a Professor of History setting forth conceptions essentially identical in nature. Here are his words: — " And now, gentlemen, was this vast campaign [of Teutons against Romans] fought without a general? If Trafalgar could not be won without the mind of a Nelson, or Waterloo without the mind of a Wellington, was there no one mind to lead those innumerable armies on whose success depended the future of the whole human race? Did no one marshal them in that impregnable convex front, from the Euxine to the North Sea? No one guide them to the two great strategic centres of the Black Forest and Trieste? No one cause them, blind barbarians without maps or science, to follow those rules of war without which victory in a protracted struggle is impossible; IS THERE A SOCIAL SCIENCE? 25 and by the pressure of the Huns behind, force on their flagging myri ads to an enterprise which their simplicity fancied at first beyond the powers of mortal men? Believe it who will: but I cannot. I may be told that they gravitated into their places, as stones and mud do Be it so. They obeyed natural laws of course, as all things do on earth, when they obeyed the laws of war: those, too, are natural laws, explicable on simple mathematical principles. But while 1 believe that not a stone or a handful of mud gravitates into its place without the will of God; that it was ordained, ages since, into what particular spot each grain of gold should be washed down from an Australian quartz reef, that a certain man might find it at a certain moment and crisis of his life;— if I be superstitious enough (as, thank God, I am) to hold that creed, shall I not believe that, though this great war had no general upon earth, it may have had a general in heaven 1 and that, in spite of all their sins, the hosts of our forefathers were the hosts of God." 6 It does not concern us here to seek a reconciliation of the incongruous ideas bracketed together in this paragraph — to ask how the results of gravitation, which acts with such uni formity that under given conditions its effect is calculable with certainty, can at the same time be regarded as the results of will, which we class apart because, as known by our expe rience, it is comparatively irregular; or to ask how, if the course of human affairs is divinely pre-determined just as material changes are, any distinction is to be drawn between that prevision of material changes which constitutes physical science and historical prevision: the reader may be left to evolve the obvious conclusion that either the current idea of physical causation has to be abandoned, or the current idea of will has to be abandoned. All which I need call attention to as indicating the general character of such interpretations, is the remarkable title of the chapter containing this passage — " The Strategy of Providence."
In common with some others, I have often wondered how the Universe looks to those who use such names for its Cause as " The Master Builder," or " The Great Artificer; " and who seem to think that the Cause of the Universe is made more marvellous by comparing its operations to those of a skilled mechanic. But really the expression, "Strategy of Provi dence," reveals a conception of this Cause which is in some respects more puzzling. Such a title as " The Great Artificer," 20 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
while suggesting simply the process of shaping a pre-existing material, and leaving the question whence this material came untouched, may at any rate be said not to negative the assump tion that the material is created by "The Great Artificer" who shapes it. The phrase, " Strategy of Providence," how ever, necessarily implies difficulties to be overcome. The Divine Strategist must have a skilful antagonist to make strategy possible. So that we are inevitably introduced to the conception of a Cause of the Universe continually impeded by some independent cause which has to be out-gencralled. It is not every one who would thank God for a belief, the im plication of which is that God is obliged to overcome opposi tion by subtle devices.