even of these, are illusory; proceeding1, as they do, on the as sumption that the intellectual acceptance of moral precepts will produce conformity to them. Plenty more reasons are forthcoming. I will not dwell on the contradictions to this assumption furnished by the Chinese, to all of whom the high ethical maxims of Confucius are taught, and who yet fail to show us a conduct proportionately exemplary. Nor will I enlarge on the lesson to be derived from the United States, the school-system of which brings up the whole population under the daily influence of chapters which set forth principles of right conduct, and which nevertheless in its political life, and by many of its social occurrences, shows us that conformity to these principles is anything but complete. It will suffice if I limit myself to evidence supplied by our own society, past and present; which negati ves, very decisively, these sanguine ex pectations. For what have we been doing all these many centuries by our religious agencies, but preaching right prin ciples to old and young? What has been the aim of services in our ten thousand churches week after week, but to enforce a code of good conduct by promised rewards and threatened penalties? — the whole population having been for many gen erations compelled to listen. What have the multitudinous Dissenting chapels been used for, unless as places where pur suance of right and desistance from wrong have been unceas ingly commended to all from childhood upwards? And if now it is held that something more must be done — if, notwith standing perpetual explanations and denunciations and ex hortations, the misconduct is so great that society is endan gered, why, after all this insistance has failed, is it expected that more insistance will succeed? See here the proposals and the implied beliefs. Teaching by clergymen not having had the desired effect, let us try teaching by schoolmasters. Bible-reading from a pulpit, with the accompaniment of im posing architecture, painted windows, tombs, and " dim re ligious light," having proved inadequate, suppose we try bible - reading in rooms with bare walls, relieved only by maps and drawings of animals. Commands and interdicts uttered by a surpliced priest to minds prepared by chant and organ-peal, not having been obeyed, let us see whether they will be obeyed wrhen mechanically repeated in schoolboy sing- 334 TOE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
song to a threadbare usher, amid the buzz of lesson-learning and clatter of slates. Not very hopeful proposals, one would say; proceeding, as they do, upon one or other of the beliefs, that a moral precept will be effective in proportion as it is received without emotional accompaniment, and that its effectiveness will increase in proportion to the number of times it is repeated. Both these beliefs are directly at vari ance with the results of psychological analysis and of daily experience. Certainly, such influence as may be gained by addressing moral truths to the intellect, is made greater if the accompaniments arouse an appropriate emotional excitement, as a religious service does; while, conversely, there can be no more effectual way of divesting such moral truths of their impress! veness, than associating them with the prosaic and vulgarizing sounds and sights and smells coming from crowded children. And no less certain is it that precepts often heard and little regarded, lose by repetition the small influence they had. What do public-schools show us? — are the boys rendered merciful to one another by listening to re ligious injunctions every morning? What do Universities show us? — have perpetual chapels habitually made under graduates behave better than the average of young men? What do Cathedral-towns show us? — is there in them a moral tone above that of other towns, or must we from the common saying, " the nearer the Church," &c., infer a pervading im pression to the contrary? What do clergymen's sons show us? — has constant insistence 011 right conduct made them conspicuously superior, or do we not rather hear it whispered that something like an opposite effect seems produced. Or, to take one more case, what do religious newspapers show us? — is it that the precepts of Christianity, more familiar to their writers than to other writers, are more clearly to be traced in their articles, or has there not ever been displayed a want of charity in their dealings with opponents, and is it not still dis played? * Nowhere do we find that repetition of rules of right, already known but disregarded, produces regard for them; but we find that, contrariwise, it makes regard for them less than before.8 The prevailing assumption is, indeed, as much disproved by analysis as it is contradicted by familiar facts. Already PREPARATION IN PSYCHOLOGY. 335 we have seen that the connexion is between action and feel ing; and hence the corollary that only by a frequent passing of feeling into action, is the tendency to such action strength ened. Just as two ideas often repeated in a certain order, be come coherent in that order; and just as muscular motions, at first difficult to combine properly with one another and with guiding perceptions, become by practice facile, and at length automatic; so the recurring production of any conduct by its prompting emotion, makes that conduct relatively easy. Not by precept, though heard daily; not by example, unless it is followed; not only by action, often caused by the related feeling, can a moral habit be formed. And yet this truth, which Mental Science clearly teaches, and which is in har mony with familiar sayings, is a truth wholly ignored in current educational fanaticisms.
There is ignored, too, the correlative truth; and ignoring it threatens results still more disastrous. While we see an expectation of benefits which the means used cannot achieve, we see no consciousness of injuries which will be entailed by these means. As usually happens with those absorbed in the eager pursuit of some good by governmental action, there is a blindness to the evil reaction on the natures of citizens. Al ready the natures of citizens have suffered from kindred reactions, due to actions set up centuries ago; and now the mischievous effects are to be increased by further such reac tions.
The English people are complained of as improvident. Very few of them lay by in anticipation of times when work is slack; and the general testimony is that higher wages commonly result only in more extravagant living or in drink ing to greater excess. As we saw a while since, they neglect opportunities of becoming shareholders in the Companies they are engaged under; and those who are most anxious for their welfare despair on finding how little they do to raise them selves when they have the means. This tendency to seize immediate gratification regardless of future penalty, is com mented on as characteristic of the English people; and con trasts between them and their Continental neighbours having been drawn, surprise is expressed that such contrasts should 336 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
exist. Improvidence is spoken of as an inexplicable trait of the race — no regard being paid to the fact that races with which it is compared are allied in blood. The people of Nor way are economical and extremely prudent. The Danes, too, are thrifty; and Defoe, commenting on the extravagance of his countrymen, says that a Dutchman gets rich on wages out of which an Englishman but just lives. So, too, if we take the modern Germans. Alike by the complaints of the Amer icans, that the Germans are ousting them from their own businesses by working hard and living cheaply, and by the success here of German traders and the preference shown for German waiters, we are taught that in other divisions of the Teutonic race there is nothing like this lack of self-control. Nor can we ascribe to such portion of Norman blood as exists among us, this peculiar trait: descendants of the Normans in France are industrious and saving. Why, then, should the English people be improvident? If we seek explanation in their remote lineage, we find none; but if we seek it in the social conditions to which they have been subject, we find a sufficient explanation. The English are improvident because they have been for ages disciplined in improvidence. Extravagance has been made habitual by shielding them from the sharp penalties extravagance brings. Carefulness has been discouraged by continually showing to the careful that those who were careless did as well as, or better than, themselves. Nay, there have been positive penalties on care fulness. Labourers working hard and paying their way, have constantly found themselves called on to help in supporting the idle around them; have had their goods taken under dis tress-warrants, that paupers might be fed; and eventually have found themselves and their children reduced also to pauperism.4 Well-conducted poor women, supporting them selves without aid or encouragement, have seen the ill-con ducted receiving parish-pay for their illegitimate children. Nay, to such extremes has the process gone, that women with many illegitimate children, getting from the rates a weekly sum for each, have been chosen as wives by men who wanted the sums thus derived! Generation after generation the hon est and independent, not marrying till they had means, and striving to bring up their families without assistance, have PREPARATION IN PSYCHOLOGY. 337 been saddled with extra burdens, and hindered from leaving a desirable posterity; while the dissolute and the idle, espe cially when given to that lying and servility by which those in authority are deluded, have been helped to produce and to rear progeny, characterized, like themselves, by absence of the mental traits needed for good citizenship. And then, after centuries during which we have been breeding the race as much as possible from the improvident, and repressing the multiplication of the provident, we lift our hands and exclaim at the recklessness our people exhibit! If men who, for a score generations, had by preference bred from their worst- tempered horses and their least-sagacious dogs, were then to wonder because their horses were vicious and their dogs stupid, we should think the absurdity of their policy paral leled only by the absurdity of their astonishment; but hu man beings instead of inferior animals being in question, no absurdity is seen either in the policy or in the astonishment. And now something more serious happens than the over looking of these evils \vrought on men's natures by centuries of demoralizing influences. We are deliberately establishing further such influences. Having, as much as we could, sus pended the civilizing discipline of an industrial life so carried on as to achieve self-maintenance without injury to others, we now proceed to suspend that civilizing discipline in another direction. Having in successive generations done our best to diminish the sense of responsibility, by warding- off evils which disregard of responsibility brings, we now carry the policy further by relieving parents from certain other responsibilities which, in the order of nature, fall on them. By way of checking recklessness, and discouraging improvident marriages, and raising the conception of duty, we are diffusing the belief that it is not the concern of parents to fit their children for the business of life; but that the na tion is bound to do this. Everywhere there is a tacit enuncia tion of the marvellous doctrine that citizens are not responsi ble individually for thebringing-up, each of his own children, but that these same citizens incorporated into a society, are each of them responsible for the bringing-up of everybody else's children! The obligation does not fall upon A in his capacity of father, to rear the minds as well as the bodies of 23 338 THE STUDY OP SOCIOLOGY.
his offspring; but in his capacity of citizen, there does fall on him the obligation of mentally rearing the offspring of B, C, D, and the rest; who similarly have their direct parental obligations made secondary to their indirect obligations to children not their own! Already it is estimated that, as mat ters are now being arranged, parents will soon pay in school- fees for their own children, only one-sixth of the amount which is paid by them through taxes, rates, and voluntary contributions, for children at large: in terms of money, the claims of children at large to their care, will be taken as six times the claim of their own children! And if, looking back forty years, we observe the growth of the public claim versus the private claim, we may infer that the private claim will presently be absorbed wholly. Already the correlative theory is becoming so definite and positive that you meet with the notion, uttered as though it were an unquestionable truth, that criminals are " society's failures.'' Presently it will be seen that, since good bodily development, as well as good mental development, is a pre-requisite to good citizenship, (for without it the citizen cannot maintain himself, and so avoid wrong-doing,) society is responsible also for the proper feeding and clothing of children: indeed, in School-Board discussions, there is already an occasional admission that no logically- defensible halting-place can be found between the two. And so we are progressing towards the wonderful notion, here and there finding tacit expression, that people are to marry when they feel inclined, and other people are to take the conse quences!
And this is thought to be the policy conducive to improve ment of behaviour. Men who have been made improvident by being shielded from many of the evil results of improvi dence, are now to be made more provident by further shield ing them from the evil results of improvidence. Having had their self-control decreased by social arrangements which less ened the need for self-control, other social arrangements are devised which will make self-control still less needful; and it is hoped so to make self-control greater. This expectation is absolutely at variance with the whole order of things. Life of every kind, human included, proceeds on an exactly-oppo site principle. All lower types of beings show us that the PREPARATION IN PSYCHOLOGY. 339 rearing of offspring1 affords the highest discipline for the faculties. The parental instinct is everywhere that which calls out the energies most persistently, and in the greatest degree exercises the intelligence. The self-sacrifice and the sagacity which inferior creatures display in the care of their young, are often commented upon; and everyone may see that parenthood produces a mental exaltation not otherwise producible. That it is so among mankind is daily proved. Continually we remark that men who were random grow steady when they have children to provide for; and vain, thoughtless girls, becoming mothers, begin to show higher feelings, and capacities that were not before drawn out. In both there is a daily discipline in unselfishness, in industry, in foresight. The parental relation strengthens from hour to hour the habit of postponing immediate ease and egoistic pleasure to the altruistic pleasure obtained by furthering the welfare of offspring. There is a frequent subordination of the claims of self to the claims of fellow-beings; and by no other agency can the practice of this subordination be so effectually secured. Not, then, by a decreased, but by an increased, sense of parental responsibility is self-control to be made greater and recklessness to be checked. And yet the policy now so earnestly and undoubtingly pursued is one which will inevitably diminish the sense of parental responsi bility. This all-important discipline of parents' emotions is to be weakened that children may get reading and grammar and geography more generally than they would otherwise do. A superficial intellectualization is to be secured at the cost of a deep-seated demoralization.
Few, I suppose, will deliberately assert that information is important and character relatively unimportant. Everyone observes from time to time how much more valuable to him self and others is the workman who, though unable to read, is diligent, sober, and honest, than is the well-taught workman who breaks his engagements, spends days in drinking, and neglects his family. And, comparing members of the upper classes, no one doubts that the spendthrift or the gambler, however good his intellectual training, is inferior as a social unit to the man who, not having passed through the approved curriculum, nevertheless prospers by performing well the 340 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
work he undertakes, and provides for his children instead of leaving them in poverty to the care of relatives. That is to say, looking at the matter in the concrete, all see that for social welfare, good character is more important than much knowledge. And yet the manifest corollary is not drawn. What effect will be produced on character by artificial appli ances for spreading knowledge, is not asked. Of the ends to be kept in view by the legislator, all are unimportant com pared with the end of character-making; and yet character- making is an end wholly unrecognized.
Let it be seen that the future of a nation depends on the natures of its units; that their natures are inevitably modified in adaptation to the conditions in which tliey are placed; that the feelings called into play by these conditions will strengthen, while those which have diminished demands on them will dwindle; and it will be seen that the bettering of conduct can be effected, not by insisting on maxims of good conduct, still less by mere intellectual culture, but only by that daily exercise of the higher sentiments and repression of the lower, which results from keeping men subordinate to the requirements of orderly social life — letting them suffer the inevitable penalties of breaking these requirements and reap the benefits of conforming to them. This alone is national education.
One further instance of the need for psychological in quiries as guides to sociological conclusions may be named — an instance of quite a different kind, but one no less relevant to questions of the time. I refer to the comparative psychol ogy of the sexes. Women, as well as men, are units in a society; and tend by their natures to give that society certain traits of structure and action. Hence the question — Are the mental natures of men and women the same? — is an impor tant one to the sociologist. If they are, an increase of femi nine influence is not likely to affect the social type in a marked manner. If they are not, the social type will inevi tably be changed by increase of feminine influence.
That men and women are mentally alike, is as untrue as that they are alike bodily. Just as certainly as they have physical differences which are related to the respective parts PREPARATION IN PSYCHOLOGY. 341 they play in the maintenance of the race, so certainly have they psychical differences, similarly related to their respective shares in the rearing and protection of offspring. To suppose that along with the unlikenesses between their parental activ ities there do not go unlikenesses of mental faculties, is to suppose that here alone in all Nature, there is no adjustment of special powers to special functions.6 Two classes of differences exist between the psychical, as between the physical, structures of men and women, which are both determined by this same fundamental need — adapta tion to the paternal and maternal duties. The first set of differences is that which results from a somewhat-earlier arrest of individual evolution in women than in men; necessi tated by the reservation of vital power to meet the cost of re production. Whereas, in man, individual evolution continues until the physiological cost of self -maintenance very nearly balances what nutrition supplies, in woman, an arrest of indi vidual development takes place while there is yet a con siderable margin of nutrition: otherwise there could be no offspring. Hence the fact that girls come earlier to maturity than boys. Hence, too, the chief contrasts in bodily form: the masculine figure being distinguished from the feminine by the greater relative sizes of the parts which carry on ex ternal actions and entail physiological cost — the limbs, and those thoracic viscera which their activity immediately taxes. And hence, too, the physiological truth that throughout their lives, but especially during the child-bearing age, women ex hale smaller quantities of carbonic acid, relatively to their weights, than men do; showing that the evolution of energy is relatively less as well as absolutely less. This rather earlier cessation of individual evolution thus necessitated, showing itself in a rather smaller growth of the nervo-muscular sys tem, so that both the limbs which act and the brain which makes them act are somewhat less, has two results on the mind. The mental manifestations have somewhat less of general power or massiveness; and beyond this there is a per ceptible falling-short in those two faculties, intellectual and emotional, which are the latest products of human evolution —the power of abstract reasoning and that most abstract of the emotions, the sentiment of justice — the sentiment which 342 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
regulates conduct irrespective of personal attachments and the likes or dislikes felt for individuals.6 After this quantitative mental distinction, which becomes incidentally qualitative by telling most upon the most recent and most complex faculties, there come the qualitative mental distinctions consequent on the relations of men and women to their children and to one another. Though the parental instinct, which, considered in its essential nature, is a love of the helpless, is common to the two; yet it is obviously not identical in the two. That the particular form of it which responds to infantine helplessness is more dominant in women than in men, cannot be questioned. In man the instinct is not so habitually excited by the very helpless, but has a more generalized relation to all the relatively-weak who are depen dent upon him. Doubtless, along with this more specialized instinct in wrornen, there go special aptitudes for dealing with infantine life — an adapted power of intuition and a fit adjust ment of behaviour. That there is here a mental specializa tion, joined with the bodily specialization, is undeniable; and this mental specialization, though primarily related to the rearing of offspring, affects in some degree the conduct at large.
The remaining qualitative distinctions between the minds of men and women, are those which have growrn out of their mutual relation as stronger and weaker. If we trace the genesis of human character, by considering the conditions of existence through which the human race passed in early bar baric times and during civilization, we shall see that the weaker sex has naturally acquired certain mental traits by its dealings with the stronger. In the course of the struggles for existence among wild tribes, those tribes survived in which the men were not only powerful and courageous, but aggres sive, unscrupulous, intensely egoistic. Necessarily, then, the men of the conquering races which gave origin to the civil ized races, were men in whom the brutal characteristics were dominant; and necessarily the women of such races, having to deal with brutal men, prospered in proportion as they pos sessed, or acquired, fit adjustments of nature. How were women, unable by strength to hold their own, otherwise en abled to hold their own? Several mental traits helped them PREPARATION IN PSYCHOLOGY. 343 to do this. We may set down, first, the ability to please, and the concomitant love of approbation. Clearly, other things equal, among women living at the mercy of men, those who succeeded most in pleasing would be the most likely to survive and leave posterity. And (recognizing the pre dominant descent of qualities on the same side) this, acting on successive generations, tended to establish, as a feminine trait, a special solicitude to be approved, and an aptitude of manner to this end. Similarly, the wives of merciless savages must, other things equal, have prospered in proportion to their powers of disguising their feelings. Women who be trayed the state of antagonism produced in them by ill-treat ment, would be less likely to survive and leave offspring than those who concealed their antagonism; and hence, by inherit ance and selection, a growth of this trait proportionate to the requirement. In some cases, again, the arts of persua sion enabled women to protect themselves, and by implication their offspring, where, in the absence of such arts, they would have disappeared early, or would have reared fewer chil dren. One further ability may be named as likely,. to be cultivated and established — the ability to distinguish quickly the passing feelings of those around. In barbarous times a woman who could from a movement, tone of voice, or expression of face, instantly detect in her savage husband the passion that was rising, would be likely to escape dangers run into by a woman less skilled in interpreting the natural lan guage of feeling. Hence, from the perpetual exercise of this power, and the survival of those having most of it. we may infer its establishment as a feminine faculty. Ordinarily, this feminine faculty, showing itself in an aptitude for guessing the state of mind through the external signs, end simply in intuitions formed without assignable reasons; but when, as happens in rare cases, there is joined with it skill in psycho logical analysis, there results an extremely-remarkable ability to interpret the mental states of others. Of this ability we have a living example never hitherto paralleled among women, and in but few, if any, cases exceeded among men. Of