the list. From the emotional, as well as from the intellectual, part of the nature, we saw that there arise obstacles. The ways in which beliefs about social affairs are perverted by in tense fears and excited hopes, were pointed out. We noted the feeling of impatience, as another common cause of mis- judgment. A contrast was drawn showing, too, what per verse estimates of public events men are led to make by their sympathies and antipathies— how, where their hate has been 24 354: THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
aroused, they utter unqualified condemnations of ill-deeds for which there was much excuse, while, if their admiration is excited by vast successes, they condone inexcusable ill-deeds immeasurably greater in amount. And we also saw that among the distortions of judgment caused by the emotions, have to be included those immense ones generated by the sentiment of loyalty to a personal ruler, or to a ruling power otherwise embodied.
These distortions of judgment caused by the emotions, thus indicated generally, we went on to consider specially — treat ing of them as different forms of bias. Though, during edu cation, understood in a wide sense, many kinds of bias are commenced or given, there is one which our educational sys tem makes especially strong — the double bias in favour of the religions of enmity and of amity. Needful as we found both of these to be, we perceived that among the beliefs about social affairs, prompted now by the one and now by the other, there are glaring incongruities; and that scientific conceptions can be formed only when there is a compromise between the dictates of pure egoism and the dictates of pure altruism, for which they respectively stand. We observed, next, the warp ing of opinion which the bias of patriotism causes. Recogniz ing the truth that the preservation of a society is made possi ble only by a due amount of patriotic feeling in citizens, we saw that this feeling inevitably disturbs the judgment when comparisons between societies are made, and that the data re quired for Social Science are thus vitiated; and we saw that the effort to escape this bias, leading as it does to an oppo site bias, is apt to vitiate the data in another way. While finding the class-bias to be no less essential, we found that it no less inevitably causes one-sidedness in the conceptions of social affairs. Noting how the various sub-classes have their specialities of prejudice corresponding to their class-interests, we noted, at greater length, how the more general prejudices of the larger and more widely-distinguished classes, prevent them from forming balanced judgments. That in politics the bias of pai'ty interferes with those calm examinations by which alone the conclusions of Social Science can be reached, scarcely needed pointing out. We observed, however, that beyond the political bias under its party-form, there is a more CONCLUSION. 355 CONCLUSION. 355 general political bias — the bias towards an exclusively-political view of social affairs, and a corresponding- faith in political instrumentalities. As affecting the study of Social Science, this bias was shown to be detrimental as directing the atten tion too much to the phenomena of social regulation, and ex cluding from thought the activities regulated, constituting an aggregate of phenomena far more important. Lastly, we came to the theological bias, which, under its general form and under its special forms, disturbs in various ways our judgments on social questions. Obedience to a supposed divine command, being its standard of rectitude, it does not ask concerning any social arrangement whether it conduces to social welfare, so much as whether it conforms to the creed locally established. Hence, in each place and time, those conceptions about public affairs which the theological bias fosters, tend to diverge from the truth in so far as the creed then and there accepted diverges from the truth. And besides the positive evil thus produced, there is a negative evil, due to discouragement of the habit of estimating actions by the results they eventually cause — a habit which the study of Social Science demands.
Having thus contemplated, in general and in detail, the difficulties of the Social Science, we turned our attention to the preliminary discipline required. Of the conclusions reached so recently, the reader scarcely needs reminding. Study of the sciences in general having been pointed out as the proper means of generating fit habits of thought, it was shown that the sciences especially to be attended to are those treating of Life and of Mind. There can be no understanding of social actions without some knowledge of human nature; there can be no deep knowledge of human nature without some knowl edge of the laws of Mind; there can be no adequate knowledge of the laws of Mind without knowledge of the laws of Life. And that knowledge of the Laws of Life, as exhibited in Man, may be properly grasped, attention must be given to the laws of Life in general.
What is to be hoped from such a presentation of difficulties and such a programme of preparatory studies? Who, in drawing his conclusions about public policies, will be made to 356 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
hesitate by remembering the many obstacles that stand in the way of right judgments? Who will think it needful to fit himself by inquiries so various and so extensive? Who, in short, will be led to doubt any of the inferences he has drawn or be induced to pause before he draws others, by conscious ness of these many liabilities to error arising from want of knowledge, want of discipline, and want of duly-balanced sentiments?
To these questions there can be but the obvious reply — a reply which the foregoing chapters themselves involve — that very little is to be expected. The implication throughout the argument has been that for every society, and for each stage in its evolution, there is an appropriate mode of feeling and thinking; and that no mode of feeling and thinking not adapted to its degree of evolution, and to its surroundings, can be permanently established. Though not exactly, still approxi mately, the average opinion in any age and country, is a func tion of the social structure in that age arid country. There may be, as we see during times of revolution, a considerable incongruity between the ideas that become current and the social arrangements which exist, and are, in great measure, appropriate; though even then the incongruity does but mark the need for a re-adjustment of institutions to character. While, however, those successive compromises which, during social evolution, have to be made between the changed natures of citizens and the institutions evolved by ancestral citizens, im ply disagreements, yet these are but partial and temporary — in those societies, at least, which are developing and not in course of dissolution. For a society to hold together, the institutions that are needed and the conceptions that are generally current, must be in tolerable harmony. Hence, it is not to be expected that modes of thinking on social affairs, are to be in any con siderable degree changed by whatever may be said respecting the Social Science, its difficulties, and the required preparations for studying it.
The only reasonable hope is, that here and there one may be led, in calmer moments, to remember how largely his be liefs about public matters have been made for him by circum stances, and how probable it is that they are either untrue or but partially true. When he reflects on the doubtfulness of CONCLUSION. 357 the evidence which he generalizes, collected hap-hazard from a narrow area — when he counts up the perverting sentiments fostered in him by education, country, class, party, creed — when, observing those around, he sees that from other evi dence selected to gratify sentiments partially unlike his own, there result unlike views; he may occasionally recollect how largely mere accidents have determined his convictions. Rec ollecting this, he may be induced to hold these convictions not quite so strongly; may see the need for criticism of them with a view to revision; and, above all, may be somewhat less eager to act in pursuance of them.
While the few to whom a Social Science is conceivable, may in some degree be thus influenced by what is said con cerning the study of it, there can, of course, be no effect on the many to whom such a science seems an absurdity, or an impiety, or both. The feeling usually excited by the proposal to deal scientifically with these most-complex phenomena, is like that which was excited in ancient times by the proposal to deal scientifically with phenomena of simpler kinds. As Mr. Grote writes of Socrates — " Physics and astronomy, in his opinion, belonged to the divine class of phenomena, in which human research was insane, fruitless, and impious."1 And as he elsewhere writes respecting the attitude of the Greek mind in general: — "In his [the early Greek's] view, the description of the sun, as given in a modern astronomical treatise, would have appeared not merely absurd, but repulsive and impious: even in later times, when the positive spirit of inquiry had made considerable progress, Anaxago- ras and other astronomers incurred the charge of blasphemy for dis- personifying Helios, and trying to assign invariable laws to the solar phenomena." 2 That a likeness exists between the feeling then displayed respecting phenomena of inorganic nature, and the feeling now displayed respecting phenomena of Life and Society, is manifest. The ascription of social actions and political events entirely to natural causes, thus leaving out Providence as a factor, seems to the religious mind of our day, as seemed to the mind of the pious Greek the dispersonification of Helios 358 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
and the explanation of celestial motions otherwise than by immediate divine agency. As was said by Mr. Gladstone, in a speech made shortly after the first publication of the second chapter of this volume — " I lately read a discussion on the manner in which the raising up of particular individuals occasionally occurs in great crises of human history, as if some sacred, invisible power had raised them up and placed them in particular positions for special purposes. The writer says that they are not uniform, but admits that they are common — so common and so remarkable that men would be liable to term them providential in a pre-scientific age. And this was said without the smallest notion apparently in the writer's mind that he was giving utterance to anything that could startle or alarm— it was said as a kind of commonplace. It would seem that in his view there was a time when mankind, lost in ignorance, might, without forfeiting en tirely their title to the name of rational creatures, believe in a Provi dence, but that since that period another and greater power has arisen under the name of science, and this power has gone to war with Provi dence, and Providence is driven from the field — and we have now the happiness of living in the scientific age, when Providence is no longer to be treated as otherwise than an idle dream."3 Of the mental attitude, very general beyond the limits of the scientific world, which these utterances of Mr. Gladstone exemplify, he has since given further illustration; and, in his anxiety to check a movement he thinks mischievous, has so conspicuously made himself the exponent of the anti-scientific view, that we may fitly regard his thoughts on the matter as typical. In an address delivered by him at the Liverpool Col lege, and since re-published with additions, he says: — " Upon the ground of what is termed evolution, God is relieved of the labour of creation; in the name of unchangeable laws, He is dis charged from governing the world."
This passage proves the kinship between Mr. Gladstone's con ception of things and that entertained by the Greeks, to be even closer than above alleged; for its implication is, not simply that the scientific interpretation of vital and social phenomena as conforming to fixed laws, is repugnant to him, but that the like interpretation of inorganic phenomena is re pugnant. In common with the ancient Greek, he regards as irreligious, any explanation of Nature which dispenses with immediate divine superintendence. He appears to overlook CONCLUSION. 359 CONCLUSION. 359 the fact that the doctrine of gravitation, with the entire sci ence of physical Astronomy, is open to the same charge as this which he makes against the doctrine of evolution; and he seems not to have remembered that throughout the past, each further step made by Science has been denounced for reasons like those which he assigns.4 It is instructive to observe, however, that in these prevail ing conceptions expressed by Mr. Gladstone, which we have here to note as excluding the conception of a Social Science, there is to be traced a healthful process of compromise be tween old and new. For as in the current conceptions about the order of events in the lives of persons, there is a partner ship, wholly illogical though temporarily convenient, between the ideas of natural causation and of providential interference; so, in the current political conceptions, the belief in divine in terpositions goes along with, and by no means excludes, the belief in a natural production of effects on society by natural agencies set to work. In relation to the occurrences of indi vidual life, we displayed our national aptitude for thus enter taining mutually-destructive ideas, when an unpopular prince suddenly gained popularity by outliving certain abnormal changes in his blood, and when, on the occasion of his re covery, providential aid and natural causation were unitedly recognized by a thanksgiving to God and a baronetcy to the doctor. And similarly, we see that throughout all our public actions, the theory which Mr. Gladstone represents, that great men are providentially raised up to do things God has decided upon, and that the course of affairs is supernaturally ordered thus or thus, does not in the least interfere with the passing of measures calculated to achieve desired ends in ways classed as natural, and nowise modifies the discussion of such meas ures on their merits, as estimated in terms of cause and conse quence. While the prayers with which each legislative sitting commences, show a nominal belief in an immediate divine guidance, the votes with which the sitting ends, given in pur suance of reasons which the speeches assign, show us a real belief that the effects will be determined by the agencies set to work.
Still, it is clear that the old conception, while it qualifies the new but little in the regulating of actions, qualifies it very 360 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
much in the forming of theories. There can be no complete acceptance of Sociology as a science, so long as the belief in a social order not conforming to natural law, survives. Hence, as already said, considerations touching the study of Sociology, not very influential even over the few who recognize a Social Science, can have scarcely any effects on the great mass to whom a Social Science is an incredibility.
I do not mean that this prevailing imperviousness to scien tific conceptions of social phenomena is to be regretted. As implied in a foregoing paragraph, it is part of the required adjustment between existing opinions and the forms of social life at present requisite. With a given phase of human char acter there must, to maintain equilibrium, go an adapted class of institutions, and a set of thoughts and sentiments in toler able harmony with those institutions. Hence, it is not to be wished that with the average human nature we now have, there should be a wide acceptance of views natural only to a more-highly-developed social state, and to the improved type of citizen accompanying such a state. The desirable thing is, that a growth of ideas and feelings tending to produce modifi cation, shall be joined with a continuance of ideas and feelings tending to preserve stability. And it is one of our satisfactory social traits, exhibited in a degree never before paralleled, that along with a mental progress which brings about con siderable changes, there is a devotion of thought and energy to the maintenance of existing arrangements, and creeds, and sentiments — an energy sufficient even to re-invigorate some of the old forms and beliefs that were decaying. When, there fore, a distinguished statesman, anxious for human welfare as he ever shows himself to be, and holding that the defence of established beliefs must not be left exclusively to its " stand ing army " of " priests and ministers of religion," undertakes to combat opinions at variance with a creed he thinks essen tial; the occurrence may be taken as adding another to the many signs of a healthful condition of society. That in our day, one in Mr. Gladstone's position should think as he does, seems to me very desirable. That we should have for our working-king one in whom a purely-scientific conception of things had become dominant, and who was thus out of har- CONCLUSION. 361 mony with our present social state, would probably be detri mental, and might be disastrous.
For it cannot be too emphatically asserted that this policy of compromise, alike in institutions, in actions, and in beliefs, which especially characterizes English life, is a policy essen tial to a society going through the transitions caused by con tinued growth and development. The illogicalities and the absurdities to be found so abundantly in current opinions and existing arrangements, are those which inevitably arise in the course of perpetual re-adjustments to circumstances perpetu ally changing. Ideas and institutions proper to a past social state, but incongruous with the new social state that has grown out of it, surviving into this new social state they have made possible, and disappearing only as this new social state establishes its own ideas and institutions, are necessarily, dur ing their survival, in conflict with these new ideas and insti tutions — necessarily furnish elements of contradiction in men's thoughts and deeds. And yet as, for the carrying-on of social life, the old must continue so long as the new is not ready, this perpetual compromise is an indispensable accom paniment of a normal development. Its essentialness we may see on remembering that it equally holds throughout the evo lution of an individual organism. The structural and func tional arrangements during growth, are never quite right: always the old adjustment for a smaller size is made wrong by the larger size it has been instrumental in producing — always the transition-structure is a compromise between the requirements of past and future, fulfilling in an imperfect way the requirements of the present. And this, which is shown clearly enough where there is simple growth, is shown still more clearly where there are metamorphoses. A creature which leads at two periods of its existence two different kinds of life, and which, in adaptation to its second period, has to develop structures that were not fitted for its first, passes through a stage during which it possesses both partially — during which the old dwindles while the new grows: as hap pens, for instance, in creatures that continue to breathe water by external branchiae during the time they are developing the lungs that enable them to breathe air. And thus it is with the alterations produced by growth in societies, as well as 362 TIIE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
with those metamorphoses accompanying1 change in the mode of life — especially those accompanying change from the pred atory life to the industrial life. Here, too, there must be transitional stages during which incongruous organizations co-exist: the first remaining indispensable until the second has grown up to its work. Just as injurious as it would be to an amphibian to cut off its branchiae before its lungs were well developed; so injurious must it be to a society to destroy its old institutions before the new have become well-organized enough to take their places.
Non-recognition of this truth characterizes too much the reformers, political, religious, and social, of our own time; as it has characterized those of past times. On the part of men eager to rectify wrongs and expel errors, there is still, as there ever has been, so absorbing a consciousness of the evils caused by old forms and old ideas, as to permit no consciousness of the benefits these old forms and old ideas have yielded. This partiality of view is, in a sense, necessary. There must be division of labour here as elsewhere: some who have the function of attacking, and who, that they may attack effectu ally, must feel strongly the viciousness of that which they attack; some who have the function of defending and who, that they may be good defenders, must over-value the things they defend. But while this one-si dediiess has to be tolerated, as in great measure unavoidable, it is in some respects to be regretted. Though, with grievances less serious and animos ities less intense than those which existed here in the past, and which exist still abroad, there go mitigated tendencies to a rash destructiveiiess on the one side, and an unreasoning bigotry on the other; yet even in our country and age there are dangers from the want of a due both-sidedness. In the speeches and writings of those who advocate various political and social changes, there is so continuous a presentation of in justices, and abuses, and mischiefs, and corruptions, as to leave the impression that for securing a wholesome state of things, there needs nothing but to set aside present arrangements. The implication seems ever to be that all who occupy places of power, and form the regulative organization, are alone to blame for whatever is not as it should be; and that the classes regulated are blameless. " See the injuries which these insti- CONCLUSION. 363 tutions inflict on you," says the energetic reformer. " Con sider how selfish must be the men who maintain them to their own advantage and your detriment," he adds. And then he leaves to be drawn the manifest inference, that were these selfish men got rid of, all would be well. Neither he nor his audience recognizes the facts that regulative arrangements are essential; that the arrangements in question, along with their many vices, have some virtues; that such vices as th£y have do not result from an egoism peculiar to those who uphold and work them, but result from a general egoism — an egoism no less decided in those who complain than in those com plained of. Inequitable government can be upheld only by the aid of a people correspondingly inequitable, in its senti ments and acts. Injustice cannot reign if the community does not furnish a due supply of unjust agents. No tyrant can tyrannize over a people save on condition that the people is bad enough to supply him with soldiers who will fight for his tyranny and keep their brethren in slavery. Class-suprem acy cannot be maintained by the corrupt buying of votes, un less there are multitudes of voters venal enough to sell their votes. It is thus everywhere and in all degrees — misconduct among those in power is the correlative of misconduct among those over whom they exercise power.
And while, in the men who urge on changes, there is an unconsciousness that the evils they denounce are rooted in the nature common to themselves and other men, there is also an unconsciousness that amid the things they would throw away there is much worth preserving. This holds of beliefs more especially. Along with the destructive tendency there goes but little constructive tendency. The criticisms made, imply that it is requisite only to dissipate errors, and that it is needless to insist on truths. It is forgotten that, along with forms which are bad, there is a large amount of substance which is good. And those to whom there are addressed con demnations of the forms, unaccompanied by the caution that there is a substance to be preserved in higher forms, are left, not only without any coherent system of guiding beliefs, but without any consciousness that one is requisite.
Hence the need, above admitted, for an active defence of that which exists, carried on by men convinced of its entire 364: THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
worth; so that those who attack may not destroy the good along with the bad.
And here let me point out distinctly, the truth already im plied, that studying Sociology scientifically, leads to fairer ap preciations of different parties, political, religious, and other. The conception initiated and developed by Social Science, is at the same time Radical and Conservative — Radical to a de gree beyond anything which current Radicalism conceives; Conservative to a degree beyond anything conceived by pres ent Conservatism. When there has been adequately seized the truth that societies are products of evolution, assuming, in their various times and places, their various modifications of structure, and function; there follows the conviction that what, relatively to our thoughts and sentiments, were arrange ments of extreme badness, had fitnesses to conditions which made better arrangements impracticable: whence comes a tolerant interpretation of past tyrannies at which even the bitterest Tory of our own days would be indignant. On the other hand, after observing how the processes that have brought things to their present stage are still going on, not with a decreasing rapidity indicating approach to cessation, but with an increasing rapidity that implies long continuance and immense transformations; there follows the conviction