The disguises which piety puts on are, indeed, not unfre- quently suggestive of that which some would describe by a quite opposite name. To study the Universe as it is manifested to us; to ascertain by patient observation the order of the manifestations; to discover that the manifestations are con nected with one another after a regular way in Time and Space; and, after repeated failures, to give up as futile the attempt to understand the Power manifested; is condemned as irreligious. And meanwhile the character of religious is claimed by those who figure to themselves a Creator moved by motives like their own; who conceive themselves as dis covering his designs; and who even speak of him as though he laid plans to outwit the Devil!
This, however, by the way. The foregoing extracts and comments are intended to indicate the mental attitude of those for whom there can be no such thing as Sociology, prop erly so called. That mode of conceiving human affairs which is implied alike by the " D. V." of a missionary-meeting placard and by the phrases of Emperor William's late despatches, where thanks to God come next to enumerations of the thou sands slain, is one to which the idea of a Social Science is entirely alien, and indeed repugnant.
An allied class, equally unprepared to interpret sociologi cal phenomena scientifically, is the class which sees in the course of civilization little else than a record of remarkable persons and their doings. One who is conspicuous as the ex- IS THERE A SOCIAL SCIENCE? 27 ponent of this view writes: — "As I take it, universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here." And this, not perhaps distinctly formulated, but everywhere implied, is the belief in which nearly all are brought up. Let us glance at the genesis of it.
Round their camp-fire assembled savages tell the events of the day's chase; and he among them who has done some feat of skill or agility is duly lauded. On a return from the war path, the sagacity of the chief and the strength or courage of this or that warrior, are the all-absorbing themes. When the day, or the immediate past, affords no remarkable deed, the topic is the achievement of some noted leader lately dead, or some traditional founder of the tribe: accompanied, it may be, with a dance dramatically representing those victories which the chant recites. Such narratives, concerning, as they do, the prosperity and indeed the very existence of the tribe, are of the intensest interest; and in them we have the com mon root of music, of the drama, of poetry, of biography, of history, and of literature in general. Savage life furnishes little else worthy of note; and the chronicles of tribes contain scarcely anything more to be remembered. Early his toric races show us the same thing. The Egyptian frescoes and the wall-sculptures of the Assyrians, represent the deeds of leading men; and inscriptions such as that on the Moabite stone, tell of nothing more than royal achievements: only by implication do these records, pictorial, hieroglyphic, or written, convey anything else. And similarly from the Greek epics, thougli we gather incidentally that there were towns, and war-vessels, and war-chariots, and sailors, and soldiers to be led and slain, yet the direct intention is to set forth the triumphs of Achilles, the prowess of Ajax, the wisdom of Ulysses, and the like. The lessons given to every civilized child tacitly imply, like the traditions of the uncivilized and semi-civilized, that throughout the past of the human race, the doings of conspicuous persons have been the only things worthy of remembrance. How Abraham girded up his loins and gat him to this place or that; how Samuel conveyed divine injunctions which Saul disobeyed; how David re counted his adventures as a shepherd, and was reproached for 28 TOE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
his misdeeds as a king — these, and personalities akin to these, are the facts about which the juvenile reader of the Bible is interested and respecting which he is catechized: such indica tions of Jewish institutions as have unavoidably got into the narrative, being regarded neither by him nor by his teacher as of moment. So too, when, with hands behind him, he stands to say his lesson out of Pinnock, we see that the things set down for him to learn, are — when and by whom Eng land was invaded, what rulers opposed the invasions and how they were killed, what Alfred did and what Canute said, who fought at Agincourt and who conquered at Flodden, which king abdicated and which usurped, &c.; and if by some chance it comes out that there were serfs in those days, that barons were local rulers, some vassals of others, that subordi nation of them to a central power took place gradually, these are facts treated as relatively unimportant. Nay, the like happens when the boy passes into the hands of his classical master, at home or elsewhere. " Arms and the man " form the end of the story as they form its beginning. After the mythology, which of course is all-essential, come the achieve ments of rulers and soldiers from Agamemnon down to Cyesar: what knowledge is gained of social organization, man ners, ideas, morals, being little more than the biographical statements involve. And the value of the knowledge is so ranked that while it would be a disgrace to be wrong about the amours of Zeus, and while inability to name the com mander at Marathon would be discreditable, it is excusable to know nothing of the social condition that preceded Lycurgus or of the origin and functions of the Areopagus.
Thus the great-man-theory of History finds everywhere a ready-prepared conception — is, indeed, but the definite expres sion of that which is latent in the thoughts of the savage, tacitly asserted in all early traditions, and taught to every child by multitudinous illustrations. The glad acceptance it meets with has sundry more special causes. There is, first, this universal love of personalities, which, active in the aboriginal man, dominates still — a love seen in the urchin who asks you to tell him a story, meaning, thereby, some body's adventures; a love gratified in adults by police-reports, court-news, divorce-cases, accounts of accidents and lists of IS THERE A SOCIAL SCIENCE? 29 births, marriages, and deaths; a love displayed even by con versations in the streets, where fragments of dialogue, heard in passing, show that mostly between men, and always be tween women, the personal pronouns recur every instant. If you want roughly to estimate any one's mental calibre, you cannot do it better than by observing a ratio of generalities to personalities in his talk — how far simple truths about indi viduals are replaced by truths abstracted from numerous experiences of men and things. And when you have thus measured many, you find but a scattered few likely to take anything more than a biographical view of human affairs. In the second place, this great-man-theory com mends itself as promising instruction along with amusement. Being already fond of hearing about people's sayings and doings, it is pleasant news that, to understand the course of civilization, you have only to read diligently the lives of dis tinguished men. What can be a more acceptable doctrine than that while you are satisfying an instinct not very remotely allied to that of the village gossip— while you are receiving through print instead of orally, remarkable facts concerning notable persons, you are gaining that knowledge which will make clear to you why things have happened thus or thus in the world, and will prepare you for forming a right opinion on each question coming before you as a citizen. And then, in the third place, the interpretation of things thus given is so beautifully simple — seems so easy to comprehend. Providing you are content with conceptions that are out of focus, as most people's conceptions are, the solutions it yields appear quite satisfactory. Just as that theory of the Solar System which supposes the planets to have been launched into their orbits by the hand of the Almighty, looks feasible so long as you do not insist on knowing exactly what is meant by the hand of the Almighty; and just as the special creation of plants and animals seems a tenable hypothesis until you try and picture to yourself definitely the process by which one of them is brought into existence; so the genesis of societies by the actions of great men, may be comfortably believed so long as, resting in general notions, you do not ask for particulars.
But now, if, dissatisfied with vagueness, we demand that our ideas shall be brought into focus and exactly defined, we 30 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
discover the hypothesis to be utterly incoherent. If, not stopping at the explanation of social progress as due to the great man, we go back a step and ask whence comes the great man, we find that the theory breaks down completely. The question has two conceivable answers: his origin is super natural, or it is natural. Is his origin supernatural? Then he is a deputy -god, and we have Theocracy once removed — or, rather, not removed at all; for we must then agree with Mr. Schomberg, quoted above, that "the determination of Caesar to invade Britain " was divinely inspired, and that from him, down to "George III. the GREAT and the GOOD," the succes sive rulers were appointed to carry out successive designs. Is this an unacceptable solution? Then the origin of the great man is natural; and immediately this is recognized he must be classed with all other phenomena in the society that gave him birth, as a product of its antecedents. Along with the whole generation of which he forms a minute part — along with its institutions, language, knowledge, manners, and its multitudinous arts and appliances, he is a resultant of an enormous aggregate of forces that have been co-operating for ages. True, if you please to ignore all that common observa tion, verified by physiology, teaches — if you assume that two European parents may produce a Negro child, or that from woolly-haired prognathous Papuans may come a fair, straight- haired infant of Caucasian type — you may assume that the advent of the great man can occur anywhere and under any conditions. If, disregarding those accumulated results of ex perience which current proverbs and the generalizations of psychologists alike express, you suppose that a Newton might be born in a Hottentot family, that a Milton might spring up among the Aiidamanese, that a Howard or a Clarkson might have Fiji parents, then you may proceed with facility to ex plain social progress as caused by the actions of the great man. But if all biological science, enforcing all popular belief, convinces you that by no possibility will an Aristotle come from a father and mother with facial angles of fifty degrees, and that out of a tribe of cannibals, whose chorus in preparation for a feast of human flesh is a kind of rhythmical roaring, there is not the remotest chance of a Beethoven aris ing; then you must admit that the genesis of the great man IS THERE A SOCIAL SCIENCE! 31 depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown. If it be a fact that the great man may modify his nation in. its structure and actions, it is also a fact that there must have been those ante cedent modifications constituting national progress before he could be evolved. Before he can re-make his society, his society must make him. So that all those changes of which he is the proximate initiator have their chief causes in the generations he descended from. If there is to be anything like a real explanation of these changes, it must be sought in that aggregate of conditions out of which both he and they have arisen.
Even were we to grant the absurd supposition that the genesis of the great man does not depend on the antecedents furnished by the society he is born in, there would still be the quite-sufficient facts that he is powerless in the absence of the material and mental accumulations which his society inherits from the past, and that he is powerless in the absence of the co-existing population, character, intelligence, and social ar rangements. Given a Shakspeare, and what dramas could he have written without the multitudinous traditions of civil ized life — without the various experiences which, descending to him from the past, gave wealth to his thought, and without the language which a hundred generations had developed and enriched by use? Suppose a Watt, with all his inventive power, living in a tribe ignorant of iron, or in a tribe that could get only as much iron as a fire blown by hand-bellows will smelt; or suppose him born among ourselves before lathes existed; what chance would there have been of the steam-engine? Imagine a Laplace unaided by that slowly- developed system of Mathematics which we trace back to its beginnings among the Egyptians; how far would he have got with the Mecanique Celeste 1 Nay, the like questions may be put and have like answers, even if we limit ourselves to those classes of great men on whose doings hero-worshippers more particularly dwell — the rulers and generals. Xenophon could not have achieved his celebrated feat had his Ten Thousand been feeble, or cowardly, or insubordinate. Caesar would never have made his conquests without disciplined troops, in- 32 THE STUDY OP SOCIOLOGY.
heriting their prestige and tactics and organization from the Romans who lived before them. And, to take a recent in stance, the strategical genius of Moltke would have triumphed in no great campaigns had there not been a nation of some forty millions to supply soldiers, and had not those soldiers been men of strong bodies, sturdy characters, obedient na tures, and capable of carrying out orders intelligently.
Were any one to marvel over the potency of a grain of det onating powder, which explodes a cannon, propels the shell, and sinks a vessel hit — were he to enlarge on the transcendent virtues of this detonating powder, not mentioning the ignited charge, the shell, the camion, and all that enormous aggre gate of appliances by which these have severally been pro duced, detonating powder included; we should not regard his interpretation as very rational. But it would fairly compare in rationality with this interpretation of social phenomena which, dwelling on the important changes the great man works, ignores that vast pre-existing supply of latent power he unlocks, and that immeasurable accumulation of antecedents to which both he and this power are due.
Recognizing what truth there is in the great-man-theory, wTe may say that, if limited to early societies, the histories of which are little else than endeavours to destroy or subju gate one another, it approximately expresses the fact in rep resenting the capable leader as all-important; though even here it leaves out of sight too much the number and the quality of his followers. But its immense error lies in the assumption that what was once true is true for ever; and that a relation of ruler and ruled which was possible and good at one time is possible and good for all time. Just as fast as this predatory activity of early tribes dimin ishes, just as fast as larger aggregates are formed by con quest or otherwise, just as fast as war ceases to be the busi ness of the whole male population, so fast do societies begin to develop, to show traces of structures and functions not before possible, to acquire increasing complexity along with increasing size, to give origin to new institutions, new activi ties, new ideas, sentiments, and habits; all of which unob trusively make their appearance without the thought of any king or legislator. And if you wish to understand these IS THERE A SOCIAL SCIENCE? 33 phenomena of social evolution, you will not do it though you should read yourself blind over the biographies of all the great rulers on record, down to Frederick the Greedy and Napoleon the Treacherous.
In addition to that passive denial of a Social Science im plied by these two allied doctrines, one or other of which is held by nine men out of ten, there comes from some an active denial of it — either entire or partial. Reasons are given for the belief that no such thing is possible. The invalidity of these reasons can be shown only after the essential nature of Social Science, overlooked by those who give them, has been pointed out; and to point this out here would be to forestal the argument. Some minor criticisms may, however, fitly precede the major criticism. Let us consider first the positions taken up by Mr. Froude: — " When natural causes are liable to be set aside and neutralized by what is called volition, the word Science is out of place. If it is free to a man to choose what he will do or not, do, there is no adequate science of him. If there is a science of him, there is no free choice, and the praise or blame with which we regard one another are im pertinent and out of place." ' " It is in this marvellous power in men to do wrong...that the impossibility stands of forming scientific calculations of what men will do "before the fact, or scientific explanations of what they have done after the fact." 8 " Mr. Buckle would deliver himself from the eccentricities of this and that individual by a doctrine of averages...Unfortunately the average of one generation need not be the average of the next:...no two generations are alike." 9 " There [in history] the phenomena never repeat themselves. There we are dependent wholly on the record of things said to have hap pened once, but which never happen or can happen a second time. There no experiment is possible; we can watch for no recurring fact to test the worth of our conjectures." 10 Here Mr. Froude changes the venue, and joins issue on the old battle-ground of free will versus necessity: declaring a Social Science to be incompatible with free will. The first extract implies, not simply that individual volition is incal culable — that " there is no adequate science of " man (no Sci ence of Psychology); but it also asserts, by implication, that 4 34 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
there are no causal relations among his states of mind: the volition by which " natural causes are liable to be set aside," being1 put in antithesis to natural, must be supernatural. Hence we are, in fact, carried back to that primitive form of interpretation contemplated at the outset. A further com ment is, that because volitions of some kinds cannot be fore seen, Mr. Froude argues as though no volitions can be fore seen: ignoring the fact that the simple volitions determining ordinary conduct, are so regular that prevision having a high degree of probability is easy. If, in crossing a street, a man sees a carriage coming upon him, you may safely assert that, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, be will try to get out of the way. If, being pressed to catch a train, he knows that by one route it is a mile to the station and by another two miles, you may conclude with consider able confidence that he will take the one-mile route; and should he be aware that losing the train will lose him a for tune, it is pretty certain that, if he has but ten minutes to do the mile in, he will either run or call a cab. If he can buy next door a commodity of daily consumption better and cheaper than at the other end of the town, we may affirm that, if he does not buy next door, some special relation be tween him and the remoter shop-keeper furnishes a strong reason for taking a worse commodity at greater cost of money and trouble. And though, if he has an estate to dispose of, it is within the limits of possibility that he will sell it to A for £1,000, though B has offered £2,000 for it; yet the unusual motives leading to such an act need scarcely be taken into account as qualifying the generalization that a man will sell to the highest bidder. Now, since the predominant activities of citizens are determined by motives of this degree of regu larity, there must be resulting social phenomena that have corresponding degrees of regularity — greater degrees, indeed, since in them the effects of exceptional motives become lost in the effects of the aggregate of ordinary motives. Another comment may be added. Mr. Froude exaggerates the antith esis he draws by using a conception of science which is too narrow: he speaks as though there were no science but exact science. Scientific previsions, both qualitative and quantita tive, have various degrees of definiteness; and because among IS THERE A SOCIAL SCIENCE! 35 certain classes of phenomena the previsions are approximate only, it is not, therefore, to be said that there is no science of those phenomena: if there is some prevision, there is some sci ence. Take, for example, Meteorology. The Derby has been run in a snow-storm, and you may occasionally want a fire in July; but such anomalies do not prevent us from being per fectly certain that the coming summer will be warmer than the past winter. Our south-westerly gales in the autumn may come early or may come late, may be violent or moderate, at one time or at intervals; but that there will be an excess of wind from the south-west at that part of the year we may be sure. The like holds with the relations of rain and dry weather to the quantity of water in the air and the weight of the at mospheric column: though exactly-true predictions cannot be made, approximately-true ones can. So that, even were there not among social phenomena more definite relations than these (arid the all-important ones are far more definite), there would still be a Social Science. Once more, Mr. Froude con tends that the facts presented in history do not furnish subject- matter for science, because they '* never repeat themselves,"— because u we can watch for no recurring fact to test the worth of our conjectures." I will not meet this assertion by the counter-assertion often made, that historic phenomena do re peat themselves; but, admitting that Mr. Froude here touches on one of the great difficulties of the Social Science (that social phenomena are in so considerable a degree different in each case from what they were in preceding cases), I still find a sufficient reply. For in no concrete science is there absolute repetition; and in some concrete sciences the repetition is no more specific than in Sociology. Even in the most exact of them, Astronomy, the combinations are never the same twice over; the repetitions are but approximate. And on turning to Geology, we find that, though the processes of denudation, deposition, upheaval, subsidence, have been ever going on in conformity with laws more or less clearly generalized, the effects have been always new in their proportions and ar rangements; though not so completely new as to forbid com parisons, consequent deductions, and approximate previsions based on them.
Were there no such replies as these to Mr. Froude's rea- 36 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
sons, there would still be the reply furnished by his own inter pretations of history; which make it clear that his denial must be understood as but a qualified one. Against his pixrfessed theory may be set his actual practice, which, as it seems to me, tacitly asserts that explanations of some social phenomena in terms of cause and effect are possible, if not explanations of all social phenomena. Thus, respecting the Vagrancy Act of 1547, which made a slave of a confirmed vagrant, Mr. Froude says: — " In the condition of things which was now commencing...neither this nor any other penal act against idleness could be practically enforced." " That is to say, the operation of an agency brought into play was neu tralized by the operation of natural causes coexisting. Again, respecting the enclosure of commons and amalgamation of farms, &c., Mr. Froude writes: — " Under the late reign these tendencies had, with great difficulty, been held partially in check, but on the death of Henry they acquired new force and activity." ia Or, in other words, certain social forces previ ously antagonized by certain other forces, produced their nat-' ural effects when the antagonism ceased. Yet again, Mr. Froude explains that, " unhappily, two causes [debased cur rency and an alteration of the farming system] were operating to produce the rise of prices." I3 And throughout Mr. Froude's History of England there are, I need scarcely say, other cases in which he ascribes social changes to causes rooted in human nature. Moreover, in his lecture on The Science of History, there is a distinct enunciation of "one lesson of History;" namely, that " the moral law is written on the tablets of eter nity Justice and truth alone endure and live. In justice and falsehood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes at last to them, in French revolutions and other terrible ways." And elsewhere he says that " the miseries and horrors which are now destroying the Chinese Empire are the direct and or ganic results of the moral profligacy of its inhabitants." " Each of these statements tacitly asserts that certain social rela tions, and actions of certain kinds, are inevitably beneficial, and others inevitably detrimental — an historic induction fur nishing a basis for positive deduction. So that we must not interpret Mr. Froude too literally when he alleges the " impos sibility of forming scientific calculations of what men will IS THERE A SOCIAL SCIENCE? 37 do before the fact, or scientific explanations of what they have done after the fact."
Another writer who denies the possibility of a Social Science, or who, at any rate, admits it only as a science which lias its relations of phenomena so traversed by providential influences that it does not come within the proper definition of a science, is Canon Kingsley. In his address on The Limits of Exact Science as applied to History, he says: —