to re-fashion the people whom one wishes to make free ": the implication being1 that a re-fashioning is practicable. There it is taken as undeniable that when you have taught children what they ought to do to be good citizens, they will become good citizens. Elsewhere it is held to be a truth beyond question, that if by law temptations to drink are removed from men, they will not only cease to drink, but thereafter cease to commit crimes. And yet the delusiveness of all such hopes is obvious enough to any one not blinded by a hypoth esis, or carried away by an enthusiasm. The fact, often pointed out to temperance-fanatics, that some of the soberest nations in Europe yield a proportion of crime higher than our own, might suffice to show them that England would not be suddenly moralized if they carried their proposed re strictions into effect. The superstition that good behaviour is to be forthwith produced by lessons learnt out of schoolbooks, which was long ago statistically disproved,8 would, but for preconceptions, be utterly dissipated by observing to what a slight extent knowledge affects conduct — by observing that the dishonesty implied in the adulterations of tradesmen and manufacturers, in fraudulent bankruptcies, in bubblecompanies, in " cooking " of railway accounts and financial prospectuses, differs only in form, and not in amount, from the dishonesty of the uneducated — by observing how amaz ingly little the teachings given to medical students affect their lives, and how even the most experienced medical men have their prudence scarcely at all increased by their infor mation. Similarly, the Utopian ideas which come out afresh along with every new political scheme, from the " paper-con stitutions " of the Abbe Sieves down to the lately-published programme of M. Louis Blanc, and from agitations for voteby-ballot up to those which have a Eepublic for their aim, might, but for this tacit belief we are contemplating, be extinguished by the facts perpetually and startlingly thrust on our attention. Again and again for three generations has France been showing to the world how impossible it is essen tially to change the type of a social structure by any re arrangement wrought out through a revolution. However great the transformation may for a time seem, the original thing re-appears in disguise. Out of the nominally-free SUBJECTIVE DIFFICULTIES— INTELLECTUAL, m government set up a new despotism arises, differing from the old by having a new shibboleth and new men to utter it; but identical with the old in the determination to put down opposition and in the means used to this end. Liberty, wThen obtained, is forthwith surrendered to an avowed autocrat; or, as we have seen within this year, is allowed to lapse into the hands of one who claims the reality of autocracy without its title. Nay, the change is, in fact, even less; for the regulative organization which ramifies throughout French society, con tinues unaltered by these changes at the governmental centre. The bureaucratic system persists equally under Imperialist, Constitutional, and Republican arrangements. As the Due d'Audiffret-Pasquier pointed out, "Empires fall, Ministries pass away, but Bureaux remain." The aggregate of forces and tendencies embodied, not only in the structural arrange ments holding the nation together, but in the ideas and sentiments of its units, is so powerful, that the excision of a part, even though it be the government, is quickly fol lowed by the substitution of a like part. It needs but to recall the truth exemplified some chapters back, that the properties of the aggregate are determined by the properties of its units, to see at once that so long as the characters of citizens remain substantially unchanged, there can be no sub stantial change in the political organization which has slowly been evolved by them.
This double difficulty of thought, with the double set of delusions fallen into by those who do not surmount it, is, indeed, naturally associated with the once-universal, and stillgeneral, belief that societies arise by manufacture, instead of arising, as they do, by evolution. Recognize the truth that incorporated masses of men grow, and acquire their structural characters through modification upon modification, and there are excluded these antithetical errors that humanity remains the same and that humanity is readily alterable; and along with exclusion of these errors comes admission of the infer ence, that the changes which have brought social arrange ments to a form so different from past forms, will in future carry them on to forms as different from those now existing. Once become habituated to the thought of a continuous unfolding of the whole and of each part, and these misleading ideas disappear. Take a word and observe how, while chang ing1, it gives origin in course of time to a family of words, each changing member of which similarly has progeny; take a custom, as that of giving eggs at Easter, which has now developed in Paris into the fashion of making expensive presents of every imaginable kind inclosed in imitation-eggs, becoming at length large enough to contain a brougham, and which entails so great a tax that people go abroad to evade it; take a law, once quite simple and made to meet a special case, and see how it eventually, by successive additions and changes, grows up into a complex group of laws, as, out of two laws of William the Conqueror came our whole legal system regulating land-tenure; * take a social appliance, as the Press, and see how from the news-letter, originally private and written, and then assuming the shape of a printed fly-leaf to a written private letter, there has slowly evolved this vast assemblage of journals and periodicals, daily, weekly, general, and local, that have, individually and as an aggregate, grown in size while growing in heterogeneity; do this, and do the like with all other established institutions, agencies, products, and there will come naturally the conviction that now, too, there are various germs of things which will in the future develop in ways no one imagines, and take shares in pro found transformations of society and of its members: trans formations that are hopeless as immediate results, but certain as ultimate results.
Try to fit a hand with five fingers into a glove with four. Your difficulty aptly parallels the difficulty of putting a com plex conception into a mind not having a proportionately-com plex faculty. As fast as the several terms and relations which make up a thought become many and varied, there must be brought into play many and varied parts of the intellectual structure, before the thought can be comprehended: and if some of these parts are wanting, only fragments of the thought can be taken in. Consider an instance.
What is meant by the ratio of A to B, may be explained to a boy by drawing a short line A and a long line B, telling him that A is said to bear a small ratio to B; and then, after lengthening the line A, telling him that A is now said to bear SUBJECTIVE DIFFICULTIES— INTELLECTUAL. H3 a larger ratio to B. But suppose I have to explain what is meant by saying that the ratio of A to B, equals the ratio of C to D. Instead of two different quantities and one relation, there are now four different quantities and three relations. To understand the proposition, the boy has to think of A and B and their difference, and, without losing his intellectual grasp of these, he has to think of C and D and their difference, and, without losing his intellectual grasp of these, he has to think of the two differences as each having a like relation to its pair of quantities. Thus the number of terms and relations to be kept before the mind, is such as to imply the co-operation of many more agents of thought; any of which being absent, the proposition cannot be understood: the boy must be older before he will understand it, and, if uncultured, will probably never understand it at all. Let us pass on to a conception of still greater complexity — say that the ratio of A to B varies as the ratio of C to D. Far more numerous things have now to be represented in consciousness with approximate simulta neity. A and B have to be thought of as not constant in their lengths, but as one or both of them changing in their lengths; so that their difference is indefinitely variable. Similarly with C and D. And then the variability of the ratio in each case being duly conceived in terms of lines that lengthen and shorten, the thing to be understood is, that whatever differ ence any change brings about between A and B, the relation it bears to one or other of them, is always like that which the difference simultaneously arising between C and D bears to one or other of them. The greater multiplicity of ideas re quired for mentally framing this proposition, evidently puts it further beyond the reach of faculties not developed by ap propriate culture, or not capable of being so developed. And as the type of proposition becomes still more involved, as it does when two such groups of dependent variables are com pared and conclusions drawn, it begins to require a grasp that is easy only to the disciplined mathematician.
One who does not possess that complexity of faculty which, as we here see, is requisite for grasping a complex conception, may, in cases like these, become conscious of his incapacity; not from perceiving what he lacks, but from perceiving that another person achieves results which he cannot achieve.
But where no such thing as the verifying of exact predictions comes in to prove to one of inferior faculty that his faculty is inferior, he is usually unaware of the inferiority. To im agine a higher mode of consciousness, is in some degree to have it; so that until he has it in some degree, he cannot really conceive of its existence. An illustration or two will make this clear.
Take a child on your knee, and, turning over with him some engravings of landscapes, note what he observes. " I see a man in a boat," says he, pointing. " Look at the cows coming down the hill." " And there is a little boy playing with a dog." These and other such remarks, mostly about the living objects in each scene, are all you get from him. Never by any chance does he utter a word respecting the scene as a whole. There is an absolute unconsciousness of anything to be pleased with in the combination of wood and water and mountain. And while the child is entirely without this com plex aesthetic consciousness, you see that he has not the re motest idea that such a consciousness exists in others but is wanting in himself. Note now a case in which a kin dred defect is betrayed by an adult. You have, perhaps, in the course of your life, had some musical culture; and can recall the stages through which you have passed. In early days a symphony was a mystery; and you were somewhat puzzled to find others applauding it. An unfolding of musical faculty, that went on slowly through succeeding years, brought some appreciation; and now these complex musical combina tions which once gave you little or no pleasure, give you more pleasure than any others. Eemembering all this, you suspect that your indifference to certain still more involved musical combinations may arise from incapacity in you, and not from faults in them. See, on the other hand, what happens with one who has undergone no such series of changes — say, an old naval officer, whose life at sea kept him out of the way of con certs and operas. You hear him occasionally confess, or rather boast, how much he enjoys the bagpipes. While the last cadences of a sonata which a young lady has just played, are still in your ears, he goes up to her and asks whether she can play " Polly, put the kettle on," or " Johnny comes march ing home." And then, when concerts are talked about at SUBJECTIVE DIFFICULTIES— INTELLECTUAL. H5 table, he seizes the occasion for expressing his dislike of clas sical music, and scarcely conceals his contempt for those who go to hear it. On contemplating his mental state, you see that along with absence of the ability to grasp complex mu sical combinations, there goes no consciousness of the absence — there is no suspicion that such complex combinations exist, and that other persons have faculties for appreciating them.
And now for the application of this general truth to our subject. The conceptions with which sociological science is concerned, are complex beyond all others. In the absence of faculty having a corresponding complexity, they cannot be grasped. Here, however, as in other cases, the absence of an adequately-complex faculty is not accompanied by any con sciousness of incapacity. Rather do we find that deficiency in the required kind of mental grasp, is accompanied by ex treme confidence of judgment on sociological questions, and a ridicule of those who, after long discipline, begin to perceive what there is to be understood, and how difficult is the right understanding of it. A simple illustration of this will prepare the way for more-involved illustrations.
A few months ago the Times gave us an account of the last achievement in automatic printing — the " Walter-Press," by which its own immense edition is thrown off in a few hours every morning. Suppose a reader of the description, adequately familiar with mechanical details, follows what he reads step by step with full comprehension: perhaps making his ideas more definite by going to see the apparatus at work and ques tioning the attendants. Now he goes away thinking he un derstands all about it. Possibly, under its aspect as a feat in mechanical engineering, he does so. Possibly, also, under its biographical aspect, as implying in Mr. Walter and those who co-operated with him certain traits, moral and intellec tual, he does so. But under its sociological aspect he prob ably has no notion of its meaning; and does not even suspect that it has a sociological aspect. Yet if he begins to look into the genesis of the thing, he will find that he is but 011 the threshold of the full explanation. On asking not what is its proximate but what is its remote origin, he finds, in the first place, that this automatic printing-machine is lineally descended from other automatic printing-machines, which have undergone successive developments— each pre-supposing others that went before: without cylinder printing-machines long previously used and improved, there would have been no "Walter-Press." He inquires a step further, and discovers that this last improvement became possible only by the help of papier-mache stereotyping, which, first employed for mak ing flat plates, afforded the possibility of making cylindrical plates. And tracing this back, he finds that plaster-of-paris stereotyping came before it, and that there was another pro cess before that. Again, he learns that this highest form of automatic printing, like the many less-developed forms pre ceding it, depended for its practicability on the introduction of rollers for distributing ink, instead of the hand-implements used by " printer 's-devils " fifty years ago; which rollers, again, could never have been made fit for their present purposes, without the discovery of that curious elastic compound out of which they are cast. And then, on tracing the more remote antecedents, he finds an ancestry of hand printing-presses, which, through generations, had been successively im proved. Now, perhaps, he thinks he understands the ap paratus, considered as a sociological fact. Far from it. Its multitudinous parts, which will work together only when highly finished and exactly adjusted, came from machineshops; where there are varieties of complicated, highly-fin ished engines for turning cylinders, cutting out wheels, plan ing bars, and so forth; and on the pre-existence of these the existence of this printing-machine depended. If he inquires into the history of these complex automatic tools, he finds they have severally been, in the slow course of mechanical progress, brought to their present perfection by the help of preceding complex automatic tools of various kinds, that co-operated to make their component parts — each larger, or more accurate, lathe or planing-machine having been made possible by pre existing lathes and planing-machines, inferior in size or exact ness. And so if he traces back the whole contents of the machine-shop, with its many different instruments, he comes in course of time to the blacksmith's hammer and anvil; and even, eventually, to still ruder appliances. The explana tion is now completed, he thinks. Not at all. No such pro cess as that which the " Walter-Press " shows us, was possible SUBJECTIVE DIFFICULTIES— INTELLECTUAL. H?
until there had been invented, and slowly perfected, a papermachine capable of making- miles of paper without break.
Thus there is the genesis of the paper-machine involved, and that of the multitudinous appliances and devices which pre ceded it, and are at present implied by it. Have we now got to the end of the matter? No; we have just glanced at one group of the antecedents. All this development of me chanical appliances — this growth of the iron-manufacture, this extensive use of machinery made from iron, this production of so many machines for making machines — has had for one of its causes the abundance of the raw materials, coal and iron; has had for another of its causes the insular position which has favoured peace and the increase of industrial ac tivity. There have been moral causes at work too. Without that readiness to sacrifice present ease to future benefit, which is implied by enterprise, there would never have arisen the machine in question, — nay, there would never have arisen the multitudinous improved instruments and processes that have made it possible. And beyond the moral traits which enter prise pre-supposes, there are those pre-supposed by efficient co-operation. Without mechanical engineers who fulfilled their contracts tolerably well, by executing work accurately, neither this machine itself nor the machines that made it, could have been produced; and without artizans having consider able conscientiousness, no master could insure accurate work.
Try to get such products out of an inferior race, and you will find defective character an insuperable obstacle. So, too, will you find defective intelligence an insuperable obstacle. The skilled artizan is not an accidental product, either morally or intellectually. The intelligence needed for making a new thing is not everywhere to be found; nor is there every where to be found the accuracy of perception and nicety of execution without which no complex machine can be so made that it will act. Exactness of finish in machines has devel oped pari passu with exactness of perception in artizans. In spect some mechanical appliance made a century ago, and you may see that, even had all other requisite conditions been fulfilled, want of the requisite skill in workmen would have been a fatal obstacle to the production of an engine requiring so many delicate adjustments. So that there are implied in this mechanical achievement, not only our slowly-generated industrial state, with its innumerable products and processes, but also the slowly-moulded moral and intellectual natures of masters and workmen. Has nothing now been forgotten?
Yes, we have left out a whole division of all-important social phenomena — those which we group as the progress of knowl edge. Along with the many other developments that have been necessary antecedents to this machine, there has been the development of Science. The growing and improving arts of all kinds, have been helped up, step after step, by those generalized experiences, becoming ever wider, more complete, more exact, which make up what we call Mathematics, Phys ics, Chemistry, &c. Without a considerably-developed Ge ometry, there could never have been the machines for mak ing machines; still less this machine that has proceeded from them. Without a developed Physics, there would have been no steam-engine to move these various automatic appliances, primary and secondary; nor would the many implied metallurgic processes have beeri brought to the needful perfection. And in the absence of a developed Chemistry, many other requirements, direct and indirect, could not have been ade quately fulfilled. So that, in fact, this organization of knowl edge which began with civilization, had to reach something like its present stage before such a machine could come into existence; supposing all other pre-requisites to be satis fied. Surely we have now got to the end of the history.
Not quite: there yet remains an essential factor. No one goes on year after year spending thousands of pounds and much time, and persevering through disappointment and anxiety, without a strong motive: the " Walter-Press " was not a mere tour de force. Why, then, was it produced? To meet an immense demand with great promptness — to print, with one machine, 16,000 copies per hour. Whence arises this demand? From an extensive reading public, brought in the course of generations to have a keen morning-appetite for news of all kinds — merchants who need to know the latest prices at home and the latest telegrams from abroad; politi cians who must learn the result of last night's division, be informed of the new diplomatic move, and read the speeches at a meeting; sporting men who look for the odds and the SUBJECTIVE DIFFICULTIES— INTELLECTUAL. H9 result of yesterday's race; ladies who want to see the births, marriages, and deaths. And on asking the origin of these many desires to be satisfied, they prove to be concomitants of our social state in general — its trading, political, philanthropic, and other activities; for in societies where these are not domi nant, the demand for news of various kinds rises to no such intensity. See, then, how enormously involved is the gen esis of this machine, as a sociological phenomenon. A whole encyclopaedia of mechanical inventions — some dating from the earliest times — go to the explanation of it. Thousands of years of discipline, by which the impulsive improvident na ture of the savage has been evolved into a comparatively selfcontrolling nature, capable of sacrificing present ease to future good, are pre-supposed. There is pre-supposed the equallylong discipline by which the inventive faculty, almost wholly absent in the savage, has been evolved; and by which accu racy, not even conceived by the savage, has been cultivated. And there is further pre-supposed the slow political and social progress, at once cause and consequence of these other changes, that has brought us to a state in which such a ma chine finds a function to fulfil.
The complexity of a sociological fact, and the difficulty of adequately grasping it, will now perhaps be more apparent. For as in this case there has been a genesis, so has there been in every other case, be it of institution, arrangement, custom, belief, &c.; but while in this case the genesis is comparatively easy to trace, because of the comparatively-concrete character of process and product, it is in other cases difficult to trace, be cause the factors are mostly not of sensible kinds. And yet only when the genesis has been traced— only when the ante cedents of all orders have been observed in their co-operation, generation after generation, through past social states — is there reached that interpretation of a fact which makes it a part of sociological science, properly understood. If, for instance, the true meaning of such phenomena as those presented by tradecombinations is to be seen, it is needful to go back to those remote Old-English periods when analogous causes produced analogous results. As Brentano points out — "The workmen formed their Trade- Unions against the aggressions of the then rising manufacturing lords, as in earlier times the old freemen formed their Frith-Gilds against the tyranny of medieval magnates, and the free handicraftsmen their Craft-Gilds against the aggressions of the Old-burghers." 7 Then, having studied the successive forms of such organiza tions in relation to the successive industrial states, there have to be observed the ways in which they are severally related to other phenomena of their respective times — the political in stitutions, the class- distinctions, the family-arrangements, the modes of distribution and degrees of intercourse between localities, the amounts of knowledge, the religious beliefs, the morals, the sentiments, the customs, the ideas. Considered as parts of a nation, having structures that form parts of its struc ture, and actions that modify and are modified by its actions, these trade-societies can have their full meanings perceived, only when they are studied in their serial genesis through many centuries, and their changes considered in relation to simultaneous changes throughout the social organism. And even then there remains the deeper inquiry — How does it hap pen that in nations of certain types no analogous institutions exist, and that in nations of other types the analogous institu tions have taken forms more or less different?
That phenomena so involved cannot be seen as they truly are, even by the highest intelligence at present existing, is tolerably manifest. And it is manifest also that a Science of Society is likely for a long time hence to be recognized by but few; since, not only is there in most cases an absence of faculty complex enough to grasp its complex phenomena, but there is mostly an absolute unconsciousness that there are any such complex phenomena to be grasped.
To the want of due complexity of conceptive faculty, has to be added, as a further difficulty, the want of due plasticity of conceptive faculty. The general ideas of nearly all men have been framed out of experiences gathered within com paratively-narrow areas; and general ideas so framed are far too rigid readily to admit the multitudinous and varied com binations of facts which Sociology presents. The child of Puri tanic parents, brought up in the belief that Sabbath-breaking brings after it all kinds of transgressions, and having had pointed out, in the village or small town that formed his world, various instances of this connection, is somewhat per plexed in after-years, when acquaintance with more of his countrymen has shown him exemplary lives joined with nonobservance of the Sunday. When during continental travel he finds that the best people of foreign societies neglect in junctions which he once thought essential to right conduct, he still further widens his originally small and stiff concep tion. Now the process thus exemplified in the change of a single superficial belief, has to be gone through with numer ous beliefs of deeper kinds, before there can be reached the flexibility of thought required for dealing properly with socio logical phenomena. Not in one direction, but in most direc tions, we have to learn that those connexions of social facts which we commonly regard as natural and even necessary, are not necessary, and often have 110 particular naturalness. On contemplating past social states, we are continually re minded that many arrangements, and practices, and convic tions, that seem matters of course, are very modern; and that others which we now regard as impossible were quite possible a few centuries ago. Still more on studying societies alien in race as well as in stage of civilization, we perpetually meet with things contrary to everything we should have thought probable, and even such as we should have scarcely hit upon in trying to conceive the most unlikely things.
Take in illustration the varieties of domestic relations. That monogamy is not the only kind of marriage, we are early taught by our Bible-lessons. But though the conception of polygamy is thus made somewhat familiar, it does not occur to us that polyandry is also a possible arrangement; and we are surprised on first learning that it exists, and was once extremely general. When we contemplate these marital institutions unlike our own, we cannot at first imagine that they are practised with a sense of propriety like that with which we practise ours. Yet Livingstone narrates that in a tribe bordering one of the Central African lakes, the women were quite disgusted on hearing that in England a man has only one wife. This is a feeling by no means peculiar to them.
" An intelligent Kandyan chief with whom Mr. Bailey visited these Veddahs was ' perfectly scandalised at the utter barbarism of living with only one wife, and never parting until separated by death.' It •was, he said, 'just like the wanderoos ' (monkeys)." 8 Again, one would suppose that, as a matter of course, mo nogamy, polygamy, and polyandry, in its several varieties, ex hausted the possible forms of marriage. An utterly-unex pected form is furnished us by one of the Arabian tribes. Marriage, among them, is for so many days in the week — commonly for four days in the week, which is said to be " the custom in the best families: " the wife during the off-days be ing regarded as an independent woman who may do what she pleases. We are a little surprised, too, on reading that by some of the Hill-tribes of India, unfaithfulness on the part of the husband is held to be a grave offence, but unfaithfulness on the part of the wife a trivial one. We assume, as self-evi dent, that good usage of a wife by a husband, implies, among other things, absence of violence; and hence it seems scarcely imaginable that in some places the opposite criterion holds. Yet it does so among the Tartars.