with contempt, come presently to be looked back upon with more calmness, and with recognition of the fact that they did good service in their time — nay, perhaps with the doubt whether they were not thrown off too soon. This re-action may be feeble or may be strong; but only when it takes place in due amount is there a possibility of balanced judgments either on religious questions or on those questions of Social Science into which the religious element enters.
Here we have to glance at the sociological errors caused by the anti-theological bias among those in whom it does not become qualified. Thinking only of what is erroneous in the rejected creed, they ignore the truth for which it stands; con templating only its mischiefs they overlook its benefits; and doing this, they think that nothing but good would result from its general abandonment. Let us observe the tacit as sumptions made in drawing this conclusion.
It is assumed, in the first place, that adequate guidance for conduct in life, private and public, could be had; and that a moral code, rationally elaborated by men as they now are, would be duly operative upon them. Neither of these propo sitions commends itself when we examine the evidence. We have but to observe human action as it meets us at every turn, to see that the average intelligence, incapable of guiding conduct even in simple matters, where but a very moderate reach of reason would suffice, must fail in apprehending with due clearness the natural sanctions of ethical principles. The unthinking ineptitude with which even the routine of life is carried on by the mass of men, shows clearly that they have nothing like the insight required for self-guidance in the ab sence of an authoritative code of conduct. Take a day's ex perience, and observe the lack of thought indicated from hour to hour.
You rise in the morning, and, while dressing, take up a phial containing a tonic, of which a little has been prescribed for you; but after the first few drops have been counted, succeeding drops run down the side of the phial, for the rea son that the lip is shaped without regard to the require ment. Yet millions of such phials are annually made by glass-makers, and sent out by thousands of druggists: so small being the amount of sense brought to bear on busi ness. Now, turning to the looking-glass, you find that, if not of the best make, it fails to preserve the attitude in which you put it; or, if what is called a " box " looking-glass, you see that maintenance of its position is insured by an expensive appli ance which would have been superfluous had a little reason been used. Were the adjustment such that the centre of grav ity of the glass came in the line joining the points of support (which would be quite as easy an adjustment), the glass would remain steady in whatever attitude you gave it. Yet, year after year, tens of thousands of looking-glasses are made with out regard to so simple a need. Presently you go down to breakfast, and taking some Harvey or other sauce with your fish, find the bottle has a defect like that which you found in the phial: it is sticky from the drops which trickle down, and occasionally stain the table-cloth. Here are other groups of traders similarly so economical of thought, that they do noth ing to rectify this obvious inconvenience. Having break fasted, you take up the paper, and, before sitting down, wish to put some coal on the fire. But the lump you seize with the tongs slips out of them, and, if large, you make several at tempts before you succeed in lifting it: all because the ends of the tongs are smooth. Makers and venders of fire-irons go on, generation after generation, without meeting this evil by simply giving to these smooth ends some projecting points, or even roughening them by a few burrs made with a chisel.
Having at length grasped the lump and put it on the fire, you begin to read; but before getting through the first column you are reminded, by the changes of position which your sensa tions prompt, that men still fail to make easy-chairs. And yet the guiding principle is simple enough. Just that advan tage secured by using a soft seat in place of a hard one — the advantage, namely, of spreading over a larger area the pres sure of the weight to be borne, and so making the pressure less intense at any one point — is an advantage to be sought in the form of the chair. Ease is to be gained by making the shapes and relative inclinations of seat and back, such as will evenly distribute the weight of the trunk and limbs over the widestpossible supporting surface, and with the least. straining of the parts out of their natural attitudes. And yet only now, after these thousands of years of civilization, are there being reached (and that not rationally but empirically) approxima tions to the structure required.
Such are the experiences of the first hour; and so they con tinue all the day through. If you watch and criticize, you may see that the immense majority bring to bear, even on those actions which it is the business of their lives to carry on effectually, an extremely-small amount of faculty. Employ a workman to do something that is partly new, and not the clearest explanations and sketches will prevent him from blundering; and to any expression of surprise, he will reply that he was not brought up to such work: scarcely ever be traying the slightest shame in confessing that he cannot do a thing he was not taught to do. Similarly throughout the higher grades of activity. Remember how generally improve ments in manufactures come from outsiders, and you are at once shown with what mere unintelligent routine manufactures are commonly carried on. Examine into the management of mercantile concerns, and you perceive that those engaged in them mostly do nothing more than move in the ruts that have gradually been made for them by the process of trial and error during a long succession of generations. Indeed, it almost seems as though most men made it their aim to get through life with the least possible expenditure of thought.
How, then, can there be looked for such power of selfguidance as, in the absence of inherited authoritative rules, would require them to understand why, in the nature of things, these modes of action are injurious and those modes beneficial — would require them to pass beyond proximate re sults, and see clearly the involved remote results, as worked out on self, on others, and on society?
The incapacity need not, indeed, be inferred: it may be seen, if we do but take an action concerning which the sancti fied code is silent. Listen to a conversation about gambling; and, where reprobation is expressed, note the grounds of the reprobation. That it tends towards the ruin of the gambler; that it risks the welfare of family and friends; that it alienates from business, and leads into bad company —these, and such as these, are the reasons given for condemning the practice.
Rarely is there any recognition of the fundamental reason. Rarely is gambling condemned because it is a kind of action by which pleasure is obtained at the cost of pain to another. The normal obtaiiiment of gratification, or of the money which purchases gratification, implies, firstly, that there has been put forth equivalent effort of a kind which, in some way, furthers the general good; and implies, secondly, that those from whom money is received, get, directly or indirectly, equivalent satisfactions. But in gambling the opposite hap pens. Benefit received does not imply effort put forth; and the happiness of the winner involves the misery of the loser. This kind of action is therefore essentially anti-social — sears the sympathies, cultivates a hard egoism, and so produces a general deterioration of character and conduct.
Clearly, then, a visionary hope misleads those who think that in an imagined age of reason, which might forthwith re place an age of beliefs but partly rational, conduct would be cor rectly guided by a code directly based on considerations of util ity. A utilitarian system of ethics cannot at present be rightly thought out even by the select few, and is quite beyond the men tal reach of the many. The value of the inherited and theolog ically-enforced code is that it formulates, with some approach to truth, the accumulated results of past human experience. It has not arisen rationally but empirically. During past times mankind have eventually gone right after trying all possible ways of going wrong. The wrong-goings have been habitually checked by disaster, and pain, and death; and the right-goings have been continued because not thus checked. There has been a growth of beliefs corresponding to these good and evil results. Hence the code of conduct, embodying discoveries slowly and almost unconsciously made through a long series of generations, has transcendent authority on its side.
Nor is this all. Were it possible forthwith to replace a traditionally-established system of rules, supposed to be supernaturally warranted, by a system of rules rationally elabo rated, no such rationally-elaborated system of rules would be adequately operative. To think that it would, implies the thought that men's beliefs and actions are throughout determined by intellect; whereas they are in much larger degrees determined by feeling.
There is a wide difference between the formal assent given to a proposition that cannot be denied, and the efficient belief which produces active conformity to it. Often the most con clusive argument fails to produce a conviction capable of swaying conduct; and often mere assertion, with great em phasis and signs of confidence on the part of the utterer, will produce a fixed conviction where there is no evidence, and even in spite of adverse evidence. Especially is this so among those of little culture. Not only may we see that strength of affirmation and an authoritative manner create faith in them; but we may see that their faith sometimes actually decreases if explanation is given. The natural language of belief dis played by another, is that which generates their belief — not the logically-conclusive evidence. The dependencies of this they cannot clearly follow; and in trying to follow, they so far lose themselves that premisses and conclusion, not per ceived to stand in necessary relation, are rendered less coher ent than by putting them in juxtaposition and strengthening their connexion by a wave of the emotion which emphatic affirmation raises.
Nay, it is even true that the most cultivated intelligences, capable of criticizing evidence and valuing arguments to a nicety, are not thereby made rational to the extent that they are guided by intellect apart from emotion. Continually men of the widest knowledge deliberately do things they know to be injurious; suffer the evils that transgression brings; are deterred awhile by the vivid remembrance of them; and, when the remembrance has become faint, transgress again. Often the emotional consciousness over-rides the intellectual consciousness absolutely, as hypochondriacal patients show us. A sufferer from depressed spirits may have the testimony of his physicians, verified by numerous past experiences of his own, showing that his gloomy anticipations are illusions caused by his bodily state; and yet the conclusive proofs that they are irrational do not enable him to get rid of them: he continues to feel sure that disasters are coming on him.
All which, and many kindred facts, make it certain that the operativeness of a moral code depends much more on the emotions called forth by its injunctions, than on the con sciousness of the utility of obeying such injunctions. The feelings drawn out during early life towards moral principles, by witnessing the social sanction and the religious sanction they possess, influence conduct far more than the perception that conformity to such principles conduces to welfare. And in the absence of the feelings which manifestations of these sanctions arouse, the utilitarian belief is commonly inade quate to produce conformity.
It is true that the sentiments in the higher races, and espe cially in superior members of the higher races, are now in considerable degrees adjusted to these principles: the sympa thies that have become organic in the most developed men, produce spontaneous conformity to altruistic precepts. Even for such, however, the social sanction, which is in part de rived from the religious sanction, is important as strengthen ing the influence of these precepts. And for persons endowed with less of moral sentiment, the social and religious sanctions are still more important aids to guidance.
Thus the anti-theological bias leads to serious errors, both when it ignores the essential share hitherto taken by religious systems in giving force to certain principles of action, in part absolutely good and in part good relatively to the needs of the time, and again when it prompts the notion that these principles might now be so established on rational bases as to rule men effectually through their enlightened intellects.
These errors, however, which the anti-theological bias pro duces, are superficial compared with the error that remains. The antagonism to superstitious beliefs habitually leads to entire rejection of them. They are thrown aside with the as sumption that along with so much that is wrong there is nothing right. Whereas the truth, recognizable only after antagonism has spent itself, is that the wrong beliefs rejected are superficial, and that a right belief hidden by them remains when they have been rejected. Those who defend, equally with those who assail, religious creeds, suppose that every thing turns on the maintenance of the particular dogmas at issue; whereas the dogmas are but temporary forms of that which is permanent.
The process of Evolution which has gradually modified and advanced men's conceptions of the Universe, will con tinue to modify and advance them during the future. The ideas of Cause and Origin, which have been slowly changing, will change still further. But no changes in them, even when pushed to the extreme, will expel them from consciousness; and hence there can never be an extinction of the correlative sentiments. No more in this than in other things, will Evo lution alter its general direction: it will continue along the same lines as hitherto. And if we wish to see whither it tends, we have but to observe how there has been thus far a decreasing coiicreteness of the consciousness to which the re ligious sentiment is related, to infer that hereafter this coii creteness will further diminish: leaving behind a substance of consciousness for which there is 110 adequate form, but which is none the less persistent and powerful.
Without seeming so, the development of religious senti ment has been continuous from the beginning; and its nature when a germ was the same as is its nature when fully devel oped. The savage first shows it in the feeling excited by a display of power in another exceeding his own power — some skill, some sagacity, in his chief, leading to a result he does not understand — something which has the element of mystery and arouses his wonder. To his unspeculative intellect there is nothing wonderful in the ordinary course of things around. The regular sequences, the constant relations, do not present themselves to him as problems needing interpretation. Only anomalies in that course of causation which he knows most intimately, namely, human will and power, excite his surprise and raise questions. And only when experiences of phenom ena of other classes become multiplied enough for generaliza tion, does the occurrence of anomalies among these also, arouse the same idea of mystery and the same sentiment of wonder: hence one kind of fetichism. Passing over in termediate stages, the truth to be noted is, that as fast as ex planation of the anomalies dissipates the wonder they excited, there grows up a wonder at the uniformities: there arises the question — How come they to be uniformities? As fast as Science transfers more and more things from the category of irregularities to the category of regularities, the mystery that once attached to the superstitious explanations of them be comes a mystery attaching to the scientific explanations of them: there is a merging of many special mysteries in one general mystery. The astronomer, having shown that the motions of the Solar System imply a uniform and invariablyacting force he calls gravitation, finds himself utterly incapa ble of conceiving this force. Though he helps himself to think of the Sun's action on the Earth by assuming an inter vening medium, and finds he must do this if he thinks about it at all; yet the mystery re-appears when he asks what is the constitution of this medium. While compelled to use units of ether as symbols, he sees that they can be but symbols. Similarly with the physicist and the chemist. The hypothesis of atoms and molecules enables them to work out multitudi nous interpretations that are verified by experiment; but the ultimate unit of matter admits of no consistent conception.
Instead of the particular mysteries presented by those actions of matter they have explained, there rises into prominence the mystery which matter universally presents, and which proves to be absolute. So that, beginning with the germinal idea of mystery which the savage gets from a display of power in another transcending his own, and the germinal sentiment of awe accompanying it, the progress is towards an ultimate recognition of a mystery behind every act and ap pearance, and a transfer of the awe from something special and occasional to something universal and unceasing.
No one need expect, then, that the religious consciousness will die away or will change the lines of its evolution. Its specialities of form, once strongly marked and becoming less distinct during past mental progress, will continue to fade; but the substance of the consciousness will persist. That the object-matter can be replaced by another object-matter, as supposed by those who think the " Religion of Humanity " will be the religion of the future, is a belief countenanced neither by induction nor by deduction. However dominant may become the moral sentiment enlisted on behalf of Hu manity, it can never exclude the sentiment, alone properly called religious, awakened by that which is behind Humanity and behind all other things. The child by wrapping its head in the bed-clothes, may, for a moment, suppress the consciousness of surrounding darkness; but the consciousness, though rendered less vivid, survives, and imagination persists in occupying itself with that which lies beyond perception. No such thing as a " Religion of Humanity " can ever do more than temporarily shut out the thought of a Power of which Humanity is but a small and fugitive product — a Power which was in course of ever-changing manifestations before Humanity was, and will continue through other manifesta tions when Humanity has ceased to be.
To recognitions of this order the anti-theological bias is a hindrance. Ignoring the truth for. which religions stand, it under-values religious institutions in the past, thinks they are needless in the present, and expects they will leave no repre sentatives in the future. Hence mistakes in sociological reasonings.
To the various other forms of bias, then, against which we must guard in studying the Social Science, has to be added the bias, perhaps as powerful and perverting as any, which relig ious beliefs and sentiments produce. This, both generally under the form of theological bigotry, and specially under the form of sectarian bigotry, affects the judgments about public affairs; and reaction against it gives the judgments an opposite warp.
The theological bias under its general form, tending to maintain a dominance of the subordination-element of re ligion over its ethical element — tending, therefore, to measure actions by their formal congruity with a creed rather than by their intrinsic congruity with human welfare, is unfavourable to that estimation of worth in social arrangements which is made by tracing out results. « And while the general theo logical bias brings into Sociology an element of distortion, by using a kind of measure foreign to the science properly so called, the special theological bias brings in further distor tions, arising from special measures of this kind which it uses. Institutions, old and new, home and foreign, are considered as congruous or incongruous with particular sets of dogmas, and are liked or disliked accordingly: the obvious result being that, since the sets of dogmas differ in all times and places, the sociological judgments affected by them must inevitably be wrong in all cases but one, and probably in all On the other hand, the reactive bias distorts conceptions of social phenomena by under-valuing religious systems. It generates an. unwillingness to see that a religious system is a normal and essential factor in every evolving society; that the specialities of it have certain fitnesses to the social conditions; and that while its form is temporary its subsistence is perma nent. In so far as the anti-theological bias causes an ignoring of these truths, or an inadequate appreciation of them, it causes misinterpretations.
To maintain the required equilibrium amid the conflicting sympathies and antipathies which contemplation of religious beliefs inevitably generates, is difficult. In presence of the theological thaw going on so fast on all sides, there is 011 the part of many a fear, and on the part of some a hope, that nothing will remain. But the hopes and the fears are alike groundless; and must be dissipated before balanced judg ments in Social Science can be formed. Like the transfor mations that have succeeded one another hitherto, the trans formation now in progress is but an advance from a lower form, no longer fit, to a higher and fitter form; and neither will this transformation, nor kindred transformations to come hereafter, destroy that which is transformed, any more than past transformations have destroyed it.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIII.
IN the foregoing eight chapters we have contemplated, under their several heads, those '* Difficulties of the Social Science " which the chapter bearing that title indicated in a general way. After thus warning the student against the errors he is liable to fall into, partly because of the nature of the phenomena themselves and the conditions they are pre sented under, and partly because of his own nature as observer of them, which by both its original and its acquired charac ters causes twists of perception and judgment; it now remains to say something about the needful preliminary studies. I do not refer to studies furnishing the requisite data; but I refer to studies giving the requisite discipline. Right thinking in any matter depends very much on the habit of thought; and the habit of thought, partly natural, depends in part on the artificial influences to which the mind has been subjected.
As certainly as each person has peculiarities of bodily action that distinguish him from his fellows, so certainly has he peculiarities of mental action that give a character to his conceptions. There are tricks of thought as well as tricks of muscular movement. There are acquired mental aptitudes for seeing things under particular aspects, as there are acquired bodily aptitudes for going through evolutions after particular ways. And there are intellectual perversities produced by certain modes of treating the mind, as there are incurable awkwardnesses due to certain physical activities daily re peated.
Each kind of mental discipline, besides its direct effects on the faculties brought into play, has its indirect effects on the faculties left out of play; and when special benefit is gained by extreme special discipline, there is inevitably more or less general mischief entailed on the rest of the mind by the con sequent want of discipline. That antagonism between body and brain which we see in those who, pushing brain-activity to an extreme, enfeeble their bodies, and those who, pushing bodily activity to an extreme, make their brains inert, is an antagonism which holds between the parts of the body itself and the parts of the brain itself. The greater bulk and strength of the right arm resulting from its greater use, and the greater aptitude of the right hand, are instances in point; and that the relative incapacity of the left hand, involved by cultivat ing the capacity of the right hand, would become still more marked were the right hand to undertake all manipulation, is obvious. The like holds among the mental faculties. The fundamental antagonism between feeling and cognition, run ning down through all actions of the mind, from the conflicts between emotion and reason to the conflicts between sensa tion and perception, is the largest illustration. We meet with a kindred antagonism among the actions of the intellect itself, between perceiving and reasoning. Men who have aptitudes for accumulating observations are rarely men given to gen eralizing; while men given to generalizing are commonly men who, mostly using the observations of others, observe for themselves less from love of particular facts than from desire to put such facts to use. We may trace the antagonism within even a narrower range, between general reasoning and special reasoning. One prone to far-reaching speculations rarely pur sues to much purpose those investigations by which particular truths are reached; while the scientific specialist ordinarily has but little tendency to occupy himself with wide views.
No more is needed to make it clear that habits of thought result from particular kinds of mental activity; and that each man's habits of thought influence his judgment on any ques tion brought before him. It will be obvious, too, that in pro portion as the question is involved and many-sided, the habit of thought must be a more important factor in determining the conclusion arrived at. Where the subject-matter is sim ple, as a geometrical truth or a mechanical action, and has therefore not many different aspects, perversions of view con sequent on intellectual attitude are comparatively few; but where the subject-matter is complex and heterogeneous, and admits of being mentally seen in countless different ways, the intellectual attitude affects very greatly the form of the conception.
A fit habit of thought, then, is all-important in the study of Sociology; and a fit habit of thought can be acquired only by study of the Sciences at large. For Sociology is a science in which the phenomena of all other sciences are included. It presents those necessities of relation with which the Ab stract Sciences deal; it presents those connexions of cause and effect which the Abstract-Concrete Sciences familiarize the student with; and it presents that concurrence of many causes and production of contingent results, which the Con crete Sciences show us, but which we are shown especially by the organic sciences. Hence, to acquire the habit of thought conducive to right thinking in Sociology, the mind must be familiarized with the fundamental ideas which each class of sciences brings into view; and must not be possessed by those of any one class, or any two classes, of sciences.
That this may be better seen, let me briefly indicate the indispensable discipline which each class of sciences gives to the intellect; and also the wrong intellectual habits produced if that class of sciences is studied exclusively.
Entire absence of training in the Abstract Sciences, leaves the mind without due sense of necessity of relation. Watch the mental movements of the wholly-ignorant, before whom there have been brought not even those exact and fixed con nexions which Arithmetic exhibits, and it will be seen that they have nothing like irresistible convictions that from given data there is an inevitable inference. That which to you has the aspect of a certainty, seems to them not free from doubt. Even men whose educations have made numerical processes and results tolerably familiar, will show in a case where the implication is logical only, that they have not ab solute confidence in the dependence of conclusion on premisses.
Unshakeable beliefs in necessities of relation, are to be gained only by studying the Abstract Sciences, Logic and Mathematics. Dealing with necessities of relation of the sim plest class, Logic is of some service to this end; though often of less service than it might be, for the reason that the sym bols used are not translated into thoughts, and hence the con nexions stated are not really represented. Only when, for a logical implication expressed in the abstract, there is sub stituted an example so far concrete that the inter-dependencies can be contemplated, is there an exercise of the mental power by which logical necessity is grasped. Of the discipline given by Mathematics, also, it is to be remarked that the habit of dealing with necessities of numerical relation, though in a degree useful for cultivating the consciousness of necessity, is not in a high degree useful; because, in the immense majority of cases, the mind, occupied with the symbols used, and not passing beyond them to the groups of units they stand for, does not really figure to itself the relations expressed — does not really discern their necessities; and has not therefore the conception of necessity perpetually repeated. It is the more special division of Mathematics, dealing with Space-relations, which above all other studies yields necessary ideas; and so makes strong and definite the consciousness of necessity in general. A geometrical demonstration time after time pre sents premisses and conclusion in such wise that the relation alleged is seen in thought — cannot be passed over by mere symbolization. Each step exhibits some connexion of posi tions or quantities as one that could not be otherwise; and hence the habit of taking