the wonderful notion, here and there finding tacit expression, that people are to marry when they feel inclined, and other people are to take the conse quences!
And this is thought to be the policy conducive to improve ment of behaviour. Men who have been made improvident by being shielded from many of the evil results of improvi dence, are now to be made more provident by further shield ing them from the evil results of improvidence. Having had their self-control decreased by social arrangements which less ened the need for self-control, other social arrangements are devised which will make self-control still less needful; and it is hoped so to make self-control greater. This expectation is absolutely at variance with the whole order of things. Life of every kind, human included, proceeds on an exactly-oppo site principle. All lower types of beings show us that the rearing of offspring1 affords the highest discipline for the faculties. The parental instinct is everywhere that which calls out the energies most persistently, and in the greatest degree exercises the intelligence. The self-sacrifice and the sagacity which inferior creatures display in the care of their young, are often commented upon; and everyone may see that parenthood produces a mental exaltation not otherwise producible. That it is so among mankind is daily proved.
Continually we remark that men who were random grow steady when they have children to provide for; and vain, thoughtless girls, becoming mothers, begin to show higher feelings, and capacities that were not before drawn out. In both there is a daily discipline in unselfishness, in industry, in foresight. The parental relation strengthens from hour to hour the habit of postponing immediate ease and egoistic pleasure to the altruistic pleasure obtained by furthering the welfare of offspring. There is a frequent subordination of the claims of self to the claims of fellow-beings; and by no other agency can the practice of this subordination be so effectually secured. Not, then, by a decreased, but by an increased, sense of parental responsibility is self-control to be made greater and recklessness to be checked. And yet the policy now so earnestly and undoubtingly pursued is one which will inevitably diminish the sense of parental responsi bility. This all-important discipline of parents' emotions is to be weakened that children may get reading and grammar and geography more generally than they would otherwise do. A superficial intellectualization is to be secured at the cost of a deep-seated demoralization.
Few, I suppose, will deliberately assert that information is important and character relatively unimportant. Everyone observes from time to time how much more valuable to him self and others is the workman who, though unable to read, is diligent, sober, and honest, than is the well-taught workman who breaks his engagements, spends days in drinking, and neglects his family. And, comparing members of the upper classes, no one doubts that the spendthrift or the gambler, however good his intellectual training, is inferior as a social unit to the man who, not having passed through the approved curriculum, nevertheless prospers by performing well the work he undertakes, and provides for his children instead of leaving them in poverty to the care of relatives. That is to say, looking at the matter in the concrete, all see that for social welfare, good character is more important than much knowledge. And yet the manifest corollary is not drawn. What effect will be produced on character by artificial appli ances for spreading knowledge, is not asked. Of the ends to be kept in view by the legislator, all are unimportant com pared with the end of character-making; and yet charactermaking is an end wholly unrecognized.
Let it be seen that the future of a nation depends on the natures of its units; that their natures are inevitably modified in adaptation to the conditions in which tliey are placed; that the feelings called into play by these conditions will strengthen, while those which have diminished demands on them will dwindle; and it will be seen that the bettering of conduct can be effected, not by insisting on maxims of good conduct, still less by mere intellectual culture, but only by that daily exercise of the higher sentiments and repression of the lower, which results from keeping men subordinate to the requirements of orderly social life — letting them suffer the inevitable penalties of breaking these requirements and reap the benefits of conforming to them. This alone is national education.
One further instance of the need for psychological in quiries as guides to sociological conclusions may be named — an instance of quite a different kind, but one no less relevant to questions of the time. I refer to the comparative psychol ogy of the sexes. Women, as well as men, are units in a society; and tend by their natures to give that society certain traits of structure and action. Hence the question — Are the mental natures of men and women the same? — is an impor tant one to the sociologist. If they are, an increase of femi nine influence is not likely to affect the social type in a marked manner. If they are not, the social type will inevi tably be changed by increase of feminine influence.
That men and women are mentally alike, is as untrue as that they are alike bodily. Just as certainly as they have physical differences which are related to the respective parts they play in the maintenance of the race, so certainly have they psychical differences, similarly related to their respective shares in the rearing and protection of offspring. To suppose that along with the unlikenesses between their parental activ ities there do not go unlikenesses of mental faculties, is to suppose that here alone in all Nature, there is no adjustment of special powers to special functions.6 Two classes of differences exist between the psychical, as between the physical, structures of men and women, which are both determined by this same fundamental need — adapta tion to the paternal and maternal duties. The first set of differences is that which results from a somewhat-earlier arrest of individual evolution in women than in men; necessi tated by the reservation of vital power to meet the cost of re production. Whereas, in man, individual evolution continues until the physiological cost of self -maintenance very nearly balances what nutrition supplies, in woman, an arrest of indi vidual development takes place while there is yet a con siderable margin of nutrition: otherwise there could be no offspring. Hence the fact that girls come earlier to maturity than boys. Hence, too, the chief contrasts in bodily form: the masculine figure being distinguished from the feminine by the greater relative sizes of the parts which carry on ex ternal actions and entail physiological cost — the limbs, and those thoracic viscera which their activity immediately taxes.
And hence, too, the physiological truth that throughout their lives, but especially during the child-bearing age, women ex hale smaller quantities of carbonic acid, relatively to their weights, than men do; showing that the evolution of energy is relatively less as well as absolutely less. This rather earlier cessation of individual evolution thus necessitated, showing itself in a rather smaller growth of the nervo-muscular sys tem, so that both the limbs which act and the brain which makes them act are somewhat less, has two results on the mind. The mental manifestations have somewhat less of general power or massiveness; and beyond this there is a per ceptible falling-short in those two faculties, intellectual and emotional, which are the latest products of human evolution —the power of abstract reasoning and that most abstract of the emotions, the sentiment of justice — the sentiment which regulates conduct irrespective of personal attachments and the likes or dislikes felt for individuals.6 After this quantitative mental distinction, which becomes incidentally qualitative by telling most upon the most recent and most complex faculties, there come the qualitative mental distinctions consequent on the relations of men and women to their children and to one another. Though the parental instinct, which, considered in its essential nature, is a love of the helpless, is common to the two; yet it is obviously not identical in the two. That the particular form of it which responds to infantine helplessness is more dominant in women than in men, cannot be questioned. In man the instinct is not so habitually excited by the very helpless, but has a more generalized relation to all the relatively-weak who are depen dent upon him. Doubtless, along with this more specialized instinct in wrornen, there go special aptitudes for dealing with infantine life — an adapted power of intuition and a fit adjust ment of behaviour. That there is here a mental specializa tion, joined with the bodily specialization, is undeniable; and this mental specialization, though primarily related to the rearing of offspring, affects in some degree the conduct at large.
The remaining qualitative distinctions between the minds of men and women, are those which have growrn out of their mutual relation as stronger and weaker. If we trace the genesis of human character, by considering the conditions of existence through which the human race passed in early bar baric times and during civilization, we shall see that the weaker sex has naturally acquired certain mental traits by its dealings with the stronger. In the course of the struggles for existence among wild tribes, those tribes survived in which the men were not only powerful and courageous, but aggres sive, unscrupulous, intensely egoistic. Necessarily, then, the men of the conquering races which gave origin to the civil ized races, were men in whom the brutal characteristics were dominant; and necessarily the women of such races, having to deal with brutal men, prospered in proportion as they pos sessed, or acquired, fit adjustments of nature. How were women, unable by strength to hold their own, otherwise en abled to hold their own? Several mental traits helped them to do this. We may set down, first, the ability to please, and the concomitant love of approbation. Clearly, other things equal, among women living at the mercy of men, those who succeeded most in pleasing would be the most likely to survive and leave posterity. And (recognizing the pre dominant descent of qualities on the same side) this, acting on successive generations, tended to establish, as a feminine trait, a special solicitude to be approved, and an aptitude of manner to this end. Similarly, the wives of merciless savages must, other things equal, have prospered in proportion to their powers of disguising their feelings. Women who be trayed the state of antagonism produced in them by ill-treat ment, would be less likely to survive and leave offspring than those who concealed their antagonism; and hence, by inherit ance and selection, a growth of this trait proportionate to the requirement. In some cases, again, the arts of persua sion enabled women to protect themselves, and by implication their offspring, where, in the absence of such arts, they would have disappeared early, or would have reared fewer chil dren. One further ability may be named as likely,. to be cultivated and established — the ability to distinguish quickly the passing feelings of those around. In barbarous times a woman who could from a movement, tone of voice, or expression of face, instantly detect in her savage husband the passion that was rising, would be likely to escape dangers run into by a woman less skilled in interpreting the natural lan guage of feeling. Hence, from the perpetual exercise of this power, and the survival of those having most of it. we may infer its establishment as a feminine faculty. Ordinarily, this feminine faculty, showing itself in an aptitude for guessing the state of mind through the external signs, end simply in intuitions formed without assignable reasons; but when, as happens in rare cases, there is joined with it skill in psycho logical analysis, there results an extremely-remarkable ability to interpret the mental states of others. Of this ability we have a living example never hitherto paralleled among women, and in but few, if any, cases exceeded among men. Of course, it is not asserted that the specialities of mind here de scribed as having been developed in women by the necessities of defence in their dealings with men, are peculiar to them: in men also they have been developed as aids to defence in their dealings with one another. But the difference is that whereas, in their dealings with one another, men depended on these aids only in some measure, women in their dealings with men depended upon them almost wholly — within the domestic circle as well as without it. Hence, in virtue of that partial limitation of heredity by sex, which many facts through out Nature shows us, they have come to be more marked in women than in men.7 One further distinctive mental trait in women, springs out of the relation of the sexes as adjusted to the welfare of the race. I refer to the effect which the manifestation of power of every kind in men, has in determining the attachments of women. That this is a trait inevitably produced, will be manifest on asking what would have happened if women had by preference attached themselves to the weaker men. If the weaker men had habitually left posterity when the stronger did not, a progressive deterioration of the race would have resulted. Clearly, therefore, it has happened (at least, since the cessation of marriage by capture or by purchase has allowed feminine choice to play an important part), that, among women unlike in their tastes, those who were fasci nated by power, bodily or mental, and who married men able to protect them and their children, were more likely to sur vive in posterity than women to whom weaker men were pleasing, and whose children were both less efficiently guarded and less capable of self-preservation if they reached maturity. To this admiration for power, caused thus inevitably, is ascribable the fact sometimes commented upon as strange, that women will continue attached to men who use them ill, but whose brutality goes along with power, more than they will continue attached to weaker men who use them well. With this admiration of power, primarily hav ing this function, there goes the admiration of power in gen eral; which is more marked in women than in men, and shows itself both theologically and politically. That the emo tion of awe aroused by contemplating whatever suggests transcendent force or capacity, which constitutes religious feeling, is strongest in women, is proved in many ways. We read that among the Greeks the women were more religiously excitable than the men. Sir Rutherford Alcock tells us of the Japanese that " in the temples it is very rare to see any congregation except women and children; the men, at any time, are very few, and those generally of the lower classes." Of the pilgrims to the temple of Juggernaut, it is stated that "at least five-sixths, and often nine-tenths, of them are fe males." And we are also told of the Sikhs, that the women believe in more gods than the men do. Which facts, coming from different races and times, sufficiently show us that the like fact, familiar to us in Roman Catholic countries and to some extent at home, is not, as many think, due to the edu cation of women, but has a deeper cause in natural character. And to this same cause is in like manner to be ascribed the greater respect felt by women for all embodiments and sym bols of authority, governmental and social.
Thus the a priori inference, that fitness for their respec tive parental functions implies mental differences between the sexes, as it implies bodily differences, is justified; as is also the kindred inference that secondary differences are necessitated by their relations to one another. Those uiilikenesses of mind between men and women, which, under the conditions, were to be expected, are the unlikenesses we actu ally find. That they are fixed in degree, by no means follows: indeed, the contrary follows. Determined as we see they some of them are by adaptation of primitive women's natures to the natures of primitive men, it is inferable that as civilization re adjusts men's natures to higher social requirements, there goes on a corresponding re-adjustment between the natures of men and women, tending in sundry respects to diminish their differences. Especially may we anticipate that those mental peculiarities developed in women as aids to defence against men in barbarous times, will diminish. It is probable, too, that though all kinds of power will continue to be attractive to them, the attractiveness of physical strength and the mental attributes that commonly go along with it, will de cline; while the attributes which conduce to social influence will become more attractive. Further, it is to be anticipated that the higher culture of women, carried 011 within such limits as shall not unduly tax the physique (and here, by higher culture, I do not mean mere language-learning and an 346 TEE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
extension of the detestable cramming-system at present in use), will in other ways reduce the contrast. Slowly leading to the result everywhere seen throughout the organic world, of a self-preserving power inversely proportionate to the race-preserving power, it will entail a less-early arrest of in dividual evolution, and a diminution of those mental differ ences between men and women, which the early arrest pro duces.
Admitting such to be changes which the future will prob ably see wrought out, we have meanwhile to bear in mind these traits of intellect and feeling which distinguish women, and to take note of them as factors in social phenomenamuch more important factors than we commonly suppose. Considering them in the above order, we may note, first, that the love of the helpless, which in her maternal capacity wom an displays in a more special form than man, inevitably affects all her thoughts and sentiments; and this being joined in her with a less-developed sentiment of abstract justice, she responds more readily when appeals to pity are made, than when appeals are made to equity. In foregoing chapters we have seen how much our social policy disregards the claims of individuals to whatever their efforts purchase, so long as no obvious misery is brought on them by the disregard; but when individuals suffer in ways conspicuous enough to excite commiseration, they get aid, and often as much aid if their sufferings are caused by themselves as if they are caused by others—often greater aid, indeed. This social policy, to which men tend in an injurious degree, women tend to still more.
The maternal instinct delights in yielding benefits apart from deserts; and being partially excited by whatever shows a feebleness that appeals for help (supposing antagonism has not been aroused), carries into social action this preference of generosity to justice, even more than men do. A further tendency having the same general direction, results from the aptitude which the feminine intellect has to dwell on the con crete and proximate rather than on the abstract and remote. The representative faculty in women deals quickly and clearly with the personal, the special, and the immediate; but less readily grasps the general and the impersonal. A vivid im agination of simple direct consequences mostly shuts out from her mind the imagination of consequences that are complex and indirect. The respective behaviours of mothers and fathers to children, sufficiently exemplify this difference, mothers thinking chiefly of present effects on the conduct of children, and regarding less the distant effects on their characters; while fathers often repress the promptings of their sympathies with a view to ultimate benefits. And this difference between their ways of estimating consequences, affecting their judgments on social affairs as on domestic affairs, makes women err still more than men do in seeking what seems an immediate pub lic good without thought of distant public evils. Once more, we have in women the predominant awe of power and au thority, swaying their ideas and sentiments about all institu tions. This tends towards the strengthening of governments, political and ecclesiastical. Faith in whatever presents itself with imposing accompaniments, is, for the reason above as signed, especially strong in women. Doubt, or criticism, or calling-in-question of things that are established, is rare among them. Hence in public affairs their influence goes towards the maintenance of controlling agencies, arid does not resist the extension of such agencies: rather, in pursuit of immedi ate promised benefits, it urges on that extension; since the concrete good in view excludes from their thoughts the re mote evils of multiplied restraints. Reverencing power more than men do, women, by implication, respect freedom less — freedom, that is, not of the nominal kind, but of that real kind which consists in the ability of each to carry on his own life without hindrance from others, so long as he does not hinder them.
As factors in social phenomena, these distinctive mental traits of women have ever to be remembered. Women have in all times played a part, and, in modern days, a very nota ble part, in determining social arrangements. They act both directly and indirectly. Directly, they take a large, if not the larger, share in that ceremonial government which supple ments the political and ecclesiastical governments, and as supporters of these other governments, especially the ecclesi astical, their direct aid is by no means unimportant. Indi rectly, they act by modifying the opinions and sentiments of men — first, in education, when the expression of maternal thoughts and feelings affects the thoughts and feelings of boys, and afterwards in domestic and social intercourse, dur ing which the feminine sentiments sway men's public acts, both consciously and unconsciously. Whether it is desirable that the share already taken by women in determining social arrangements and actions should be increased, is a question we will leave undiscussed. Here I am concerned merely to point out that, in the course of a psychological preparation for the study of Sociology, we must include the- comparative psy chology of the sexes; so that if any change is made, we may make it knowing what we are doing.
Assent to the general proposition set forth in this chapter, does not depend on assent to the particular propositions un folded in illustrating it. Those who, while pressing forward education, are so certain they know what good education is, that, in an essentially-Papal spirit, they wish to force chil dren through their existing school-courses, under penalty on parents who resist, wTill not have their views modified by what has been said. I do not look, either, for any appreciable effect on those who shut out from consideration the reactive influence on moral nature, entailed by the action of a system of intellectual culture wrhich habituates parents to make the public responsible for their children's minds. Nor do I think it likely that many of those who wish to change funda mentally the political status of women, will be influenced by the considerations above set forth on the comparative psy chology of the sexes. But without acceptance of these illus trative conclusions, there may be acceptance of the general conclusion, that psychological truths underlie sociological truths, and must therefore be sought by the sociologist. For whether discipline of the intellect does or does not change the emotions; whether national character is or is not progres sively adapted to social conditions; whether the minds of men and women are or are not alike; are obviously psycho logical questions; and either answer to any one of them, im plies a psychological conclusion. Hence, whoever on any of these questions has a conviction to which he would give legis lative expression, is basing a sociological belief upon a psy chological belief; and cannot deny that the one is true only if the other is true. Having admitted this, he must admit that without preparation in Mental Science there can be no Social Science. For, otherwise, he must assert that the ran domly-made and carelessly-grouped observations on Mind, common to all people, are better as guides than observations cautiously collected, critically examined, and generalized in a systematic way.
No one, indeed, who is once led to dwell on the matter, can fail to see how absurd is the supposition that there can be a rational interpretation of men's combined actions, without a previous rational interpretation of those thoughts and feelings by which their individual actions are prompted. Nothing comes out of a society but what originates in the motive of an individual, or in the united similar motives of many individ uals, or in the conflict of the united similar motives of some having certain interests, with the diverse motives of others whose interests are diff erent. Always the power which initi ates a change is feeling, separate or aggregated, guided to its ends by intellect; and not even an approach to an explana tion of social phenomena can be made, without the thoughts and sentiments of citizens being recognized as factors. How, then, can there be a true account of social actions without a true account of these thoughts and sentiments? Manifestly, those who ignore Psychology as a preparation for Sociology, can defend their position only by proving that while other groups of phenomena require special study, the phenomena of Mind, in all their variety and intricacy, are best understood without special study; and that knowledge of human nature gained haphazard, becomes obscure and misleading in propor tion as there is added to it knowledge deliberately sought and carefully put together.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVI.
OF readers who have.accompanied me thus far, probably some think that the contents of the work go beyond the limits implied by its title. Under the head, Study of Sociology, so many sociological questions have been incidentally discussed, that the science itself has been in a measure dealt with while dealing' with the study of it. Admitting1 this criticism, my excuse must be that the fault, if it is one, has been scarcely avoidable. Nothing to much purpose can be said about the study of any science without saying a good deal about the general and special truths it includes, or what the expositor holds to be truths. To write an essay on the study of Astron omy in which there should be no direct or implied conviction respecting the Copernican theory of the Solar System, nor any such recognition of the Law of Gravitation as involved ac ceptance or rejection of it, would be a task difficult to execute, and, when executed, probably of little value. Similarly with Sociology — it is next to impossible for a writer who points out the way towards its truths, to exclude all tacit or avowed expressions of opinion about those truths; and, were it possi ble to exclude such expressions of opinion, it would be at the cost of those illustrations needed to make his exposition effective.
Such must be, in part, my defence for having set down many thoughts which the title of this work does not cover. Especially have I found myself obliged thus to transgress, by representing the study of Sociology as the study of Evolu tion in its most complex form. It is clear that to one who considers the facts societies exhibit as having had their origin in supernatural interpositions, or in the wills of individual ruling men, the study of these facts will have an aspect wholly unlike that which it has to one who contemplates them as generated by processes of growth and development continuing through centuries. Ignoring, as the first view tacitly does, that conformity to law, in the scientific sense of the word, which the second view tacitly asserts, there can be but little community between the methods of inquiry proper to them respectively. Continuous causation, which in the one case there is little or no tendency to trace, becomes, in the other case, the chief object of attention; whence it follows that there must be formed wholly-different ideas of the ap propriate modes of investigation. A foregone conclusion respecting the nature of social phenomena, is thus inevitably implied in any suggestions for the study of them.