Take, again, our system of drainage. Urged on as it was some thirty years ago as a panacea for sundry sanitary evils, and spread as it has been by force of law through all our great towns, this system cannot now be replaced by a better system without extreme difficulty. Though, by necessitating decom position where oxygen cannot get, and so generating chemical compounds that are unstable and poisonous, it has in many cases produced the very diseases it was to have prevented; though, by delivering the morbid products from fever-patients, &c., into a branching tube which, communicating with all houses, effectually conveys to them infecting gases that are kept out only so long as stink-traps are in good order; yet it has become almost out of the question now to adopt those methods by which the excreta of towns may be got rid of at once innocuously and usefully. Nay, worse — one part of our sanitary administration having insisted on a sewage-system by which Oxford, Beading, Maidenhead, Windsor, &c., pollute the water London has to drink, another part of our sanitary administration makes loud protests against the impurity of the water, which it charges with causing disease (not remarking, however, that law-enforced arrangements have produced the impurity). And now there must be a re-organization, that will be immensely impeded by the existing premature organization, before we can have either pure air or pure water.
Our mercantile arrangements, again, furnish abundant illus trations teaching the same lesson. In each trade there is an established course of business; and however obvious may be some better course, the difficulties of altering the settled routine are, if not insurmountable, still very considerable. Take, for instance, the commerce of literature. In days when a letter cost a shilling and no book-post existed, there grew up an or ganization of wholesalers and retailers to convey books from publishers to readers: a profit being reached by each distribut- NATURE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCE. Cl ing- agent, primary and secondary. Now that a book may be ordered for a half -penny and sent for a few pence, the old sys tem of distribution might be replaced by one that would di minish the cost of transfer, and lower the prices of books. But the interests of distributors practically negative the change. An advertised proposal to supply a book direct by post at a reduced rate, offends the trade; and by ignoring the book they check its sale more than its sale is otherwise furthered. And so an old organization, once very serviceable, now stands iu the way of a better organization. The commerce of liter ature furnishes another illustration. At a time when the reading public was small and books were dear, there grew up circulating libraries, enabling people to read books without buying them. At first few, local, and unorganized, these cir culating libraries have greatly multiplied, and have become organized throughout the kingdom: the result being that the demand for library-circulation is in many cases the chief de mand. This arrangement being one which makes few copies supply many readers, the price per copy must be high, to ob tain an adequate return on the edition. And now reading people in^ general, having been brought up to the habit of get ting books through libraries, usually do not think of buying the books themselves — would still get most of them through libraries even were they considerably cheapened. We are, therefore, except with works of very popular authors, pre vented by the existing system of book-distribution in England from adopting the American system — a system which, not ad justing itself to few libraries but to many private purchasers, issues large editions at low prices.
Instances of another class are supplied by our educational institutions. Richly endowed, strengthened by their prestige, and by the bias given to those they have brought up, our col leges, public schools, and other kindred schools early founded, useful as they once were, have long been enormous impedi ments to a higher education. By subsidizing the old, they have starved the new. Even now they are retarding a culture better in matter and manner; both by occupying the field, and by partially incapacitating those who pass through them for seeing what a better culture is. Evidence of a kindred kind is offered by the educational organization developed for C2 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
dealing with the masses. The struggle going on between Secularism and Deiiominationalism in teaching, might alone show to any one who looks for the wider meanings of facts, that a structure which has ramified throughout a society, ac quired an army of salaried officials looking for personal wel fare and promotion, backed by classes, ecclesiastical and polit ical, whose ideas and interests they further, is a structure which, if not unalterable, is difficult to alter in proportion as it is highly developed.
These few examples, which might be supported by others from the military organization, the ecclesiastical organization, the legal organization, will make comprehensible the analogy I have indicated; while they make clearer the nature- of the Social Science, by bringing into view one of its questions. That with social organisms, as with individual organisms, structure up to a certain point is needful for growth is obvious. That in the one case, as in the other, continued growth implies un-building and re-building of structure, which therefore be comes in so far an impediment, seems also obvious. Whether it is true in the one case, as in the other, that completion of structure involves arrest of growth, and fixes the society to the type it has then reached, is a question to be considered. Without saying anything more by way of answer, it is, I think, manifest enough that this is one belonging to an order of questions entirely overlooked by those who contemplate societies from the ordinary historical point of view; and one pertaining to that Social Science which they say does not exist.
Are there any who utter the cui bono criticism? Proba bly not a few. I think I hear from some whose mental atti tude is familiar to me, the doubt whether it is worth while to ask what happens among savage tribes; in what way chiefs and medicine-men arise; how the industrial functions become separated from the political; what are the original relations of the regulative classes to one another; how far the social structure is determined by the emotional natures of individ uals, how far by their ideas, how far by their environment. Busied as men of this stamp are with what they call " prac tical legislation " (by which they seemingly mean legislation NATURE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCE. (53 that recognises proximate causes and effects while ignoring remote ones), they doubt whether conclusions of the kind Social Science proposes to draw, are good for much when drawn.
Something may, however, be said in defence of this study which they thus estimate. Of course, it is not to be put on the same level with those historical studies so deeply interest ing to them. The supreme value of knowledge respecting the genealogies of kings, and the fates- of dynasties, and the quar rels of courts, is beyond question. Whether or not the plot for the murder of Amy Robsart was contrived by Leicester himself, with Queen Elizabeth as an accomplice; and whether or not the account of the G-owrie Conspiracy, as given by King James, was true; are obviously doubts to be decided before there can be formed any rational conclusions respect ing the development of our political institutions. That Friedrich I. of Prussia quarrelled with his stepmother, suspected her of trying to poison him, fled to his aunt, and when he suc ceeded to the Electorate, intrigued and bribed to obtain his kingship; that half-aii-hour after his death his son Friedrich Wilhelm gave his courtiers notice to quit, commenced forth with to economize his revenues, made it his great object to recruit and drill his army, and presently began to hate and bully his son — these, and facts like these about all royal fam ilies in all ages, are facts without which civilization would obviously be incomprehensible. Nor can one dispense with full knowledge of events like those of Napoleon's wars — his Italian conquests and exactions, and perfidious treatment of Venice; his expedition to Egypt, successes and massacres there, failure at Acre, and eventual retreat; his various cam paigns in Germany, Spain, Russia, &c., including accounts of his strategy, tactics, victories, defeats, slaughters; for how, in the absence of such information, is it possible to judge what institutions should be advocated, and what legislative changes should be opposed?
Still, after due attention has been, paid to these indispensa ble matters, a little time might, perhaps, with advantage be devoted to the natural history of societies. Some guidance for political conduct would possibly be reached by asking — What is the normal course of social evolution, and how will it be effected by this or that policy? It may turn out that legislative action of 110 kind can be taken that is not either in agreement with, or at variance with, the processes of national growth and development as naturally going on; and that its desirableness is to be judged by this ultimate standard rather than by proximate standards. Without claiming too much, we may at any rate expect that, if there does exist an order among those structural and functional changes which socie ties pass through, knowledge of that order can scarcely fail to affect our judgments as to what is progressive and what retrograde — what is desirable, what is practicable, what is Utopian.
To those who think such an inquiry worthy to be pursued, will be addressed the chapters that are to follow. There are sundry considerations important to be dwelt upon, before commencing Sociology. To a clear idea of the nature of the science have to be added clear ideas of the conditions to suc cessful study of it. These will henceforth occupy us.
CHAPTER IV.
DIFFICULTIES OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCE.
FROM the intrinsic natures of its facts, from our own na tures as observers of its facts, and from the peculiar relation in which we stand towards the facts to he observed, there arise impediments in the way of Sociology greater than those in the way of any other science.
The phenomena to be generalized are not of a directly-per ceptible kind — cannot be noted by telescope and clock, like those of Astronomy; cannot be measured by dynamometer and thermometer, like those of Physics; cannot be elucidated by scales and test-papers, like those of Chemistry; are not to be got at by scalpel and microscope, like the less obvious bio logical phenomena; nor are to be recognized by introspection, like the phenomena Psychology deals with. They have sev erally to be established by putting together many details, no one of which is simple, and which are dispersed, both in Space and Time, in ways that make them difficult of access. Hence the reason why even cardinal truths in Sociology, such as the division of labour, remain long unrecognized. That in ad vanced societies men follow different occupations, was indeed a generalization easy to make; but that this form of social arrangement had neither been specially created, nor enacted by a king, but had grown up without forethought of any one, was a conclusion which could be reached only after many transactions of many kinds between men had been noted, re membered, and accounted for, and only after comparisons had been made between these transactions and those taking place between men in simpler societies and in earlier times. And when it is remembered that the data for the inference that labour becomes specialized, are far more accessible than QQ THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
the data for most other sociological inferences, it will be seen how greatly the advance of Sociology is hindered by the na ture of its subject-matter.
The characters of men as observers, add to this first diffi culty a second that is perhaps equally great. Necessarily men take with them into sociological inquiries, the modes of obser vation, and reasoning which they have been accustomed to in other inquiries — those of them, at least, who make any inqui ries worthy to be so called. Passing over the great majority of the educated, and limiting ourselves to the very few who consciously collect data, compare them, and deliberately draw conclusions; we may see that even these have to struggle with the difficulty that the habits of thought generated by converse with relatively-simple phenomena, partially unfit them for converse with these highly-complex phenomena. Faculty of every kind tends always to adjust itself to its work. Special adjustment to one kind of work involves more or less nonadjustment to other kinds. And hence, intellects disciplined in dealing with less-involved classes of facts, cannot success fully deal with this most-involved class of facts without par tially unlearning the methods they have learnt. From the emotional nature, too, there arise great obstacles. Scarcely any one can contemplate social arrangements and actions with the unconcern felt when contemplating arrangements and actions of other kinds. For correct observation and cor rect drawing of inferences, there needs the calmness that is ready to recognize or to infer one truth as readily as another.
But it is next to impossible thus to deal with the truths of Sociology. In the search for them, each is moved by feel ings, more or less strong, which make him eager to find this evidence, oblivious of that which is at variance with it, reluc tant to draw any conclusion but that already drawn. And though perhaps one in ten among those who think, is con scious that his judgment is being warped by prejudice, yet even in him the warp is not adequately allowed for. Doubt less in nearly every field of inquiry emotion is a perturbing intruder: mostly there is some preconception, and some amour propre that resists disproof of it. But a peculiarity of Sociology is, that the emotions with which its facts and con clusions are regarded, have unusual strength. The personal DIFFICULTIES OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCE. 67 interests are directly affected; or there is gratification or offence to sentiments that have grown out of them; or else other sen timents which have relation to the existing form of society, are excited, agreeably or disagreeably.
And here we are introduced to the third kind of difficulty — that caused by the position occupied, in respect to the phenom ena to be generalized. In no other case has the inquirer to investigate the properties of an aggregate in which he is him self included. His relation towards the facts he here studies, we may figure to ourselves by comparing it to the relation be tween a single cell forming part of a living body, and the facts which that living body presents as a whole. Speaking generally, the citizen's life is made possible only by due per formance of his function in the place he fills; and he cannot wholly free himself from the beliefs and sentiments generated by the vital connexions hence arising between himself and his society. Here, then, is a difficulty to which no other science presents anything analogous. To cut himself off in thought from all his relationships of race, and country, and citizenship — to get rid of all those interests, prejudices, likings, superstitions, generated in him by the life of his own society and his own time — to look on all the changes societies have undergone and are undergoing, without reference to national ity, or creed, or personal welfare; is what the average man cannot do at all, and what the exceptional man can do very imperfectly.
The difficulties of the Social Science, thus indicated in vague outline, have now to be described and illustrated in detail.
CHAPTER V.
ALONG with much that has of late years been done towards changing primitive history into myth, and along with much that has been done toward changing once-unquestioned esti mates of persons living in past ages, much has been said about the untrustworthiness of historical evidence. Hence there will be ready acceptance of the statement that one of the im pediments to sociological generalization, is the uncertainty of our data. We find this uncertainty not alone in early stories, such as those about the Amazons, their practices, the particu lar battles with them, &c.; which are recorded and sculptui'ed as circumstantially as they might be were the persons and events historic. We find it even in accounts of a well-known people like the New-Zealanders, who "by some...are said to be intelligent, cruel, and brave; by others weak, kindly, and cowardly." * And on remembering that between these extremes we have to deal with an enormous accumulation of conflicting statements, we cannot but feel that the task of se lecting valid evidence is in this case a more arduous one than in any other case. Passing over remote illustrations, let us take an immediate one.
Last year advertisements announced the "Two-headed Nightingale," and the walls of London were placarded with a figure in which one pair of shoulders were shown to bear two heads looking the same way (I do not refer to the later placards, which partially differed from the earlier). To some, this descriptive name and answering diagram seemed suffi ciently exact; for in my hearing a lady, who had been to see this compound being, referred to the placards and handbills as giving a good representation. If we suppose this lady to have repeated in a letter that which I heard her say, and if we ask what would appear the character of the evidence to one who, some fifty years hence, had before him the advertise ment, the representation, and the letter, we shall see that the alleged fact would be thought by him incontestable. Only if, after weary search through all the papers and periodicals of the time, he happened to come upon a certain number of the Lan cet, would he discover that this combination was not that of two heads on one body, but that of two individuals united back to back, with heads facing opposite ways, and severally complete in all respects, except where the parts were so fused as to form a double pelvis, containing certain pelvic viscera common to the two. Seeing, then, that about facts so simple and so easily verifiable, where no obvious motive for misrepresentations ex ists, we cannot count on true representations, how shall we count on true representations of social facts, which, being so diffused and so complex, are so difficult to observe, and in re spect to which the perceptions are so much perverted by inter ests, and prepossessions, and party-feelings?
In exemplifying this difficulty, I will limit myself to cases supplied by the life of our own time: leaving it to be inferred that if, in a comparatively calm and critical age, sociological evidence is vitiated by various influences, much more must there have been vitiation of such evidence in the past, when passions ran higher and credulity was greater.
Those who have lately -become conscious of certain facts are apt to suppose those facts have lately arisen. After a changed state of mind has made us observant of occurrences we were before indifferent to, there often results the belief that such occurrences are more common than they were. It happens so even with accidents and diseases. Having lamed himself, a man is surprised to find how many lame people there are; and, becoming dyspeptic, he discovers that dyspep sia is much more frequent than he supposed when he was young. For a kindred reason he is prone to think that serv ants do not behave nearly so well as they did during his boy hood: not remembering that in Shakespeare's days the service obtainable was similarly reprobated in comparison writh " the constant service of the antique world." In like manner, now that he has sons to establish in life, he fancies that the diffi culty of getting places is much greater than it used to be.
As witnesses to social phenomena, men thus impressed by facts which did not before impress them, became perverters of evidence. Things they have suddenly recognized, they mis take for things that have suddenly come into existence; and so are led to regard as a growing evil or good, that which is very likely a diminishing evil or good. Take an example or two.
In generations not long passed away, sobriety was the ex ception rather than the rule: a man who had never been drunk was a rarity. Condiments were used to create thirst; glasses were so shaped that they would not stand, but must be held till emptied; and a man's worth was in part measured by the number of bottles he could take in. After a reaction had already diminished the evil among the upper and middle ranks, there came an open recognition of the evil; resulting in Temperance Societies, which did their share towards fur ther diminishing it. Then came the Teetotal Societies, more thorough-going in their views and more energetic in their acts, which have been making the evil still less. Such has been the effect of these causes, that for a long time past among the upper classes, the drinking which was once creditable has been thought a disgrace; while among the lower classes it has greatly decreased, and come to be generally reprobated. Those, however, who, carrying on the agitations against it, have had their eyes more and more widely opened to the vice, assert or imply in their speeches and petitions that the vice is not only great but growing. Having in the course of a gen eration much mitigated it by their voluntary efforts, they now make themselves believe, and make others believe, that it is too gigantic to be dealt with otherwise than by repressive enactments — Maine-Laws and Permissive-Prohibitory Bills.
And, if we are to be guided by a Select Committee which has just reported, fines and imprisonments for drunkenness must be made far more severe than now, and reformatories must be established in which inebriates shall be dealt with much as criminals are dealt with.
Take, again, the case of education. Go back far enough, and you find nobles not only incapable of reading and writing, but treating these accomplishments with contempt. Go back not quite so far, and you find, along with a slight en couragement by authority of such learning as referred to Theology, a positive discouragement of all other learning; a joined with the belief that only for the clergy is learning of any kind proper. Go back a much smaller distance, and you find in the highest classes inability to spell tolerably, joined with more or less of the feeling that good spelling was a pedantry improper for ladies — a feeling akin to that named by Shakespeare as shown by those who counted it " a mean ness to write fair." Down even to quite modern times, wellto-do farmers and others of their rank were by no means all of them able to read and write. Education, spreading thus slowly during so many centuries, has during the last century spread with comparative rapidity. Since Raikes commenced Sunday-schools in 1771; since Lancaster, the Quaker, in 1796 set up the first of the schools that afterwards went by his name; since 1811, when the Church had to cease its opposi tion and become a competitor in educating poor children; the strides have been enormous. A degree of ignorance which had continued the rule during so many centuries, was made, in the course of half a century, the exception. And then in 1834, after this unobtrusive but speedy diffusion of knowl edge, there came along with a growing consciousness of the still-remaining deficiency, the system of State-subsidies; which, beginning with £20,000, grew, in less than thirty years, to more than a million. Yet now, after this vast progress at an ever-increasing rate, there has come the outcry that the nation is perishing for lack of knowledge. Any one not knowing the past, and judging from the statements of those who have been urging on educational organizations, would suppose that strenuous efforts are imperative to save the people from some gulf of demoralization and crime into which ignorance is sweeping them.
How testimonies respecting objective facts are thus per verted by the subjective states of the witnesses, and how we have to be ever on our guard against this cause of vitiation in sociological evidence, may indeed be inferred from the illu sions that daily mislead men in their comparisons of past with present. Returning after many years to the place of his boyhood, and finding how insignificant are the buildings he re membered as so imposing, every one discovers that in this case it was not that the past was so grand, but that his im pressibility was so great and his power of criticism so small He does not perceive, however, that the like holds generally; and that the apparant decline in various things is really due to the widening of his experiences and the growth of a judg ment no longer so easily satisfied. Hence the mass of wit nesses may be under the impression that there is going on a change just the reverse of that which is really going on; as we see, for example, in the notion current in every age, that the size and strength of the race have been decreasing, when, as proved by bones, by mummies, by armour, and by the ex periences of travellers in contact with aboriginal races, they have been on the average increasing.
Most testimony, then, on which we have to form ideas of sociological states, past and present, has to be discounted to meet this cause of error; and the rate of discount has to be varied according to the epoch, and the subject, and the witness.
Beyond this vitiation of sociological evidence by general subjective states of the witnesses, thei'e are vitiations due to more special subjective states. Of these, the first to be noted are of the class which foregone conclusions produce.
Extreme cases are furnished by fanatical agitators, such as members of the Anti-Tobacco Society; in the account of whose late meeting we read that " statistics of heart-disease, of insan ity, of paralysis, and the diminished bulk and stature of the population of both sexes proved, according to the Report, that these diseases were attributable to the use of tobacco." But without making much of instances so glaring as this, we may find abundant proof that evidence is in most cases uncon sciously distorted by the pet theories of those who give it.
Early in the history of our sanitary legislation, a leading officer of health, wishing to show the need for those measures he advocated, drew a comparison between the rate of mortality in some salubrious village (in Cumberland, I think it was) and the rate of mortality in London; and then, pointing out the marked difference, alleged that this difference was due to "preventible causes" — to causes, that is, which good sanitary administration would exclude. Ignoring the fact that the carbonic acid exhaled by nearly three millions of people and by their fires, caused in the one case a vitiation of the air which in the other case did not exist — ignoring the fact that most city-occupations are of necessity indoor, and many of them sedentary, while the occupations of village life are outof-door and active — ignoring the fact that in many of the Lon doners the activities are cerebral in a degree beyond that to which the constitution of the race is adapted, while in the vil lagers the activities are bodily, in a degree appropriate to the constitution of the race; he set down the whole difference in the death-rate to causes of the kind which laws and officials might get rid of.
A still more marked example of this effect of a cherished hypothesis in vitiating evidence, was once unconsciously yielded to me by another enthusiast for sanitary regulation. Producing his papers, he pointed out the great contrast be tween the number of deaths per annum in the small town near London where he lived, and the number of deaths per annum in a low district of London — Bermondsey, or Lam beth, or some region on the Surrey side. On this great con trast he triumphantly dilated, as proving how much could be done by good drainage, ventilation, &c. On the one hand, he passed over the fact that his suburban place was, in large measure, inhabited by a picked population — people of means, well fed and clothed, able to secure all appliances for comfort, leading regular lives, free from over- work and anxiety. On the other hand, he passed over the fact that this low region of London was, by virtue of its lowness, one out of which all citizens pecuniarily able to take care of themselves escaped if they could, and into which were thrust great numbers whose poverty excluded them from better regions — the ill-fed, the drunken, the dissolute, and others on the highway to death.