Though, in the first case, the healthiness of the locality obvi ously drew to it an excess of persons otherwise likely to live long; and though, in the second case, the unhealthiness of the locality made it one in which an excess of those not likely to live long were left to dwell, or hid themselves to die; yet the whole difference was put down to direct effects of pure air and impure air respectively.
Statements proceeding from witnesses whose judgments are thus warped — statements republished by careless sub editors, and readily accepted by the uncritical who believe all they see in print, diffuse erroneous prepossessions; which, again, tend to justify themselves by drawing the attention to confirmatory facts and away from facts that are adverse. Throughout all past time vitiations of evidence by influences of this nature have been going on in degrees varying with each people and each age; and hence arises an additional ob stacle to the obtainment of fit data.
Yet another, and perhaps stronger, distorting influence ex isting in the medium through which facts reach us, results from the self-seeking, pecuniary or other, of those who testify. We require constantly to bear in mind that personal interests effect most of the statements on which sociological conclusions are based, and on which legislation proceeds.
Everyone knows this to be so where the evidence concerns mercantile affairs. That railway -enterprise, at first prompted by pressing needs for communication, presently came to be prompted by speculators, professional and financial; and that the estimates of cost, of traffic, of profits, &c., set forth in prospectiises were grossly misleading; many readers have been taught by bitter experience. That the gains secured by schemers who float companies have fostered an organized sys tem which has made falsification of data a business, and which, in the case of bubble Insurance Companies, has been worked so methodically that it has become the function of a journal to expose the frauds continually repeated, are also familiar facts: reminding us how, in these directions, it is needful to look very sceptically on the allegations put before us. But there is not so distinct a consciousness that in other than business-enterprises, self-seeking is an active cause of mis representation.
Like the getting-up of companies, the getting-up of agita tions and of societies is, to a considerable extent, a means of advancement. As in the United States politics has become a profession, into which a man enters to get an income, so here there has grown up, though happily to a smaller extent, a pro fessional philanthropy, pursued with a view to position, or to profit, or to both. Much as the young clergyman in want of a benefice, feeling1 deeply the spiritual destitution of a suburb that has grown beyond churches, busies himself in raising funds to build a church, and probably does not, during his canvass, understate the evils to be remedied; so every here and there an educated man with plenty of leisure and small income, greatly impressed with some social evil to be remedied or benefit to be achieved, makes himself the nucleus to an in stitution, or the spur to a movement. And since his success depends mainly on the strength of the case he makes out, it is not to be expected that the evils to be dealt with will be faintly pictured, or that he will insist very strongly upon facts adverse to his plan. As I can personally testify, there are those who, having been active in getting up schemes for alleged beneficial public ends, consider themselves aggrieved when not after wards appointed salaried officials. The recent exposure of the " Free Dormitory Association," which, as stated at a meeting of the Charity-Organization Society, was but one of a class, shows what this process may end in. And the vitiation of evidence is an inevitable concomitant. One whom I have known during his thirty years' experience of Leagues, Alli ances, Unions, &c., for various purposes, writes: — "Like re ligious bodies, they [Associations] form creeds, and every ad herent is expected to cry up the shibboleth of his party...
All facts are distorted to the aid of their own views, and such as cannot be distorted are suppressed." " In every association with which I have had any connection, this fraud has been practised."
The like holds in political agitations. Unfortunately, agencies established to get remedies for crying evils, are liable to become agencies maintained and worked in a con siderable degree, and sometimes chiefly, for the benefit of those who reap incomes from them. An amusing instance of this was furnished, not many years ago, to a Member of Parliament who took an active part in advocating a certain radical measure which had for some years been making way, and which then seemed not unlikely to be carried. Being a member of the Association that had pushed forward this measure, he happened to step into its offices just before a debate which was expected to end in a majority for the bill, Y6 THE STUDY OP SOCIOLOGY.
and he found the secretary and his subs in a state of conster nation at the prospect of their success: feeling, as they ob viously did, that their occupation was in danger.
Clearly, then, where personal interests come into play, there must be, even in men intending to be truthful, a great readiness to see the facts which it is convenient to see, and such reluc tance to see opposite facts as will prevent much activity in seek ing for them. Hence, a large discount has mostly to be made from the evidence furnished by institutions and societies in justification of the policies they pursue or advocate. And since much of the evidence respecting both past and present social phenomena comes to us through agencies calculated thus to pervert it, there is here a further impediment to clear vision of facts.
That the reader may fully appreciate the difficulties which these distorting influences, when combined, put in the way of getting good materials for generalization, let him contemplate a case.
All who are acquainted with such matters know that up to some ten years since, it was habitually asserted by lecturers when addressing students, and by writers in medical journals, that in our day, syphilis is a far less serious evil than it was in days gone by. Until quite recently this was a commonplace statement, called in question by no one in the profession. But just as, while a decrease of drunkenness has been going on, Temperance-fanatics have raised an increasing outcry for strenuous measures to put down drunkenness; so, while ve nereal disease has been diminishing in frequency and severity, certain instrumentalities and agencies have created a belief that rigorous measures are required to check its progress. This incongruity would by itself be a sufficient proof of the extent to which, on the one side or the other, evidence must have been vitiated. What, then, shall we say of the incon gruity on finding that the first of these statements has recently been repeated by many of the highest medical authorities, as one verified by their experience? Here are some of their tes timonies.
The Chairman of the late Government Commission for inquiring into the treatment and prevention of syphilis, Mr.
Skey, Consulting Surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, gave evidence before a House of Lords' Committee. Refer ring to an article expressing the views of the Association for promoting the extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts, he said it was — " largely overcharged," and " coloured too highly." " The disease is by no means so common or universal, I may say, as is represented in that article,...and I have had an opportunity since I had the summons to appear here to-day of communicating with several lead ing members in the profession at the College of Surgeons, and we are all of the same opinion, that the evil is not so large by any means as it is represented by the association."
Mr. John Simon, F.E.S., for thirty-five years a hospital surgeon, and now Medical Officer to the Privy Council, writes in his official capacity — " I have not the least disposition to deny that venereal affections constitute a real and great evil for the community; though I suspect that very exaggerated opinions are current as to their diffusion and malignity."
By the late Prof. Syme it was asserted that — " It is now fully ascertained that the poison of the present day (true syphilis) does not give rise to the dreadful consequences which have been mentioned, when treated without mercury...None of the serious effects that used to be so much dreaded ever appear, and even the trivial ones just noticed comparatively seldom present them selves. We must, therefore, conclude either that the virulence of the poison is worn out, or that the effects formerly attributed to it de pended on treatment." 3 The British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, which stands far higher than any other medical journal, and is friendly to the Acts as applied to military and naval sta tions, writes thus: — " The majority of those who have undergone the disease, thus far [including secondary manifestations] live as long as they could other wise have expected to live, and die of diseases with which syphilis has no more to do than the man in the moon." 4..." Surely 455 persons suffering from true syphilis in one form or another, in a poor population of a million and a half [less than 1 in 3000]...can not be held to be a proportion so large as to call for exceptional action on the part of any Government." 5 Mr. Holmes Coote, F.RC.S., Surgeon and Lecturer on Sur gery at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, says — " It is a lamentable truth that the troubles which respectable hard working married women of the working class undergo are more trying to the health, and detrimental to the looks, than any of the irregu larities of the harlot's career."
Again, it is stated by Mr. Byrne, Surgeon to the Dublin Lock Hospital, that '* there is not nearly so much syphilis as there used to be; " and, after describing some of the serious results that were once common, he adds: — " You will not see such a case for years — a fact that no medical man can have failed to remark." Mr. W. Burns Thompson, F.R.C.S., for ten years head of the Edinburgh Dispensary, testifies as. follows: — " 1 have had good opportunities of knowing the prevailing dis eases, and I can only say that the representations given by the advo cates of these Acts are to me perfectly unintelligible; they seem to me to be gross exaggerations."
Mr. Surgeon-Major Wyatt, of the Coldstream Guards, when examined by the Lords' Committee, stated that he quite concurred with Mr. Skey. Answering question 700, he said: — " The class of syphilitic diseases which we see are of a very mild character; and, in fact, none of the ravages which used formerly to be committed on the appearance and aspect of the men are now to be seen...It is an undoubted fact that in this country and in France the character of the disease is much diminished in intensity.— Question 708: I understand you to say, that in your opinion the venereal disease has generally, independent of the Act, become more mitigated, and of a milder type? Ansiver: Yes; that is the experi ence of all surgeons, both civil and military."
Dr. Druitt, President of the Association of the Medical Officers of Health for London, affirmed at one of its meet ings — " that, speaking from thirty-nine years' experience, he was in a posi tion to say that cases of syphilis in London were rare among the middle and better classes, and soon got over."
Even Mr. Acton, a specialist to whom more than to any other man the Acts are due, admitted before the Lords' Com mittee that "the disease is milder than it was formerly."
And then, most important of all, is the testimony of Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, who is recognized as the highest au thority on inherited syphilis, and to whose discoveries, indeed, OBJECTIVE DIFFICULTIES. Y9 the identifications of syphilitic taint are mainly due. Though thus under a natural bias rather to over-estimate than under estimate the amount of inherited syphilis, Mr. Hutchinson, while editor of the British Medical Journal, wrote: — " Although there is an impression to the contrary, yet recent dis coveries and more accurate investigations, so far from extending the domain of syphilis as a cause of chronic disease, have decidedly tended to limit it...although we have admitted as positively syphilitic certain maladies of a definite kind not formerly recognized, we have excluded a far larger number which were once under suspicion We can identify now the subject of severe hereditary taint by his teeth and physiognomy; but those who believe most firmly in the value of these signs, believe also that they are not displayed by one in five thou sand of our population.* Like testimony is given by continental surgeons, among whom it was long ago said by Ambrose Pare, that the disease "is evidently becoming milder every day;" and by Auzias Turenne, that " it is on the wane all over Europe." Astruc and Diday concur in this statement. And the latest authority on syphilis, Lancereaux, whose work is so highly valued that it has been translated by the Sydenham Society, asserts that:— " In these cases, which are far from being rare, syphilis is but an abortive disease; slight and benignant, it does not leave behind any troublesome trace of its passage. It is impossible to lay too much stress upon this point. At the present day especially, when syphilis still inspires exaggerated fears, it should be known that this disease becomes dissipated completely in a great number of cases after the ces sation of the cutaneous eruptions, and perhaps sometimes even with the primary lesion." ' It will, perhaps, be remarked that these testimonies of med ical men who, by their generally high position, or their length ened experience, or their special experience, are so well quali fied to judge, are selected testimonies; and against them will be set the testimonies of Sir James Paget, Sir W. Jenner, and Mr. Prescott Hewett, who regard the evil as a very grave one. Possibly there will be quoted in reply an authoritative Statedocument, which, referring to the views of the three gentle men just named as having " the emphatic concurrence of nu merous practitioners," says that they "are hardly answered by a few isolated opinions that the evil has been exaggerated " — a somewhat inadequate description of the above-quoted testi monies, considering not only the general weight of the names, but also the weight of sundry of them as those of specialists.
To gather accurately the consensus of medical opinion would be impracticable without polling the whole body of physicians and surgeons; but we have a means of judging which view most truly meets with " the emphatic concurrence of numer ous practitioners ": that, namely, of taking a local group of medical men. Out of fifty-eight physicians and surgeons re siding in Nottingham and its suburbs, fifty-four have put their signatures to a public statement that syphilis is " very much diminished in frequency, and so much milder in form that we can scarcely recognize it as the disease described by our fore fathers." And among these are the medical men occupying nearly all the ollicial medical positions in the town — Senior Physician to the General Hospital, Honorary Surgeon ditto, Surgeons to the Jail, to the General Dispensary, to the Free Hospital, to the Union Hospital, to the Lock Hospital (four in number), Medical Officers to the Board of Health, to the Union, to the County Asylum, &c., &c. Even while I write there comes to me kindred evidence in the shape of a letter published in the British Medical Journal for 20th July, 1872, by Dr. Carter, Honorary Physician to the Liverpool Southern Hospital, who states that, after several debates at the Liver pool Medical Institution, " a form of petition strongly condem natory of the Acts was written out by myself, and...in a few days one hundred and eight signatures [of medical men] were obtained." Meanwhile, he adds, "earnest efforts were being made by a number of gentlemen to procure medical sig natures to the petition in favour of the Acts known as the 'London Memorial,' — efforts which resulted in twenty-nine signatures only."
Yet notwithstanding this testimony, great in quantity and much of it of the highest quality, it has been possible so to present the evidence as to produce in the public mind, and in the Legislature, the impression that peremptory measures for dealing with a spreading pest are indispensable. As lately writes a Member of Parliament, — " We were assured, on what appeared unexceptionable testimony, that a terrible constitu tional disease was undermining the health and vigour of the OBJECTIVE DIFFICULTIES. §1 nation, and especially destroying innocent women and chil dren."
And then note the startling circumstance that while so erroneous a conception of the facts may be spread abroad, there may, by the consequent alarm, be produced a blindness to facts of the most unquestionable kind, established by the ever-accumulating1 experiences of successive generations. Un til quite recently, our forms of judicial procedure embodied the principle that some overt injury must be committed before legal instrumentalities can be brought into play; and con formity to this principle was in past times gradually brought about by efforts to avoid the terrific evils that otherwise arose.
As a Professor of Jurisprudence reminds us, "the object of the whole complicated system of checks and guards provided by English law, and secured by a long train of constitutional conflicts, has been to prevent an innocent man being even mo mentarily treated as a thief, a murderer, or other criminal, on the mere alleged or real suspicion of a policeman." Yet now, in the state of groundless fright that has been g'ot up, " the concern hitherto exhibited by the Legislature for the personal liberty of the meanest citizen has been needlessly and reck lessly lost sight of." 8 It is an a priori inference from human nature that irresponsible power is sure, on the average of cases, to be grossly abused. The histories of all nations, through all times, teem with proofs that irresponsible power has been grossly abused. The growth of representative governments is the growth of arrangements made to prevent the gross abuse of irresponsible power. Each of our political struggles, end ing in a further development of free institutions, has been made to put an end to some particular gross abuse of irrespon sible power. Yet the facts thrust upon us by our daily expe riences of men, verifying the experiences of the whole human race throughout the past, are now tacitly denied; and it is tacitly asserted that irresponsible power will not be grossly abused. And all because of a manufactured panic about a de creasing disease, which kills not one-fifteenth of the number killed by scarlet fever, and which takes ten years to destroy as many as diarrhoea destroys in one year.
See, then, what we have to guard against in collecting so ciological data — even data concerning the present, and, still more, data concerning the past. For testimonies that come down to us respecting bygone social states, political, religious, judicial, physical, moral, &c., and respecting the actions of particular causes on those social states, have been liable to perversions not simply as great, but greater; since while the regard for truth was less, there was more readiness to accept unproved statements.
Even where deliberate measures are taken to obtain valid evidence on any political or social question raised, by sum moning witnesses of all classes and interests, there is difficulty in getting at the truth; because the circumstances of the in quiry tend of themselves to bring into sight some kinds of evidence, and to keep out of sight other kinds. In illustra tion may be quoted the following statement of Lord Lincoln on making his motion concerning the enclosures of com mons:— " This I know, that in nineteen cases out of twenty, committees sitting in this House on private bills neglected the rights of the poor. I do not say that they wilfully neglected those rights — far from it; but this I affirm, that they were neglected in consequence of the com mittees being permitted to remain in ignorance of the rights of the poor man, because by reason of his very poverty he is unable to come up to London to fee counsel, to procure witnesses, and to urge his claims before a committee of this House." — Hansard. 1 May, 1845. 9 Many influences of a different order, but similarly tending to exclude particular classes of facts pertinent to an inquiry, come into play. Given a question at issue, and it will very probably happen that witnesses on the one side may, by evi dence of a certain nature, endanger a system 011 which they depend for the whole or for part of their livelihood; and by evidence of an opposite nature may preserve it. By one kind of testimony they may offend their superiors and risk their promotion: doing the reverse by another kind. Moreover, witnesses not thus directly interested are liable to be indirectly swayed by the thought that to name certain facts they know will bring on them the ill-will of important persons in their locality — a serious consideration in a provincial town. And while such influences strongly tend to bring out evidence, say in support of some established organization, there may very possibly, and, indeed, very probably, be no organized adverse interest with abundant resources which busies itself to bring out a contrary class of facts — no occupation in danger, no pro motion to be had, no applause to be gained, no odium to be escaped. The reverse may happen: there may be positive sac rifices serious in amount to be made before such contrary class of facts can be brought to light. And thus it may result that, perfectly open and fair as the inquiry seems, the circumstances will insure a one-sided representation.
A familiar optical illusion well illustrates the nature of these illusions which often deceive sociological inquirers. When standing by a lake-side in the moonlight, you see stretching over the rippled surface towards the moon, a bar of light which, as shown by its nearer part, consists of flashes from the sides of separate wavelets. You walk, and the bar of light seems to go with you. There are, even among the educated classes, many who suppose that this bar of light has an objective existence, and who believe that it really moves as the observer moves — occasionally, indeed, as I can testify, ex pressing surprise at the fact. But, apart from the observer there exists no such bar of light; nor when the observer moves is there any movement of this line of glittering wavelets. All over the dark part of the surface the undulations are just as bright with moonlight as those he sees; but the light reflected from them does not reach his eyes. Thus, though there steems to be a lighting of some wavelets and not of the rest, and though, as the observer moves, other wavelets seem to become lighted that were not lighted before, yet both these are utterly false seemings. The simple fact is, that his position in relation to certain wavelets brings into view their reflections of the moon's light, while it keeps out of view the like reflections from all other wavelets.
Sociological evidence is largely vitiated by illusions thus caused. Habitually the relations of observers to the facts are such as make visible the special, and exceptional, and sensa tional, and leave invisible the common-place and uninterest ing, which form the great body of the facts. And this, which is a general cause of deceptive appearances, is variously aided by those more special causes above indicated; which conspire to make the media through which the facts are seen, transparent in respect of some and opaque in respect of others.
Again, very serious perversions of evidence result from the unconscious confounding1 of observation with inference. Every where, a fertile source of error is the putting down as something perceived what is really a conclusion drawn from something perceived; and this is a more than usually fertile source of error in Sociology. Here is an instance.
A few years ago Dr. Stark published the results of com parisons he had made between the rates of mortality among the married and among the celibate: showing, as it seemed, the greater healthfulness of married life. Some criticisms made on his argument did not seriously shake it; and he has been since referred to as having conclusively proved the alleged relation. More recently I have seen quoted from the Medical Press and Circular, the following summary of re sults supposed to tell the same tale: — " M. Bertillon has made a communication on this subject (' The Influence of Marriage ') to the Brussels Academy of Medicine, which has been published in the Revue Scientifique. From 25 to 30 years of age the mortality per 1000 in France amounts to G-2 in married men, 10-2 in bachelors, and 21-8 in widows. In Brussels the mortality of married women is 9 per 1000, girls the same, and widows as high as 16'9. Iii Belgium from 7 per 1000 among married men, the number rises to 8*5 in bachelors, and 24'6 in widows. The proportion is the same in Holland. From 8'2 in married men, it rises to 11-7 in bache lors, and 16-9 in widowers, or 12'8 among married women, 8'5 in spin sters, and 13-8 in widows. The result of all the calculations is that from 25 to 30 years of age the mortality per 1000 is 4 in married men, 10'4 in bachelors, and 22 in widows. This beneficial influence of mar riage is manifested at all ages, being always more strongly marked in men than in women."
I will not dwell on the fallacy of the above conclusions as re ferring to the relative mortality of widows — a fallacy suffi ciently obvious to any one who thinks awhile. I will confine myself to the less-conspicuous fallacy in the comparison be tween the mortalities of married and celibate, fallen into by M. Bertillon as well as by Dr. Stark. Clearly as their figures seem to furnish proof of some direct causal relation between marriage and longevity, they really furnish no proof what ever. There may be such a relation; but the evidence assigned forms no warrant for inferring it.
We have but to consider the circumstances which in many cases determine marriage, and those which in other cases pre vent marriage, to see that the connexion which the figures apparently imply is not.the real connexion. Where attach ments exist what most frequently decides the question for or against marriage? The possession of adequate means. Though some improvidently marry without means, yet it is undeniable that in many instances marriage is delayed by the man, or for bidden by the parents, or not assented to by the woman, until there is reasonable evidence of ability to meet the responsi bilities. Now of men whose marriages depend on getting the needful incomes, which are the most likely to get the needful incomes? The best, physically and mentally — the strong, the intellectually capable, the morally well-balanced. Often bodily vigour achieves a success, and therefore a revenue, which bodily weakness, unable to bear the stress of competi tion, cannot achieve. Often superior intelligence brings pro motion and increase of salary, while stupidity lags behind in ill-paid posts. Often caution, self-control, and a far-seeing sacrifice of present to future, secure remunerative offices that are never given to the impulsive or the reckless. But what are the effects of bodily vigour, of intelligence, of prudence, on longevity; when compared with the effects of feebleness, of stupidity, of deficient self-control? Obviously, the first further the maintenance of life, and the