second tend towards premature death. That is, the qualities which, on the average of cases, give a man an advantage in gaining the means of marrying, are the qualities which make him likely to be a long-liver; and conversely.
There is even a more direct relation of the same general nature. In all creatures of high type, it is only when indi vidual growth and development are nearly complete, that the production of new individuals becomes possible; and the power of producing and bringing up new individuals, is measured by the amount of vital power in excess of that need ful for self-maintenance. The reproductive instincts, and all their accompanying emotions, become dominant when the demands for individual evolution are diminishing, and there is arising1 a surplus of energy which makes possible the rearing of oii'spring as well as the preservation of self; and, speaking generally, these instincts and emotions are strong in propor tion as this surplus vital energy is great. But to have a large surplus of vital energy implies a good organization — an or ganization likely to last long. So that, in fact, the superiority of physique which is accompanied by strength of the instincts and emotions causing marriage, is a superiority of physique also conducive to longevity.
One further influence tells in the same direction. Mar riage is not altogether determined by the desires of men; it is determined in part by the preferences of women. Other things equal, women are attracted towards men of power — physical, emotional, intellectual; and obviously their freedom of choice leads them in many cases to refuse inferior samples of men: especially the malformed, the diseased, and those who are ill-developed, physically and mentally. So that, in so far as marriage is determined by female selection, the aver age result on men is that while the best easily get wives, a certain proportion of the worst are left without wives. This influence, therefore, joins in bringing into the ranks of married men those most likely to be long-lived, and keeping in bache lorhood those least likely to be long-lived.
In three ways, then, does that superiority of organization which conduces to long life, also conduce to marriage. It is normally accompanied by a predominance of the instincts and emotions prompting marriage; there goes along with it that power which can secure the means of making marriage practicable; and it increases the probability of success in courtship. The figures given afford no proof that marriage and longevity are cause and consequence; but they simply verify the inference which might be drawn a priori, that marriage and longevity are concomitant results of the same cause.
This striking instance of the way in which inference may be mistaken for fact, will serve as a warning against an other of the dangers that await us in dealing with sociological data. Statistics having shown that married men live longer than single men, it seems an irresistible implication that married life is healthier than single life. And yet we see that the implication is not at all irresistible: though such a con nexion may exist, it is not demonstrated by the evidence as signed. Judge, then, how difficult it must be, among social phenomena that have more entangled dependencies, to dis tinguish between the seeming relations and the real relations.
Once more, we are liable to be led away by superficial, trivial facts, from the deep-seated and really-important facts they indicate. Always the details of social life, the interest ing events, the curious things which serve for gossip, will, if we allow them, hide from us the vital connexions and the vital actions underneath. Every social phenomenon results from an immense aggregate of general and special causes; and we may either take the phenomenon itself as intrinsically momentous, or may take it along with other phenomena, as indicating some inconspicuous truth of real significance. Let us contrast the two courses.
Some months ago a correspondent of the Times, writing from Calcutta, said: — " The Calcutta University examinations of any year would supply curious material for reflection on the value of our educational sys tems. The prose test in the entrance examination this year includes Ivanhoe. Here are a few of the answers which I have picked up. The spelling is bad, but that I have not cared to give: — "Question: — 'Dapper man?' (Answer 1.) 'Man of superfluous knowledge.' (A. 2.) 'Mad.' (Q.) ' Democrat?' (A.I.) 'Petticoat Government.' (A. 2.) ' Witchcraft.' (A. 3.) ' Half-turning of the horse.' (Q.) 'Babylonish jargon?' (A. 1.) 'A vessel made at Baby lon.' (A. 2.) ' A kind of drink made at Jerusalem.' (A. 3.) ' A kind of coat worn by Babylonians.' (Q.) 'Lay brother?' (A. 1.) 'A bishop.' (A. 2.) ' A step-brother.' (A. 3.) ' A scholar of the same godfather.' (Q.) 'Sumpter mule?' (A.) 'A stubborn Jew.' (Q.) ' Bilious-looking fellow? ' (A. 1.) ' A man of strict character.' (A. 2.) ' A person having a nose like the bill of an eagle.' (Q.) ' Cloister? ' (A.) ' A kind of shell.' (Q.) 'Tavern politicians?' (A.I.) 'Politi cians in charge of the alehouse.' (A. 2.) ' Mere vulgars.' (A. 3.) ' Managers of the priestly church.' (Q.) ' A pair of cast-off galli gaskins? ' (A.) ' Two gallons of wine.'
The fact here drawn attention to as significant, is, that these Hindu youths, during their matriculation examination, betrayed so much ignorance of the meaning of words arid ex pressions contained in an English work they had read. And the intended implication appears to be that they were proved unfit to begin their college careers. If, now, instead of accept ing that which is presented to us, we look a little below it, that which may strike us is the amazing folly of an examiner who proposes to test the fitness of youths for commencing their higher education, by seeing how much they know of the technical terms, cant-phrases, slang, and even extinct slang, talked by the people of another nation. Instead of the unfitness of the boys, which is pointed out to us, we may see rather the unfitness of those concerned in educating them.
If, again, not dwelling 011 the particular fact underlying the one offered to our notice, we consider it along with others of the same class, our attention is arrested by the general fact that examiners, and especially those appointed under recent systems of administration, habitually put questions of which a large proportion are utterly inappropriate. As I learn from his son, one of our judges not long since found himself un able to answer an examination-paper that had been laid before law-students. A well-known Greek scholar, editor of a Greek play, who was appointed examiner, found that the examina tion-paper set by his predecessor was too ditlicult for him. Mr. Froude, in his inaugural address at St. Andrews, describ ing a paper set by an examiner in English history, said, " I could myself have answered two questions out "of a dozen." And I learn from Mr. G. H. Lewes that he could not give re plies to the questions on English literature which the Civil Service examiners had put to his son. Joining which testi monies with kindred ones coming from students and pro fessors on all sides, we find the really-noteworthy thing to be that examiners, instead of setting questions fit for students, set questions which make manifest their own extensive learning. Especially if they are young, and have reputations to make or to justify, they seize the occasion for displaying their erudi tion, regardless of the interests of those they examine.
If we look through this more significant and general fact for the still deeper fact it grows out of, there arises before us the question — Who examines the examiners? How happens it that men competent in their special knowledge, but so incompetent in their general judgment, should occupy the places they do? This prevailing faultiiiess of the examiners shows conclusively that the administration is faulty at its centre. Somewhere or other, the power of ultimate decision is exer cised by those who are unfit to exercise it. If the examiners of the examiners were set to fill up an examination-paper which had for its subject the right conduct of examinations, and the proper qualifications for examiners, there would come out very unsatisfactory answers.
Having seen through the small details and the wider facts down to these deeper facts, we may, on contemplating them, perceive that these, too, are not the deepest or most significant.
It becomes clear that those having supreme authority suppose, as men in general do, that the sole essential thing for a teacher or examiner is complete knowledge of that which he has to teach, or respecting which he has to examine. Whereas a co-essential thing is a knowledge of Psychology- and espe cially that part of Psychology which deals with the evolution of the faculties. Unless, either by special study or by daily observation and quick insight, he has gained an approximatelytrue conception of how minds perceive, and reflect, and gen eralize, and by what processes their ideas grow from concrete to abstract, and from simple to complex, no one is competent to give lessons that will effectually teach, or to ask ques tions which will effectually measure the efficiency of teach ing. Further, it becomes manifest that, in common with the public, those in authority assume that the goodness of education is to be tested by the quantity of knowledge ac quired. Whereas it is to be much more truly tested by the capacity for using knowledge — by the extent to which the knowledge gained has been turned into faculty, so as to be available both for the purposes of life and for the purposes of independent investigation. Though there is a growing con sciousness that a mass of unorganized information is, after all, of little value, and that there is more value in less informa tion well-organized, yet the significant truth is that this con sciousness has not got itself officially embodied; and that our educational administration is working, and will long continue to work, in pursuance of a crude and out-worn belief.
As here, then, so in other cases meeting us in the present and all through the past, we have to contend with the diffi culty that the greater part of the evidence supplied to us as of chief interest and importance, is of value only for what it in dicates. We have to resist the temptation to dwell on those trivialities which make up nine-tenths of our records and his tories; and which are worthy of attention solely because of the things they indirectly imply or the things tacitly asserted along with them.
Beyond those vitiations of evidence due to random obser vations, to the subjective states of the observers, to their en thusiasms, or preposessions, or self-interests — beyond those arising from the general tendency to set down as a fact ob served what is really an inference from an observation, and also those arising from the general tendency to admit the dis section by which small surface results are traced to large in terior causes; there come those vitiations of evidence conse quent on its distribution in Space. Of whatever class, political, moral, religious, commercial, &c., may be the phenomena we have to consider, a society presents them in so diffused and multitudinous a way, and under such various relations to us, that the conceptions we can frame are at best extremely inade quate.
Consider how impossible it is truly to conceive so rela tively-simple a thing as the territory which a society covers. Even by the aid of maps, geographical and geological, slowly elaborated by multitudes of surveyors — even by the aid of de scriptions of towns, counties, mountainous and rural districts — even by the aid of such personal examinations as we have made here and there in journeys during life; we can reach nothing approaching to a true idea of the actual surface — arable, grass-covered, wooded; flat, undulating, rocky; drained by rills, brooks, and slow rivers; sprinkled with cottages, farms, villas, cities. Imagination simply rambles hither and thither, and fails utterly to frame an adequate thought of the whole. How then shall we frame an adequate thought of a diffused moral feeling, of an intellectual state, of a commer cial activity, pervading this territory; unaided by maps, and aided only by the careless statements of careless observers? Eespecting most of the phenomena, as displayed by a nation at large, only dim apprehensions are possible; and how un trustworthy they are, is shown by every parliamentary de bate, by every day's newspapers, and by every evening's con versations; which severally disclose quite conflicting estimates.
See how various are the statements made respecting any nation in its character and actions by each traveller visiting it. There is a story, apt if not true, of a Frenchman who, having been three weeks here, proposed to write a book on England; who, after three months, found that he was not quite ready; and who, after three years, concluded that he knew nothing about it. And every one who looks back and compares his early impressions respecting states of things in his own society with the Impressions he now has, will see how erroneous were the beliefs once so decided, and how probable it is that even his revised beliefs are but partially true. On remembering how wrong he was in his pre-conceptions of the people and the life in some unvisited part of the kingdom — on remembering how different from those he had imagined, were the characters he actually found in certain alien classes and along with certain alien creeds; he will see how greatly this wide diffusion of social facts impedes true appreciation of them.
Moreover, there are illusions consequent on what we may call moral perspective, which we do not habitually correct in thought, as we correct in perception the illusions of physical perspective. A small object close to, occupies a larger visual area than a mountain afar off; but here our well-organized ex periences enable us instantly to rectify a false inference sug gested by the subtended angles. No such prompt rectification for the perspective is made in sociological observations. A small event next door, producing a larger impression than a great event in another country, is over-estimated. Conclu sions prematurely drawn from social experiences daily occur ring around us, are difficult to displace by clear proofs that elsewhere wider social experiences point to opposite conclu sions.
A further great difficulty to which we are thus introduced is, that the comparisons by which alone we can finally estab lish relations of cause and effect among social phenomena, can rarely be made between cases in all respects fit for comparison.
Every society differs specifically, if not generically, from every other. Hence it is a peculiarity of the Social Science that parallels drawn between different societies, do not afford grounds for decided conclusions — will not, for instance, show us with certainty, what is an essential phenomenon in a given society and what is a non-essential one. Biology deals with numerous individuals of a species, and with many species of a genus, and by comparing them can see what traits are specifi cally constant and what generically constant; and the like holds more or less with the other concrete sciences. But com parisons between societies, among which we may almost say that each individual is a species by itself, yield much less defi nite results: the necessary characters are not thus readily dis tinguishable from the accidental characters.
So that even supposing we have perfectly- valid data for our sociological generalizations, there still lies before us the diffi culty that these data are, in many cases, so multitudinous and diffused that we cannot adequately consolidate them into true conceptions; the additional difficulty that the moral perspec tive under which they are presented, can scarcely ever be so allowed for as to secure true ideas of proportions; and the fur ther difficulty that comparisons of our vague and incorrect conceptions concerning one society with our kindred concep tions concerning another society, have always to be taken with the qualification that the comparisons are only partially justi fiable, because the compared things are only partially alike in their other traits.
An objective difficulty, even greater still, which the Social Science presents, arises from the distribution of its facts in Time. Those who look on a society as either supernaturally created or created by Acts of Parliament, and who conse quently consider successive stages of its existence as having no necessary dependence on one another, will not be deterred from drawing political conclusions from passing facts, by a consciousness of the slow genesis of social phenomena. But those who have risen to the belief that societies are evolved in structure and function, as in growth, will be made to hesitate on contemplating the long unfolding through which early causes work out late results.
Even true appreciation of the successive facts which an individual life presents, is generally hindered by inability to grasp the gradual processes by which ultimate effects are pro duced; as we may see in the foolish mother who, yielding to her perverse child, gains the immediate benefit of peace, and cannot foresee the evil of chronic dissension which her policy will hereafter bring about. And in the life of a nation, which, if of high type, lasts at least a hundred individual lives, cor rect estimation of results is still more hindered by this im mense duration of the actions through which antecedents bring their consequents. In judging of political good and evil, the average legislator thinks much after the manner of the mother dealing with the spoiled child: if a course is pro ductive of immediate benefit, that is considered sufficient jus tification. Quite recently an inquiry has been made into the results of an administration which had been in action some five years only, with the tacit assumption that supposing the results were proved good, the administration would be justified.
And yet to those who look into the records of the past not to revel in narratives of battles or to gloat over court-scandals, but to find how institutions and laws have arisen and how they have worked, there is no truth more obvious than that generation after generation must pass before the outcome of an action that has been set up can be seen. Take the example furnished us by our Poor Laws. When villeinage had passed away and serfs were no longer maintained by their owners — when, in the absence of any one to control and take care of serfs, there arose an increasing class of mendicants and " stur dy rogues, preferring robbery to labour " — when, in Richard the Second's time, authority over such was given ^to justices and sheriffs, out of which there presently grew the binding of servants, labourers, and beggars, to their respective localities - — when, to meet the case of beggars, " impotent to serve," the people of the districts in which they were found, were made in some measure responsible for them (so re-introducing in a more general form the feudal arrangement of attachment to the soil, and reciprocal claim on the soil); it was not sus pected that the foundations were laid for a system which would, in after times, bring about a demoralization threaten- ~ ing general ruin. When, in subsequent centuries, to meet 94. THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
the evils of again-increasing vagrancy which punishment failed to repress, these measures, re-enacted with modifica tions, ended in making the people of each parish chargeable with the maintenance of their poor, while it re-established the severest penalties on vagabondage, even to death without benefit of clergy, no one ever anticipated that while the penal elements of this legislation would by and by become so modi fied as to have little practical effect in checking idleness, the accompanying arrangements would eventually take such forms as immensely to encourage idleness. Neither legisla tors nor others foresaw that in 230 years the poor's-rate, hav ing grown to seven millions, would become a public spoil of which we read that — " The ignorant believed it an inexhaustible fund which belonged to them. To obtain their share the brutal bullied the administrators, the profligate exhibited their bastards which must be fed, the idle folded their arms and waited till they got it; ignorant boys and girls married upon it; poachers, thieves, and prostitutes, extorted it by in timidation; country justices lavished it for popularity, and guardians for convenience...Better men sank down among the worse: the rate-paying cottager, after a vain struggle, went to the pay-table to seek relief; the modest girl might starve while her bolder neighbour received Is. Qd. per week for every illegitimate child." As sequences of the law of Elizabeth, no one imagined that, in rural districts, farmers, becoming chief administrators, would pay part of their men's wages out of the rates (so tax ing the rest of the ratepayers for the cultivation of their fields); and that this abnormal relation of master and man would entail bad cultivation. No one imagined that, to escape poor's-rates, landlords would avoid building cottages, and would even clear cottages away: so causing over-crowding, with consequent evils, bodily and mental. No one imagined that workhouses, so called, would become places for idling in; and places where married couples would display their " elec tive affinities " time after time.10 Yet these, and detrimental results which it would take pages to enumerate, culminating in that general result most detrimental of all — helping the worthless to multiply at the expense of the worthy — finally came out of measures taken out ages ago merely to mitigate certain immediate evils.
Is it not obvious, then, that only in the course of those long periods required to mould national characters and habits and sentiments, will the truly-important results of a public policy show themselves? Let us consider the question a little further.
In a society living1, growing, changing, every new factor becomes a permanent force; modifying more or less the direc tion of movement determined by the aggregate of forces. Never simple and direct, but, by the co-operation of so many causes, made irregular, involved, and always rhythmical, the course of social change cannot be judged of in its general direction by inspecting any small portion of it. Each action will inevitably be followed, after a while, by some direct or indirect reaction, and this again by a re-action; and until the successive effects have shown themselves, no one can say how the total motion will be modified. You must compare posi tions at great distances from one another in time, before you can tell rightly whither things are tending. Even so simple a thing as a curve of single curvature cannot have its nature perceived unless there is a considerable length of it. See here these five points close together. The curve passing through them may be a circle, an ellipse, a parabola, an hyperbola.
Let the points be further apart, and it becomes possible to form some opinion of the nature of the curve — it is obviously not a circle. Let them, or some of them, be more remote still, and it may be seen that if not an infinite curve it must be a highly eccentric ellipse. And when the points are at relative ly great distances, the mathematician can say with certainty what conic section alone will pass through them all. Surely, then, in such complex and slowly-evolving movements as those of a nation's life, all the smaller and greater rhythms of which fall within certain general directions, it is impossible that such general directions can be traced by looking at stages that are close together — it is impossible that the effect wrought on any general direction by some additional force, can be truly computed from observations extending over but a few years, or but a few generations.
For, in the case of these most-involved of all movements, there is the difficulty, paralleled in no other movements (being only approached in those of individual evolution), that each new factor, besides modifying in an immediate way the course of a movement, modifies it also in a remote way, by changing the amounts and directions of all other factors. A fresh influ ence brought into play on a society, not only affects its mem bers directly in their acts, but also indirectly in their charac ters. Continuing to work on their characters generation after generation, and altering by inheritance the feelings which they bring into social life at large, this influence alters the in tensities and bearings of all other influences throughout the society. By slowly initiating modifications of nature, it brings into play forces of many kinds, incalculable in their strengths and tendencies, that act without regard to the original influ ence, and may cause quite opposite effects.
Fully to exhibit this objective difficulty, and to show more clearly still how important it is to take as data for sociological conclusions, not the brief sequences, but the sequences that extend over centuries or are traceable throughout civilization, let us draw a lesson from a trait which all regulative agencies in all nations have displayed.
The original meaning of human sacrifices, otherwise toler ably clear, becomes quite clear on finding that where canni balism is still rampant, and where the largest consumers of human flesh are the chiefs, these chiefs, undergoing apotheosis when they die, are believed thereafter to feed on the souls of the departed — the souls being regarded as duplicates equally material with the bodies they belong to. And should any doubt remain, it must be dissipated by the accounts we have of the ancient Mexicans, whose priests, when war had not lately furnished a victim, complained to the king that the god was hungry; and who, when a victim was sacrificed, offered his heart to the idol (bathing its lips with his blood, and even putting portions of the heart into his mouth) and then cooked and ate the rest of the body themselves. Here the fact to which attention is drawn, and which various civilizations show us, is that the sacrificing of prisoners or others, once a general usage among cannibal ancestry, continues as an eccle siastical usage long after having died out in the ordinary life of a society. Two facts, closely allied with this fact, have like general implications. Cutting implements of stone remain in use for sacrificial purposes when implements of bronze, and even of iron, are used for all other purposes: the Hebrews are commanded in Deuteronomy to build altars of stone without using iron tools; the high priest of Jupiter at Rome was shaved with a bronze knife. Further, the primitive method of obtaining fire by the friction of pieces of wood, survives in religious ceremonies ages after its abandonment in the house hold; and even now, among the Hindus, the flame for the altar is kindled by the "fire drill." These are striking in stances of the pertinacity with which the oldest part of the regulative organization maintains its original traits in the teeth of influences that modify things around it.
The like holds in respect of the language, spoken and written, which it employs. Among the Egyptians the most ancient form of hieroglyphics was retained for sacred records, when more developed forms were adopted for other purposes.
The continued use of Hebrew for religious services among the Jews, and the continued use of Latin for the Roman Catholic service, show us how strong this tendency is, apart from the particular creed. Among ourselves, too, a less dominant ecclesiasticism exhibits a kindred trait. The English of the Bible is of an older style than the English of the date at which the translation was made; and in the church service various words retain obsolete meanings, and others are pro nounced in obsolete ways. Even the typography, with its illu minated letters of the rubric, shows traces of the same ten dency; while Puseyites and ritualists, aiming to reinforce ecclesiasticism, betray a decided leaning towards archaic print, as well as archaic ornaments. In the aesthetic direction, in deed, their movement has brought back the most primitive type of sculpture for monumental purposes; as may be seen in Canterbury Cathedral, where, in two new monuments to ecclesiastics, one being Archbishop Sumner, the robed figures recline on their backs, with hands joined, after the manner of the mailed knights on early tombs — presenting complete sym metry of attitude, which is a distinctive trait of barbaric art, as shown by every child's drawing of a man and every idol carved by a savage.