TEE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 3 



ly asserted by those who, every morning, read of chaos at the Admi- 

 ralty, or cross-purposes in the dock-yards, or wretched army organiza- 

 tion, or diplomatic bungling that endangers peace, or frustration of 

 justice by technicalities and costs and delays all without having their 

 confidence in officialism shaken. " Building Acts should msure better 

 ventilation in small houses," says one who either never knew or has 

 forgotten that, after Messrs. Reid & Barry had spent 200,000 in fail- 

 ing to ventilate the Houses of Parliament, the First Commissioner of 

 Works proposed that " the House should get some competent engi- 

 neer, above suspicion of partiality, to let them see what ought to be 

 done." * And similarly there are continually cropping out in the press, 

 and at meetings, and in conversations, such notions as that the State 

 might provide " cheap capital " by some financial sleight of hand ; that 

 " there ought to be bread-overseers appointed by Government ; " 2 that 

 " it is the duty of Government to provide a suitable national asylum 

 for the reception of all illegitimate children." 3 And here it is doubt- 

 less thought by some, as it is in France by M. de Lagevenais, that 

 Government, by supplying good music, should exclude the bad, such 

 as that of Offenbach. 4 We smile on reading of that French princess, 

 celebrated for her innocent wonder that people should starve when 

 there was so simple a remedy. But why should we smile ? A great 

 part of the current political thought evinces notions of practicability 

 not much more rational 



That connections among social phenomena should be so little un- 

 derstood need not surprise us, if we note the ideas which prevail re- 

 specting the connections among much simpler phenomena. Minds 

 left ignorant of physical causation are unlikely to appreciate clearly, 

 if at all, that causation, so much more subtle and complex, which runs 

 through the actions of incorporated men. In almost every house, ser- 

 vants, and those who employ them, alike believe that a poker leaned 

 up in front of the bars, or across them, makes the fire burn ; and you 

 will be told, very positively, that experience proves the efficacy of the 

 device the experience being that the poker has been repeatedly so 

 placed and the fire has repeatedly burned ; and no comparison having 

 been made with cases in which the poker was absent, and all other 

 conditions as before. In the same circles the old prejudice against 

 sitting down thirteen to dinner still survives : there actually exists, 

 among ladies who have been at finishing-schools of the highest char- 

 acter, and among some gentlemen who pass as intelligent, the convic- 

 tion that adding or subtracting one, from a number of people who eat 

 together will affect the fates of some among: them. And this state 



1 Debates, Times, February 12, 1852. 



2 Letter in Daily News, November 28, 1851. 



8 Recommendation of a Coroner's Jury, Times, March 26, 1850. 

 4 Revue des Deux Mondes, February 15, 1872. 



