THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 5 



mental reaction. He expects to get out of a stupid people the effects 

 of intelligence, and to evolve from inferior citizens superior conduct. 



But, while the prevalence of crude political opinions, among those 

 whose conceptions about simple matters are so crude, might be antici- 

 pated, it is somewhat surprising that the class specially disciplined by- 

 scientific culture should bring to the interpretation of social phenomena 

 methods but little in advance of those used by others. Now that the 

 transformation and equivalence of forces is seen by men of science to 

 hold not only throughout all inorganic actions, but throughout all or- 

 ganic actions; now that even mental changes are recognized as the 

 correlatives of cerebral changes, which also conform to this principle ; 

 and now that there must be admitted the corollary that all actions 

 going on in a society are measured by certain antecedent energies, 

 which disappear in effecting them, while they themselves become actual 

 or potential energies, from which subsequent actions arise ; it is strange 

 that thei-e should not have arisen the consciousness that these highest 

 phenomena are to be studied as lower phenomena have been studied 

 not, of course, after the same physical methods, but in pursuance of 

 the same principles. And yet scientific men rarely display such a con- 

 sciousness. 



A mathematician, who had agreed or disagreed with the view of 

 Prof. Tait respecting the value of Quaternions for pursuing researches 

 in Physics, would listen with raised eyebrows were one without mathe- 

 matical culture to express a decided opinion on the matter. Or, if the 

 subject discussed was the doctrine of Helmholtz, that hypothetical 

 beings, occupying space of two dimensions, might be so conditioned 

 that the axioms of our geometry would prove untrue, the mathema- 

 tician would marvel if an affirmation or a negation came from a man 

 who knew no more of the properties of space than is to be gained by 

 daily converse with things around, and no more of the principles of 

 reasoning than the course of business taught him. And yet, were we 

 to take members of the Mathematical Society, who, having severally 

 devoted themselves to the laws of quantitative relations, know that, 

 simple as these are intrinsically, a life's study is required for the full 

 comprehension of them were we to ask each of these his opinion on 

 some point of social policy, the readiness with which he answered 

 would seem to imply that in these cases, where the factors of the phe- 

 nomenon are so numerous and so much involved, a general survey of 

 men and things gives data for trustworthy judgment. 



Or, to contrast more fully the mode of reaching a conclusion which 

 the man of science uses in his own department, with that which he 

 regards as satisfactory in the department of politics, let us take a case 

 from a concrete science say, the question, What are the solar spots, 

 and what constitution of the Sun is implied by them ? Of tentative 

 answers to this question there is first Wilson's, adopted by Sir William 



