THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 9 



different from its real direction, and sometimes, as when a fish is seen 

 in the water, its apparent place is so far from its real place, that great 

 misconception results unless large allowance is made for refraction ; but 

 sociological observations are not thus falsified : through the daily press 

 light comes without any bending of its rays, and in studying past ages 

 it is easy to make allowance for the refraction due to the historic 

 medium. 



The motions of gases, though they conform to mechanical laws 

 which are well understood, are nevertheless so involved, that the art 

 of controlling currents of air in a house is not yet mastered ; but the 

 waves and currents of feeling running through a society, and the con- 

 sequent directions and amounts of social activities, may be readily 

 known beforehand. 



Though molecules of inorganic substances are very simple, yet pro- 

 longed study is required to understand their modes of behavior to one 

 another, and even the most instructed frequently meet with interactions 

 of them producing consequences they never anticipated ; but, where 

 the interacting bodies are not molecules but living beings of highly- 

 complex natures, it is easy to foresee all results which will arise. 

 Physical phenomena are so connected that, between seeming proba- 

 bility and actual truth, there is apt to be a wide difference, even where 

 but two bodies are acting : instance the natural supposition that during 

 our northern summer the Earth is nearer to the Sun than during the 

 winter, which is just the reverse of the fact ; but among sociological 

 phenomena, where the bodies are so multitudinous, and the forces by 

 which they a* ., on one another so many, and so multiform, and so 

 variable, the probability and the actuality will naturally correspond. 



Matter often behaves paradoxically, as when two cold liquids added 

 together become boiling hot, as when the mixing of two clear liquids 

 produces an opaque mud, or as when water immersed in sulphurous 

 acid freezes on a hot iron plate ; but what we distinguish as Mind, 

 especially when massed together in the way which causes social action, 

 evolves no paradoxical results always such results come from it as 

 seem likely to come. 



The acceptance of contradictions like these, tacitly implied in the 

 beliefs of the scientifically cultivated, is the more remarkable when we 

 consider how abundant are the proofs that human nature is difficult to 

 manipulate ; that methods apparently the most rational disappoint 

 expectation ; and that the best results frequently arise from courses 

 which common-sense thinks unpractical. Even individual human 

 nature shows us these startling anomalies. A man of leisure is the 

 man naturally fixed upon, if something has to be done ; but your man 

 of leisure cannot find time, and the man to be trusted to do what is 

 wanted, is the man who is already busy. The boy who studies long- 

 est will learn the most, and a man will become wise in proportion as 

 he reads much, are propositions which look true but are quite untrue 



