, 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and then rush all one way, like a flock of sheep after a leader. These 

 characteristics in human nature, leading to these perturbations, the 

 far-seeing buyer takes into account judging how far existing influ- 

 ences have made opinion deviate from the truth, and how far impending 

 influences are likely to do it. Nor has be got to the end of the matter 

 even when he has considered all these things. He has still to ask 

 what are the general mercantile conditions of the country, and what 

 the immediate future of the money market will be ; since the course of 

 speculation in every commodity must be affected by the rate of dis- 

 count. See, then, the enormous complication of causes which deter- 

 mine so simple a thing as the rise or fall of a farthing per pound in 

 cotton some months hence ! 



If the genesis of social phenomena is so involved in cases like this, 

 where the effect produced has no concrete persistence but very soon 

 dissipates, judge what it must be where there is produced something 

 which continues thereafter to be an increasing agency, capable of 

 self-propagation. Not only has a society, as a whole, a power of 

 growth and development, but each institution set up in it has the like 

 draws to itself units of the society and nutriment for them, and 

 tends ever to multiply and ramify. Indeed, the instinct of self-preser- 

 vation in each institution soon becomes dominant over every thing 

 else ; and maintains it when it performs some quite other function than 

 that intended, or no function at all. See, for instance, what has come 

 of the " Society of Jesus," Loyola set up ; or see what grew out of the 

 company of traders who got a footing on the coast of Hindostan. 



To such considerations as these, set down to show the inconsistency 

 of those who think that prevision of social phenomena is possible 

 without much study, though much study is needed for prevision of 

 other phenomena, it will doubtless be replied that time does not 

 allow of systematic inquiry. From the scientific, as from the unscien- 

 tific, there will come the plea that, in his capacity of citizen, each man 

 has to act ; must vote, and must decide before he votes ; must con- 

 clude, to the best of his ability, on such information as he has. 



In this plea there is some truth, mingled with a good deal more 

 that looks like truth. It is a product of that " must-do-something " 

 impulse which is the origin of much mischief, individual and social. 

 An amiable anxiety to undo or neutralize an evil often prompts to 

 rash courses, as you may see in the hurry with which one who has 

 fallen is snatched up by those at hand ; just as though there were 

 danger in letting him lie, which there is not, and no danger in 

 incautiously raising him, which there is. Always you nnd among 

 people, in proportion as they are ignorant, a belief in specifics, and a 

 great confidence in pressing the adoption of them. Has some one a 

 pain in the side, or in the chest, or in the bowels ? Then, before any 

 careful inquiry as to its probable cause, there comes an urgent recom- 



