THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 15 



mendation ol a never-failing remedy, joined probably with the remark 

 that, if it does no good, it can do no harm. There still prevails in the 

 average mind a large amount of the fetishistic conception clearly 

 shown by a butler to some friends of mine, who, having been found 

 to drain the half-emptied medicine-bottles, explained that he thought 

 it a pity good physic should be wasted, and that what benefited 

 his master would benefit him. But, as fast as crude conceptions of 

 diseases and remedial measures grow up into Pathology and Thera- 

 peutics, we find increasing caution, along with increasing proof that 

 evil is often done instead of good. This contrast is traceable not only 

 as we pass from popular ignorance to professional knowledge, but as 

 we pass from the smaller professional knowledge of early times to 

 the greater professional knowledge of our own. The question with 

 the modern physician is not as with the ancient shall the treatment 

 be bloodletting ? shall cathartics, or shall diaphoretics be given ? or 

 shall mercurials be administered ? But there rises the previous ques- 

 tion shall there be any treatment beyond a healthy regimen ? And 

 even among existing physicians it happens that, in proportion as the 

 judgment is most cultivated, there is the least yielding to the " must- 

 do-something " impulse. 



Is it not possible, then is it not even probable that this supposed 

 necessity for immediate action, which is put in as an excuse for 

 drawing quick conclusions from few data, is the concomitant of 

 deficient knowledge ? Is it not probable that, as in Biology so in 

 Sociology, the accumulation of more facts, the more critical com- 

 parison of them, and the drawing of conclusions on scientific methods, 

 will be accompanied by increasing doubt about the benefits to be 

 secured, and increasing fear of the mischiefs which may be worked ? 

 Is it not probable that what in the individual organism is improperly, 

 though conveniently, called the vis medicatrix naturae, may be found 

 to have its analogue in the social organism ? and will there not very 

 likely come, along with the recognition of this, the consciousness 

 that in both cases the one thing needful is to maintain the condi- 

 tions under which the natural actions may have fair play ? Such a 

 consciousness, to be anticipated from increased knowledge, will di- 

 minish the force of this plea for prompt decision after little inquiry ; 

 since it will check this tendency to think of a remedial measure as 

 one that may do good and cannot do harm. Nay, more, the study of 

 Sociology, scientifically carried on by tracing back proximate causes 

 to remote ones, and tracing down primary effects to secondary and 

 tertiary effects which multiply as they diffuse, will dissipate the cur- 

 rent illusion that social evils admit of radical cures. Given an 

 average defect of nature among the units of a society, and no skilful 

 manipulation of them will prevent that defect from producing its 

 equivalent of bad results. It is possible to change the form of these 

 bad results ; it is possible to change the places at which they are 



