NATURE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCE. 



527 



tors practically negative the change. An advertised proposal to sup- 

 ply a book direct by post, at a reduced rate, offends the trade ; and by 

 'gnoring the book they check its sale more than its sale is otherwise 

 furthered. And so an old organization once very serviceable now 

 stands in the way of a better organization. The commerce of litera- 

 ture furnishes yet another illustration. At a time when the reading 

 public was small and books were dear, there grew up circulating libra- 

 ries, enabling people to read books without buying them. At first, 

 few, local, and unorganized, these circulating libraries have greatly 

 multiplied, and have become organized throughout the kingdom: the 

 result being that the demand for library-circulation is in many cases 

 the chief demand. This arrangement being one which makes few 

 copies supply many readers, the price per copy must be high, to obtain 

 an adequate return on the edition. And now reading people in gen- 

 eral, having been brought up in the habit of getting books through 

 libraries, they usually do not think of buying the books themselves 

 would still get most of them through libraries even were they consider- 

 ably cheapened. We are, therefore, except with works of very popu- 

 lar authors, prevented, by the existing system of book-distribution in 

 England, from adopting the American system a system which, not 

 adjusting itself to few libraries but to many private purchasers, issues 

 large editions at low prices. 



Instances of another class are supplied by our educational institu- 

 tions. Richly endowed, strengthened by their prestige, and by the 

 bias given to those they have brought up, our colleges, public schools, 

 and other kindred schools early founded, useful as they once were, 

 have long been enormous impediments to a higher education. By 

 subsidizing the old, they have starved the new. Even now they are 

 retarding a culture better in matter and manner ; both by occupying 

 the field, and by partially incapacitating those who pass through them 

 for seeing what a better culture is. More evidence of a kindred kind 

 is offered by the educational organization developed for dealing with 

 the masses. The struggle going on between Secularism and Denomi- 

 nationalism in teaching might alone show to any one, who looks for 

 the wider meanings of facts, that a structure which has ramified 

 throughout a society, acquired an army of salaried officials looking for 

 personal welfare and promotion, backed by classes, ecclesiastical and 

 political, whose ideas and interests they further, is a structure which, 

 if not unalterable, is difficult to alter in proportion as it is highly de- 

 veloped. 



These few examples, which might be supported by others from the 

 military organization, the ecclesiastical organization, the legal organi- 

 zation, will make comprehensible the analogy I have indicated ; while 

 they make clearer the nature of the Social Science, by bringing into 

 view one of its questions. That with social organisms, as with indi- 

 vidual organisms, structure up to a certain point is needful for growth 



