THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 7 



back and compares his early impressions respecting states of things in 

 his own society with the impressions he now has, will see how erroneous 

 were the beliefs once so decided, and how probable it is that even his 

 revised beliefs are but very partially true. On remembering how 

 wrong he was in his preconceptions of the people and the life in some 

 unvisited part of the kingdom on remembering how different, from 

 those he had imagined, were the characters he actually found in certain 

 alien classes and along with certain alien creeds he will see how 

 greatly this wide diffusion of social facts impedes true appreciation of 

 them. 



Moreover, there are illusions consequent on what we may call moral 

 perspective, which we do not habitually correct in thought, as we 

 correct in perception the illusions of physical perspective. A small 

 object close to, occupies a larger visual area than a mountain afar off; 

 but here our well-organized experiences enable us instantly to rectify 

 a false inference suggested by the subtended angles. ISTo such prompt 

 rectification for the perspective is made in sociological observations. 

 A small event next door, producing a larger impression than a great 

 event in another country, is over-estimated. Conclusions, prematurely 

 drawn from social experiences daily occurring around us, are difficult 

 to displace by clear proofs that elsewhere wider social experiences 

 point to quite opposite conclusions. 



A further great difficulty to which we are thus introduced is, that 

 the comparisons of experiences, by which alone we can finally establish 

 relations of cause and effect among social phenomena, can rarely be 

 made between cases in all respects fit for comparison. Every society 

 differs specifically, if not generically, from every other. Hence it is a 

 peculiarity of the Social Science that parallels drawn between different 

 societies do not afford grounds for decided conclusions will not, for 

 instance, show us with certainty what is an essential phenomenon in 

 a given society and what is a non-essential one. Biology deals with 

 numerous individuals of a species, and with many species of a genus, 

 and by comparing them can see what traits are specifically constant 

 and what generically constant ; and the like holds more or less with 

 the other concrete sciences. But comparisons between societies, among 

 which we may almost say that each individual is a species by itself, 

 y eld much less definite results : the necessary characters are not thus 

 readily distinguishable from the accidental characters. 



So that, even supposing we have perfectly valid data for our socio- 

 logical generalizations, there still lies before us the difficulty that 

 these data are, in many cases, so multitudinous and diffused that we 

 cannot adequately consolidate them into true conceptions ; the addi- 

 tional difficulty, that the moral perspective under which they are pre- 

 sented can scarcely ever be so allowed for as to secure true ideas of 

 proportions; and the further difficulty, that comparisons of our vague 

 and incorrect conceptions concerning oue society with our kindred 



