TEE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 261 



I point out this union of seemingly-inconsistent traits, not because 

 of the direct bearing it has on the argument, but for the sake of its in- 

 direct bearing. For I have here to dwell awhile on the misleading effects 

 of certain mental tendencies which similarly appear very unlikely to 

 coexist, and which yet do habitually coexist. I refer to the belief 

 which, even while I write, I find repeated in the leading journal, that 

 "the deeper a student of history goes, the more does he find man the 

 same in all time ; " and to the quite opposite belief embodied in current 

 politics, that human nature may be readily altered. These two beliefs, 

 which ought to cancel one another but do not, originate two classes of 

 errors in sociological speculation ; and nothing like correct conclusions 

 in Sociology can be drawn until they have been rejected, and replaced 

 by a belief which reconciles them the belief that human nature is in- 

 definitely modifiable, but that no modification of it can be brought 

 about rapidly. We will glance at the errors to which each of these 

 beliefs leads. 



While it was held that the stars are fixed and that the hills are ever- 

 lasting, there was a certain congruity in the notion that man contin- 

 ues unchanged from age to age ; but now when we know that all 

 stars are in motion, and that there are no such things as everlasting 

 hills now that we find all things throughout the Universe to be in a 

 ceaseless flux, it is time for this crude conception of human nature to 

 disappear out of our social conceptions ; or rather it is time that its 

 disappearance should be followed by that of the many narrow notions 

 respecting the past and the future of society, which have grown out 

 of it, and which linger notwithstanding the loss of their root. For, 

 avowedly by some and tacitly by others, it continues to be thought 

 that the human heart is as " desperately wicked " as it ever was, and 

 that the state of society hereafter will be very much like the state of 

 society now. If, when the evidence has been piled mass upon mass, 

 there comes a reluctant admission that aboriginal man, of troglodyte 

 or kindred habits, differed somewhat from man as he was during feudal 

 times, and that the customs and sentiments and beliefs he had in feudal 

 times imply a character appreciably unlike that which he has now 

 if, joined with this, there is a recognition of the truth that along with 

 these changes in man there have gone still more conspicuous changes 

 in society ; there is, nevertheless, an ignoring of the implication that 

 hereafter man and society will continue to change, until they have 

 diverged as widely from their existing types as their existing types 

 have diverged from those of the earliest recorded ages. It is true that 

 among the more cultured, the probability, or even the certainty, that 

 such transformations will go on, may be granted ; but the granting is 

 but nominal, the admission does not become a factor in the conclusions 

 drawn. The first discussion on a political or social topic reveals the 

 tacit assumption that in times to come society will have a structure 

 substantially like its existing structure. If, for instance, the question 



