262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of domestic service is raised, it mostly happens that its bearings are 

 considered wholly in reference to those social arrangements which exist 

 around us ; only a few proceed on the supposition that these arrange- 

 ments are probably but transitory. It is so throughout. Be the sub- 

 jects industrial organization, or class-relations, or rule by fashion, the 

 belief which practically, moulds the conclusions, if not the belief theo- 

 retically professed, is, that, whatever changes they may undergo, our 

 institutions will not cease to be recognizably the same. Even those 

 who have, as they think, deliberately freed themselves from this per- 

 verting tendency even M. Comte and his disciples, believing in an 

 entire transformation of society, nevertheless betray an incomplete 

 emancipation ; for the ideal society believed in by them, is one under 

 regulation by a hierarchy essentially akin to hierarchies such as man- 

 kind have known. So that everywhere, more or less, sociological 

 thinking is impeded by the difficulty of constantly bearing in mind 

 that the social states toward which mankind are being carried are 

 probably as little conceivable by us as our present state was conceiv- 

 able by a Norse pirate and his followers. 



Note, now, the contrary difficulty, which appears to be surmount- 

 able by scarcely any of our parties, political and philanthropic, from 

 the highest to the lowest the difficulty of understanding that human 

 nature, though indefinitely modifiable, can be modified but very 

 slowly ; and that all laws and institutions and appliances, which count 

 on getting from it within a short time much better results than pres- 

 ent ones, will inevitably fail. If we glance over the programmes of 

 societies, and sects, and schools of all kinds, from Rousseau's disciples 

 in the French Convention down to the members of the United King- 

 dom Alliance, from the adherents of the Ultramontane propaganda 

 down to the enthusiastic advocates of an education exclusively secu- 

 lar, we find in them one common trait. They are all pervaded by the 

 conviction, now definitely expressed and now taken as a self-evident 

 truth, that there needs but this kind of instruction or that kind of 

 discipline, this mode of repression or that system of culture, to bring 

 society into a very much better state. Here we read that " it is neces- 

 sary completely to refashion the people whom one wishes to make 

 free : " the implication being that a refashioning is practicable. 

 There it is taken as self-evident that, when you have taught children 

 what they ought to do to be good citizens, they will become good 

 citizens. Elsewhere it is held to be a truth beyond question that, if 

 by law temptations to drink are removed from men, they will not only 

 cease to drink, but thereafter cease to commit crimes. And yet the 

 delusiveness of all such hopes is obvious enough to any one not blind- 

 ed by an hypothesis, or carried away by an enthusiasm. The fact, 

 often pointed out to Temperance-fanatics, that some of the soberest 

 nations in Europe yield a proportion of crime higher than our own, 

 might suffice to show them that England would not be suddenly 



