THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 263 



moralized if they carried their proposed restrictions into effect. The 

 superstition that good behavior is to be forthwith produced by lessons 

 learned out of school-books, which was long ago statistically disproved, 1 

 would, but for preconceptions, be utterly dissipated by observing to 

 what a slight extent knowledge affects conduct by observing that 

 the dishonesty implied in the adulterations of tradesmen and manufac- 

 turers, in fraudulent bankruptcies, in bubble-companies, in " cooking " 

 of railway accounts and financial prospectuses, differs only in form, 

 and not in amount, from the dishonesty of the uneducated on observ- 

 ing how amazingly little the teachings given to medical students affect 

 their lives, and how even the most experienced medical men have their 

 prudence scarcely at all increased by their information. Similarly, 

 the Utopian ideas which come out afresh along with every new politi- 

 cal scheme, from the " paper-constitutions " of the Abbe Sieyes down 

 to the just-published programme of M. Louis Blanc, and from agita- 

 tions for vote-by-ballot up to those who have a republic for their aim, 

 might, but for this tacit belief we are contemplating, be extinguished 

 by the facts perpetually and startlingly thrust on our attention. 

 Again and again for three generations has France been showing to 

 the world how impossible it is essentially to change the type of a social 

 structure by any rearrangement wrought out through a revolution. 

 However great the transformation may for a time seem, the original 

 thing reappears in disguise. Out of the nominally-free government 

 set up, a new despotism arises, different from the old by having a new 

 shibboleth and new men to utter it; but identical with the old in the 

 determination to put down opposition, and in the means used to this 

 end. Liberty, when obtained, is forthwith surrendered to an avowed 

 autocrat ; or, as we have seen within this year, it is allowed to lapse 

 into the hands of one who claims the reality of autocracy without its 

 title. Nay, the change is, in fact, even less ; for the regulative organi- 

 zation which ramifies throughout French society continues unaltered 

 by these changes at the governmental centre. The bureaucratic sys- 

 tem persists equally under Imperialist, Constitutional, and Republican 

 arrangements. As the Due d'Audriffret-Pasquier pointed out, " Em- 

 pires fall, Ministers pass away, but Bureaux remain." The aggregate 

 of forces and tendencies embodied, not only in the structural arrange- 

 ments holding the nation together, but in the ideas and sentiments of 

 its units, is so powerful that the excision of a part, even though it be 

 the governmental centre, is quickly followed by the substitution of a 

 like part. It needs but to recall the truth exemplified some chapters 

 back, that the properties of the aggregate are determined by the prop- 

 erties of the units, to see at once that, so long as the characters of citizens 

 remain substantially unchanged, there can be no substantial change in 

 the political organization which has slowly been evolved by them. 



1 " Summary of the Moral Statistics of England and Wales." By Joseph Fletcher, , 

 Esq., one of her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. 



