THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 275 



Peter's going outside for a minute or two, the tailor left his seat and looked 

 about him. He soon came to a place where there were many stools, and a chair 

 of massive gold and a golden footstool, which were God's. Climbing up on 

 the chair, he could see all that was happening on the earth ; and he saw an old 

 woman, who was washing clothes in a stream, making away with some of the 

 linen. In his anger, he took up the footstool and threw it at her. As he could 

 not get it back, he thought it best to return to his place behind the door, where 

 he sat down, putting on an air of innocence. God now reentered, without ob- 

 serving the tailor. Finding his footstool gone, he asked Peter what had become 

 of it had he let any one in? The apostle at first evaded the question, but con- 

 fessed that he had let in one only, however, a poor limping tailor. The tailor 

 was then called, and asked what he had done with the footstool. When he had 

 told, God said to him : ' you knave, if I judged like you, how long do you 

 think you would have escaped? Long ago I should not have had a chair or 

 even a poker left in the place, but should have hurled every thing at the sin- 

 ners.' . . . ." ' 



These examples, out of multitudes that might be given, show the 

 wide limits of variation within which social phenomena range. When 

 we bear in mind that, along with theological ideas that now seem little 

 above those of savages, there went (in England) a political constitu- 

 tion having outlines like the present, an established body of laws, a 

 regular taxation, an emancipated working-class, an industrial system 

 of considerable complexity, with the general intelligence and mutual 

 trust implied by social cooperations so extensive and involved, we see 

 that there are possibilities of combination far more numerous than we 

 are apt to suppose. There is proved to us the need for greatly enlar- 

 ging those stock-notions which are so firmly established in us by daily 

 observations of surrounding; arrangements and occurrences. 



"We might, indeed, even if limited to the evidence which our own 

 society at the present time supplies, greatly increase the plasticity of 

 our conceptions, did we contemplate the facts as they really are. 

 Could we nationally, as well as individually, " see ourselves as others 

 see us," we might find at home seeming contradictions, sufficient to 

 show us that what we think necessarily-connected traits are by no 

 means necessarilv connected. We might learn from our own institu- 

 tions, and books, and journals, and debates, that while there are cer- 

 tain constant relations among social phenomena, they are not the 

 relations commonly supposed to be constant ; and that, when from 

 some conspicuous characteristic we infer certain other characteristics, 

 we may be quite wrong. To aid ourselves in perceiving this, let us, 

 varying a somewhat trite mode of representation, consider what might 

 be said of us by an independent observer, living in the far future 

 supposing his statements translated into our cumbrous language. 



" Though the diagrams used for teaching make every child aware 

 thac many thousands of years ago the earth's orbit began to recede 



1 " Kinder- und-Hausmarchen," by William and James Grimm, larger edition (1870), 

 pp. 140-142. 



