THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 279 



justment, we are apt to suppose that congruity of institutions, con- 

 duct, sentiments, and beliefs, is necessary. "We think it almost im- 

 possible that, in the same society, there should be daily practised 

 principles of quite opposite kinds ; and it seems to us scarcely credible 

 that men should have, or profess to have, beliefs with which their acts 

 are absolutely irreconcilable. Only that extremely rare disorder, in- 

 sanity, could explain the conduct of one who, knowing that fire burns, 

 nevertheless thrusts his hand into the flame ; and to insanity also we 

 should ascribe the behavior of one who, professing to think a certain 

 course morally right, pursued the opposite course. Yet the revela- 

 tions yielded by these ancient remains show us that societies could 

 hold together notwithstanding: what we should think a chaos of con- 

 duct and of opinion. Nay, more, they show us that it was possible for 

 men to profess one thing and do another, without betraying a con- 

 sciousness of inconsistency. One piece of evidence is curiously to the 

 point. Among their multitudinous agencies for beneficent purposes, 

 the English had a 'Naval and Military Bible Society' a society for 

 distributing copies of their sacred book among their professional 

 fighters on sea and land ; and this society was subscribed to, and 

 chiefly managed by, leaders among these fighters. It is, indeed, sug- 

 gested by the reporter, that for these classes of men they had an ex- 

 purgated edition of their sacred book, from which the injunctions to 

 'return good for evil,' and 'to turn the cheek to the smiter,' were 

 omitted. It may have been so ; but, if not, we have a remarkable in- 

 stance of the extent to which conviction and conduct may be diamet- 

 rically opposed, without any apparent perception that they are op- 

 posed. We habitually assume that the distinctive trait of humanity 

 is rationality, and that rationality involves consistency ; yet here we 

 find an extinct race (unquestionably human, and regarding itself as 

 rational) in which the inconsistency of conduct and professed belief 

 was as great as can well be imagined. Thus we are warned against 

 supposing that what now seems to us so natural was always natural. 

 We have our eyes opened to an error which has been getting con- 

 firmed among us for these thousands of years, that social phenomena 

 and the phenomena of human nature necessarily hang together in the 

 ways we see around us." 



Before summing up what has been said under the title of "Sub- 

 jective Difficulties Intellectual," I may remai'k that this group of 

 difficulties is separated from the group of objective difficulties, dealt 

 with in the last chapter, rather for the sake of convenience than 

 because the division can be strictly maintained. In contemplating 

 difficulties of interpretation phenomena being on the one side and in- 

 telligence on the other we may, as we please, ascribe failure either to 

 the inadequacy of the intelligence or to the involved nature of the 

 phenomena. * The difficulty is subjective or objective according to our 



