452 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



extremely inadequate. Political passion, class-hatred, and feelings of 

 great intensity, are alone habitually admitted to be large factors in 

 determining opinions. But, as above implied, we have to take account 

 of emotions of many kinds and of all degrees, down to slight likes and 

 dislikes. For, if we look closely into our own beliefs on public affairs, 

 as well as into the beliefs of those around us, we find them to be 

 caused much more by aggregates of feelings than by examinations of 

 evidence. No one, even if he tries, succeeds in preventing the slow 

 growth of sympathies with, or antipathies to, certain institutions, cus- 

 toms, ideas, etc. ; and, if he watches himself, he will perceive that un- 

 avoidably each new question coming before him is considered in rela- 

 tion to the mass of convictions which have been gradually moulded 

 into agreement with his sympathies and antipathies. 



When the reader has admitted,, as he must if he is candid with 

 himself, that his opinion on any political act or proposal is commonly 

 formed in advance of direct evidence, and that he rarely takes the 

 trouble to inquire whether direct evidence justifies it, he will see how 

 great are those difficulties in the way of sociological science, which 

 arise from the various emotions excited by the matters it deals with. 

 Let us note, first, the effects of some emotions of a general kind, which 

 we are apt to overlook. 



The state of mind we call impatience is one of these. If a man 

 swears at some inanimate thing which he cannot adjust as he wishes, 

 or if, in wintry weather, slipping down and hurting himself, he vents 

 his anger by damning gravitation, his folly is manifest enough to 

 spectators, and to himself also when his irritation has died away. But 

 in the political sphere it is otherwise. A man may here, in fact if not 

 in word, damn a law of Nature, without being himself aware, and with- 

 out making others aware, of his absurdity. 



The state of feeling often betrayed toward Political Economy ex- 

 emplifies this. An impatience, accompanying the vague consciousness 

 that certain cherished convictions or pet schemes are at variance with 

 politico-economical truths, shows itself in contemptuous words ap- 

 plied to these truths. Knowing that his theory of government and 

 plans for social reformation are discountenanced by it, Mr. Carlyle 

 manifests his annoyance by calling Political Economy " the dismal 

 science." And, among others than his adherents, there are many be- 

 longing to all parties, retrograde and progressive, who display repug- 

 nance to this body of doctrine with which their favorite theories do 

 not agree. Yet a little thought might show them that their feeling is 

 much of the same kind as would be scorn vented by a perpetual-motion 

 schemer against the principles of mechanics. 



To see that these generalizations which they think of as cold and 

 hard, and acceptable only by the unsympathetic, are nothing but 

 statements of certain modes of action arising out of human nature, 



