* 7 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ages ; or if, at the present time, we observe how the least advanced 

 European nations show a superstitious awe of the ruler, which, in the 

 more advanced, has become conventional respect ; we shall perceive 

 that decrease of the feeling goes on, and can normally go on, only as 

 fast as the fitness of men for social cooperation increases. Manifestly, 

 throughout all past time, assemblages of men in whom the aggressive 

 selfishness of the predatory nature existed without this feeling, which 

 induces obedience to a controlling power, dissolved and disappeared, 

 leaving the world to be peopled by those who had the required emo- 

 tional balance. And it is manifest that, even in civilized society, if 

 the sentiment of subordination becomes enfeebled without self-control 

 gaining in strength proportionately, there arises a danger of social 

 dissolution a truth of which France supplies an illustration. 



Hence, as above said, the conceptions of sociological phenomena, 

 or, at least, of those all-important ones relating to governmental 

 structures and actions, must now, and for a long time to come, be 

 rendered more or less untrue by this perturbing emotion. Here, in 

 the concrete, may be recognized the truth before stated in the abstract, 

 that the individual citizen, embedded, as it were, in the social organism 

 as one of its units, mainly moulded by its influences, and aiding recip- 

 rocally to remould it, furthering its life while enabled by it to live, 

 cannot so emancipate himself as to see things around him in their real 

 relations. Unless the mass of citizens have sentiments and beliefs in 

 something like harmony with the social organization in which they 

 are incorporated, this organization cannot continue. These sentiments 

 proper to each type of society will inevitably sway the sociological 

 conclusions of its units. And, among other sentiments, this awe of 

 embodied power will take a large share in doing this. 



How large a share it takes, we shall see on contemplating the as- 

 tonishingly perverted estimates of rulers it has produced, and the re- 

 sulting perversions of history. Recall the titles of adoration given to 

 emperors and kings ; the ascription to them of capacities, beauties, 

 powers, virtues, transcending those of mankind in general ; the ful- 

 some flatteries used when commending them to God in prayers profess- 

 ing to utter the truth. Now, side by side with these, put records of 

 their deeds throughout all past times in all nations ; notice how thick- 

 ly these records are sprinkled with crimes of all orders ; and then 

 dwell a while on the contrast. Is it not manifest that the conceptions 

 of State-actions that went along with these profoundly untrue concep- 

 tions of rulers must also have been profoundly untrue ? Take, as a 

 single example, King James, who, as described by ]\Ir. Bisset in agree- 

 ment with other historians, was " in every relation of life in which he 

 is viewed .... equally an object of aversion or contempt ; " but to 

 whom, nevertheless, the English translation of the Bible is dedicated 

 in sentences beginning, " Great and manifold were the blessings, most 



