5 66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to think about difficulties of which he can get no solutions ; so, a little 

 later, the contradictions between the things taught to him in school 

 and in church, at first startling and inexplicable, become by-and-by 

 familiar, and no longer attract his attention. Thus while growing up 

 he acquires, in common with all around him, the habit of using first 

 one and then the other of his creeds as the occasion demands ; and at 

 maturity the habit has become completely established. Now he en- 

 larges on the need for maintaining the national honor, and thinks it 

 mean to arbitrate about an aggression instead of avenging it by war ; 

 and now, calling his servants together, he reads a prayer in which he 

 asks God that our trespasses may be forgiven as we forgive the tres- 

 passes against us. That which he prays for as a virtue on the Sunday, 

 he scorns as a vice on the Monday. 



The religion of amity and the religion of enmity, with the emotions 

 they respectively enlist, are important factors in sociological conclu- 

 sions; and rational sociological conclusions can be produced only 

 when both sets of factors come into play. We have to look at each 

 cluster of social facts as a phase in a continuous metamorphosis. We 

 have to look at the conflicting religious beliefs and feelings included 

 in this cluster of facts as elements in this phase. We have to do more. 

 We have to consider as transitional, also, the conflicting religious be- 

 liefs and feelings in which we are brought up, and which distort our 

 views, not only of passing phenomena in our own society, but also of 

 phenomena in other societies and in other times ; and the aberrations 

 they cause in our inferences have to be sought for and rectified. Of 

 these two religions taught us, we must constantly remember that dur- 

 ing civilization the religion of enmity is slowly losing strength, while 

 the religion of amity is slowly gaining strength. We must bear in 

 mind that at each stage a certain ratio between them has to be main- 

 tained. We must infer that the existing ratio is only a temporary 

 one, and that the accompanying bias to this or that conviction respect- 

 ing social affairs is temporary. And if we are to reach those unbiassed 

 convictions which form parts of the Social Science, we can do it only 

 by allowing for this temporary bias only by analyzing and criticising 

 the sentiments and dogmas they respectively sanctify, with the view 

 of discovering how far these need qualification. 



To see how greatly our opposite religions respectively pervert 

 sociological beliefs, and how needful it is that the opposite perversions 

 they cause should be corrected, we must here contemplate the ex- 

 tremes to which men are carried, now by the one and now by the 

 other. 



As from antagonist physical forces, as from antagonist emotions in 

 each man, so from the antagonist social tendencies men's emotions 

 create, there always results, not a medium state, but a rhythm between 

 opposite states. The one force or tendency is not continuously 



