THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 7 n 



Does any one think this instance so far out of the ordinary track 

 of error, as to have no instruction for us ? To see the contrary he has 

 but to look at the caricatures of Frenchmen that were common a 

 generation ago, or to remember the popular statement then current 

 respecting the relative strengths of French and English. Such re- 

 minders will convince him that the reflex self-esteem we call patriotism, 

 has had, among ourselves, perverting effects sufficiently striking. And 

 even now there are kindred opinions which the facts, when examined, 

 do not bear out : instance the opinion respecting personal beauty. 

 That the bias thus causing misjudgments in cases where it is checked 

 by direct perception, causes greater misjudgments where direct per- 

 ception cannot check it, needs no proof. How great are the mistakes 

 it generates, all histories of international struggles show us, both by 

 the contradictory estimates the two sides form of their respective 

 leaders and by the contradictory estimates the two sides form of their 

 deeds. Take an example : 



" Of the character in which Wallace first hecame formidable, the accounts 

 in literature are distractingly conflicting. "With the chroniclers of his own 

 country, who write after the War of Independence, he is raised to the highest 

 pinnacle of magnanimity and heroism. To the English contemporary chroni- 

 clers he is a pestilent ruffian ; a disturber of the peace of society ; an outrager 

 of all laws and social duties; finally, a robber tbe head of one of many bands 

 of robbers and marauders then infesting Scotland." * 



That, along with such opposite distortions of belief about conspicu- 

 ous persons, there go opposite distortions of belief about the conduct 

 of the peoples they belong to, the accounts of every war demonstrate. 

 Like the one-sidedness shown within our own society by the remem- 

 brance among Protestants of Roman Catholic cruelties only, and the 

 remembrance among Roman Catholics of Protestant cruelties only, is 

 the one-sidedness shown in the traditions preserved by each nation 

 concerning the barbarities of nations it has fought with. As in old 

 times the Normans, savage themselves, were shocked at the vin- 

 dictiveness of the English when driven to bay ; so in recent times 

 the French have enlarged on the atrocities committed by Spanish 

 guerrillas, and the Russians on the atrocities the Circassians perpe- 

 trated. In this conflict between the views of those who commit 

 savage acts, and the views of those on whom they are committed,, 

 we clearly perceive the bias of patriotism where both sides are 

 aliens ; but we fail to perceive it where we are ourselves concerned 

 as actors. Every one old enough remembers the reprobation vented 

 here when the French in Algiers dealt so cruelly with Arabs who re- 

 fused to submit lighting fires at the mouths of caves in which they 

 had taken refuge; but we do not see a like barbarity in deeds of our 

 own in India, such as the executing a group of rebel sepoys by fusil- 

 lade, and then setting fire to the heap of them because they were not 



1 Burton's " History of Scotland," vol. ii., pp. 281, 282. 



