i 9 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



disproved a posteriori. The belief that truly good legislation and ad- 

 ministration can go along with a humanity not truly good, is a chronic 

 delusion. While our own form of government, giving means for ex- 

 pressing and enforcing claims, is the best form yet evolved for pre- 

 venting aggressions of class upon class, and of individuals on one 

 another, yet it is hopeless to expect from it, any more than from other 

 forms of government, a capacity and a rectitude greater than those of 

 the society out of which it grows. And criticisms like the foregoing, 

 which imply that its shortcomings can "be set right by expostulating 

 with existing governing agents or by appointing others, imply that 

 subtlest kind of political bias which is apt to remain when the stronger 

 kinds have been got rid of. 



Second only to the class-bias, we may say that the political bias most 

 seriously distorts sociological conceptions. That this is so with the 

 bias of political party, every one sees in some measure, though not in 

 full measure. It is manifest to the Radical that the bias of the Tory 

 blinds him to a present evil or to a future good. It is manifest to the 

 Tory that the Radical does not see the benefit there is in that which 

 he wishes to destroy, and fails to recognize the mischiefs likely to be 

 done by the institution he would establish. But neither imagines that 

 the other is no less needful than himself. The Radical, with his im- 

 practicable ideal, is unaware that his enthusiasm will serve only to 

 advance things a little, but not at all as he expects ; and he will not 

 admit that the obstructiveness of the Tory is a wholesome check. 

 The Tory, doggedly resisting, cannot perceive that the established 

 order is but relatively good, and that his defence of it is simply a 

 means of preventing premature change ; wdiile he fails to recognize in 

 the bitter antagonism and sanguine hopes of the Radical the agencies 

 without which there could be no progress. Thus neither fully under- 

 stands his own function or the function of his opponent ; and, by as 

 much as he falls short of understanding it, he is disabled from rightly 

 understanding social phenomena. 



The more general kinds of political bias distort men's sociological 

 conceptions in other ways, but quite as seriously. There is this peren- 

 nial delusion, common to Radical and Tory, that legislation is omnipo- 

 tent, and that things will get done because laws are passed to do them; 

 there is this confidence in one or other form of government, due to the 

 belief that a government once established will retain its form and 

 work as was intended ; there is this hope that by some means the col- 

 lective wisdom can be separated from the collective folly, and set over 

 it in such way as to guide things aright all of them implying that 

 general political bias which inevitably coexists with subordination to 

 political agencies. The effect on sociological speculation is to main- 

 tain the conception of a society as something manufactured by states- 

 men, and to distract attention from the phenomena of social evolution. 



