THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 41 9 



around Havre and Lyons, but has not realized the hopes of its pro- 

 moters, its dispatches being often illegible. 



Instead of a series of parallel lines, the styles may be made to trace 

 the successive convolutions of a fine helix, the two sheets being bent 

 round two cylinders, which revolve in equal times, and also advance 

 longitudinally. 



-+++- 



THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 



By HEEBEET SPENCEE. 



XIII. Discipline, 



IN" the foregoing eight chapters we have contemplated, under their 

 several heads, those " Difficulties of the Social Science " which the 

 chapter bearing that title indicated in a general way. After thus 

 warning the student against the errors he is liable to fall into, partly 

 because of the nature of the phenomena themselves and the conditions 

 they are presented under, and partly because of his own nature as 

 observer of them which by both its original and its acquired charac- 

 ters causes twists of perception and judgment it now remains to say 

 something about the needful preliminary studies. I do not refer to 

 studies furnishing the requisite data, but I refer to studies giving 

 the requisite discipline. Right thinking in any matter depends very 

 much on the habit of thought ; and the habit of thought, partly nat- 

 ural, depends in part on the artificial influences to which the mind 

 has been subjected. 



As certainly as each person has peculiarities of bodily action that 

 distinguish him from his fellows, so certainly has he peculiarities of 

 mental action that give a character to his conceptions. There are 

 tricks of thought as well as tricks of muscular movement. There are 

 acquired mental aptitudes for seeing things under particular aspects, 

 as there are acquired bodily aptitudes for going through evolutions 

 after particular ways. And there are intellectual perversities pro- 

 duced by certain modes of treating the mind, as there are incurable 

 awkwardnesses due to certain physical activities daily repeated. 



A truth ever to be remembered is, that each kind of mental disci- 

 pline, besides its direct effects on the faculties brought into play, has 

 its indirect effects on the faculties left out of play ; and when special 

 benefit is gained by extreme special discipline, there is inevitably more 

 or less general mischief entailed on the rest of the mind by the conse- 

 quent want of discipline. That antagonism between body and brain 

 which we see in those who, pushing brain-activity to an extreme, en- 

 feeble their bodies, and those who, pushing bodily activity to an ex- 

 treme, make their brains inert, is an antagonism which holds between 



