INTRODUCTORY 



informal or unintended 1 results of human association. 

 In ancient days the line of division scarcely existed. 

 The conception of a natural growth had never been 

 applied to society. Speculation in early times was 

 exceedingly sanguine, and counted upon refashioning 

 society at its pleasure. We have learned from age-long 

 experience that human nature is not so easily tamed or 

 managed, even by those who try to manage it for its 

 own good. We turn away incredulously from stories 

 of a lawgiver who stamped his own personality and 

 ideas upon many generations. Perhaps we go too far 

 in our recoil from the ancient belief in the powers of 

 the wise man. He may not always have been a myth ; 

 his results might even be repeated. And yet, essentially, 

 we are in the right. "All the world," as we say, is 

 wiser than anybody in the world. To take a more 

 definite example, the House of Commons is alleged to 

 possess better taste than any one of its members. Our 

 modern attitude is partly fatalism, but it is partly 

 religious faith. 



A second science may be thought of, which deals 

 with the objective and involuntary tendencies of social 

 conduct economics or political economy. This was on 

 the ground before modern sociology, and Comte, who 

 gave the latter science its name, and claimed to be its 

 author, regarded economics as a fragment of social 

 science, wrongly studied in isolation from the rest, and 

 therefore resulting in mistaken practical conclusions. 

 In point of fact, one of the great difficulties or 

 ambiguities of sociology arises no less plainly in 

 economics. How make the transition from study of 



1 Compare Mr. Mallock's definition, of evolution as " the reasonable 

 sequence of the unintended " (Aristocracy and Evolution, p. 97), quoted in 

 our closing chapter. 



