134 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



priate mode of feeling and thinking ; and that no mode of feeling and 

 thiuking not adapted to its degree of evolution, and to its surround- 

 ings, can be permanently established. Though not exactly, still ap- 

 proximately, the average opinion in any age and country is a function 

 of the social structure in that age and country. There may be, as we 

 see during times of revolution, a considerable incongruity between the 

 ideas that become current and the social arrangements which exist, 

 and are, in great measure, appropriate ; though even then the incon- 

 gruity does but mark the need for a readjustment of institutions to 

 character. While, however, those successive compromises, which, 

 during social evolution, have to be made between the changed natures 

 of citizens and the institutions evolved by ancestral citizens, imply 

 disagreements, yet these are but partial and temporary — in those so- 

 cieties, at least, which are developing and not in course of dissolution. 

 For a society to hold together, the institutions that are needed and the 

 conceptions that are generally current must be in tolerable harmony. 

 Hence, it is not to be expected that modes of thinking on social affairs 

 are to be in any considerable degree changed by whatever may be 

 said respecting the Social Science, its difficulties, and the required 

 preparations for studying it. « 



The only reasonable hope is, that here and there one may be led, 

 in calmer moments, to remember how largely his beliefs about public 

 matters have been made for him by circumstances, and how probable 

 it is that they are either untrue or but partially true. When he re- 

 flects on the doubtfulness of the evidence which he generalizes, col- 

 lected hap-hazard from a narrow area — when he counts up the per- 

 verting sentiments fostered in him by education, country, class, party, 

 creed — when, observing those around, he sees that, from other evi- 

 dence selected to gratify sentiments partially unlike his own, there re- 

 sult unlike views — he may occasionally recollect how largely mere ac- 

 cidents have determined his convictions. Recollecting this, he may 

 be induced to hold these convictions not quite so strongly ; may see 

 the need for criticism of them with a view to revision; and, above all, 

 may be somewhat less eager to act in pursuance of them. 



While the few to whom a Social Science is conceivable may, to 

 some degree, be thus influenced by what is said concerning the study 

 of it, there can, of course, be no effect on the many to whom such a 

 science seems an absurdity, or an impiety, or both. The feeling or- 

 dinarily excited, by the proposal to deal scientifically with these most 

 complex phenomena, is like that which was excited in ancient times by 

 the proposal to deal scientifically with phenomena of simpler kinds. 

 As Mr. Grote writes of Socrates : 



" Physics and astronomy, in his opinion, belonged to the divine class of 

 phenomena, in which human research was insane, fruitless, and impious." l 



" History of Greece," vol. i., p. 498. 



