v i PREFACE. 



treating of Political Institutions, will, I think, be of some 

 importance; and I should regret having to keep it in my 

 portfolio for a year, or perhaps two years, until Parts VI, 

 VII, and VIII, included in the second volume, were writ 

 ten. [Inclusion of these proves impracticable.] 



On sundry of the following chapters when published in 

 the Fortnightly llemew, a criticism passed by friends was 

 that they were overweighted by illustrative facts. I am 

 conscious that there were grounds for this criticism; and 

 although I have, in the course of a careful revision, dimin 

 ished in many cases the amount of evidence given (adding 

 to it, however, in other cases) the defect may still be alleged. 

 That with a view to improved effect I have not suppressed a 

 larger number of illustrations, is due to the consideration 

 that scientific proof, rather than artistic merit, is the end to 

 be here achieved. If sociological generalizations are to pass 

 out of the stage of opinion into the stage of established 

 truth, it can only be through extensive accumulations of 

 instances: the inductions must be wide if the conclusions 

 are to be accepted as valid. Especially while there contin 

 ues the belief that social phenomena are not the subject-mat 

 ter of a Science, it is requisite that the correlations among 

 them should be shown to hold in multitudinous cases. Evi 

 dence furnished by various races in various parts of the 

 world, must be given before there can be rebutted the alle 

 gation that the inferences drawn are not true, or are but 

 partially true. Indeed, of social phenomena more than all 

 other phenomena, it must, because of their complexity, hold 

 that only by comparisons of many examples can fundamen 

 tal relations be distinguished from superficial relations. 



In pursuance of an intention intimated in the preface to 

 the first volume, I have here adopted a method of reference 

 to authorities cited, which gives the reader the opportunity 

 of consulting them if he wishes, though his attention to 

 them is not solicited. At the end of the volume will be 

 found the needful clues to the passages extracted; pre- 



