230 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



regard conduct as always the result of certain forces ; or, 

 dealing with its problems morally, and recognizing . its out 

 come as in this case good and in that case bad, we may 

 allow now admiration and now indignation to fill our con 

 sciousness. Obviously, it must make a great difference in 

 our conclusions whether, as in the one case, we study men s 

 doings as those of alien creatures, which it merely concerns 

 us to understand ; or whether, as in the other case, we con 

 template them as the doings of creatures like ourselves, with 

 whose lives our own lives are bound up, and whose behaviour 

 arouses in. us, directly and sympathetically, feelings of love 

 or hate. 



In an ancillary work, The Study of Sociology, I have de 

 scribed the various perversions produced in men s judgments 

 by their emotions. Examples are given showing how fears 

 and hopes betray them into false estimates ; how impatience 

 prompts unjust condemnations ; how in this case antipathy, 

 and in that case sympathy, distorts belief. The truth that 

 the bias of education and the bias of patriotism severally 

 warp men s convictions, is enforced by many illustrations. 

 And it is pointed out that the more special forms of bias 

 the class bias, the political bias, the theological bias each 

 originates a predisposition towards this or that view of public 

 affairs. 



Here let me emphasize the conclusion that in pursuing 

 our sociological inquiries, and especially those on which we 

 are now entering, we must, as much as possible, exclude 

 whatever emotions the facts are calculated to excite, and 

 attend solely to the interpretation of the facts. There are 

 several groups of phenomena in contemplating which either 

 contempt, or disgust, or indignation, tends to arise but must 

 be restrained. 



435. Instead of passing over as of no account, or else 

 regarding as purely mischievous, the superstitions of the 

 primitive man, we must inquire what part they play in 



