28 
THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY. 
Feb., 1890. 
after all, liis indignation is neither unnatural nor unreasonable. 
For it is a Sociological axiom that no mind can by an effort 
of will transport itself from one evolutional stage to another 
stage more advanced and more complex. The principles of 
a science can never be intelligently accepted until its data are 
understood, fitted together, viewed from every side, and 
known in all their mutual bearings. If, without such know¬ 
ledge, the principles are taken on trust, they change their 
character, and are transformed into dogmas, of no more avail 
for intellectual nutriment than the driest books of theology. 
Teach a savage—or a schoolboy—the whole contents of a 
chemical text book without giving him a glimpse of the facts 
summarised in its formulae, and you might as well have 
taught him the Athanasian Creed or the magician’s Abraca¬ 
dabra. I do not mean that he must necessarily see every 
process in the laboratory, but that he must have sufficient 
practical knowledge to form a clear conception of the pheno¬ 
mena from which the principles are inferred. Ill-gotten 
truth never prospers, but ceases to be truth in the mind 
which acquires it otherwise than by the legitimate method of 
rational inference. It is like the lightly earned fairy gold 
that changes to dead leaves at the dawn of day. 
The bare idea of Sociological law could not possibly have 
arisen at an early period in the history of knowledge. 
Sociology demands the concurrence of all the sciences to 
furnish its raw materials, and to work out the lines on which 
it must proceed. All must combine in the bestowal of its 
birthright—as the Olympian gods were fabled to shower gifts 
upon some fortunate infant: endowed by Juno with power, by 
Venus with beauty, with wisdom by Pallas, with genius by 
Apollo. No conception of the formation and growth of 
societies can ever spring up until we have learnt to view the 
physical universe as a network of cause and effect, of action 
and reaction. Nor can the conception become fruitful until 
we can trace, with at least a partial comprehension of the 
processes involved, the evolution of organic life, thus honestly 
earning truths which can afterwards be applied to the inter¬ 
pretation of social phenomena. Further a knowledge of the 
laws and workings of the human mind is absolutely essential 
that we may analyse aright the strange customs, the wild tradi¬ 
tions, the apparently senseless prohibitions and commands 
which we find among barbarous peoples—or which our own 
forefathers inherited from ancestors still more remote. 
Even with these equipments, the result of our Sociological 
investigations must be, and perhaps must always remain, 
extremely imperfect. To a certain extent it must be granted 
