30 
THE PKINC1PLES OF SOCIOLOGY. 
Feb., 1890. 
and coherent, we may learn to distinguish many of the 
“ streams of tendency” which flow around us or bear us on¬ 
ward ; but the inter-actions even of those which are seen are 
far too complex to be worked out by the clearest intellect. 
And we can never be certain that the most important currents 
have not remained unobserved, just because we are moving 
with their motion. 
“ Enough,” cried Rasselas, when Imlac had explained to 
him the necessary qualifications of a poet—“ enough ! Thou 
hast convinced me that no human being can ever be a poet.” 
In like manner, I have possibly suggested to some present 
that the existence of this Section and the delivery of this 
Address must be mere vanity, since no human being can ever 
hope to become a Sociologist, the earliest and the latest con¬ 
ditions of society being, for different reasons, wrapped in 
obscurity. Yet I would fain hope that my audience will be 
more indulgent than the Prince of Abyssinia, who, wearied 
out by his friend’s rhapsody, refused to hear further parti¬ 
culars of the poet’s vocation. 
There is one consideration which should make every man 
a Sociologist. There is a key fitted to unlock many of the 
dark places into which direct inductive research can never 
penetrate. Without inductive research, the key is indeed 
useless—for we must take the trouble first to find the lock 
that it fits, and then to examine diligently the stores to which 
it gives access. And this key is that knowledge of the laws 
of human reason, and the workings of the human mind, of 
which I have already spoken, as absolutely essential to the 
sociological student. But I might, in one word, have called 
it self-knowledge. Though we cannot completely estimate 
the modifiable elements in ourselves and in society, because 
these elements are exactly the ones which unconsciously bear 
our conclusions ; yet we can, if we will, learn to discover in 
our own personality the foundations of human thought and 
feeling, which do not change, and which are the same for the 
whole world. I do not mean that we are to evolve the condi¬ 
tion of primitive society out of our own inner consciousness, 
but that we are to use that inner consciousness as an instru¬ 
ment of selection and interpretation. And with good right, 
for your reason and my reason are, fundamentally, one with 
the reason of the race;—of the most evolved sage and the 
most undeveloped savage. That is, natural logic is in all 
men the same ; and this truth will often give us a clue to the 
origin of the most apparently irrational beliefs and practices. 
In Mr. Spencer’s words—“ Our postulate must be that primi¬ 
tive ideas are natural, and, under the circumstances in which 
