Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/21

Rh visit a shrine? Who would have thought it possible that a public sentiment and a force of custom might be such that a man should revenge himself on one who insulted him by disembowelling himself, and so forcing the insulter to do the like? Or to take historical cases more nearly concerning ourselves—Who foresaw that the beliefs in purgatory and priestly intercession would cause the lapse of one-third or more of England into the hands of the Church? Or who foresaw that a flaw in the law of mortmain might lead to bequests of large estates consecrated as graveyards? Who could have imagined that robber-kings and bandit-barons, with vassals to match, would, generation after generation, have traversed all Europe through hardships and dangers to risk their lives in getting possession of the reputed burial-place of one whose injunction was to turn the left cheek when the right was smitten? Or who, again, would have anticipated that, when, in Jerusalem, this same teacher disclaimed political aims, and repudiated political instrumentalities, the professed successors of his disciples would by-and-by become rulers dominating over all the kings of Europe? Such a result could be as little foreseen as it could be foreseen that an instrument of torture used by the Jews would give the ground-plans to Christian temples throughout Europe; and as little as it could be foreseen that the process of this torture, recounted in Christian narratives, might come to be mistaken for a Christian institution, as it was by the Malay chief who, being expostulated with for crucifying some rebels, replied that he was following "the English practice," which he read in "their sacred books."

Look where we will at the genesis of social phenomena, and we shall similarly find that, while the particular ends contemplated and arranged for have commonly not been more than temporarily attained, if attained at all, the changes actually brought about have arisen from causes of which the very existence was unknown.

How, indeed, can any man, and how more especially can any man of scientific culture, think special results of special political acts can be calculated, when he contemplates the incalculable complexity of the influences under which each individual, and a fortiori each society, develops, lives, and decays? The multiplicity of these factors is illustrated even in the material composition of a man's body. Every one, who watches closely the course of things, must have observed that at a single meal he may take in bread made from Russian wheat, beef from Scotland, potatoes from the midland counties, sugar from the Mauritius, salt from Cheshire, pepper from Jamaica, curry-powder from India, wine from France or Germany, currants from Greece, oranges from Spain, as well as various spices and condiments from other places; and if he considers whence came the draught of water he swallows, tracing it back from the reservoir through the stream and the brook and the rill, to the separate rain-drops which fell wide apart,