Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/475

Rh conclusions, respecting social phenomena, which alone constitute Social Science.

The sentiment which thus shudders with horror at bad deeds for which there was much excuse, while to deeds immeasurably more dreadful and without excuse it gives applause very slightly qualified with blame, is a sentiment which, among other effects, marvellously perverts men's political conceptions. This awe of power, by the help of which social subordination has been, and still is, chiefly maintained—this feeling which delights to contemplate the imposing, be it in military successes, or be it in the grand pageantries, the sounding titles, and the sumptuous modes of living that imply supreme authority—this feeling which is offended by outbreaks of insubordination, and acts or words of a disloyal kind; is a feeling that inevitably generates delusions respecting governments, their capacities, their achievements. It transfigures them and all their belongings, as does every strong emotion the objects toward which it is drawn out. Just as maternal love, idealizing offspring, sees perfections but not defects, and believes in the future good behavior of a worthless son, notwithstanding countless broken promises of amendment; so this power-worship idealizes the State, as embodied either in a despot, or in king, lords, and commons, or in a republican assembly, and continually hopes in spite of continual disappointments.

How awe of power sways men's political beliefs will be perceived, on observing how it sways their religious beliefs. We shall best see this by taking an instance supplied by people whose religious ideas are extremely crude. Here is an abstract of a description given by Captain Burton:

To us it seems scarcely imaginable that men should thus behave to their gods and demi-gods—should pray to them, should insult and sometimes castigate them for not answering their prayers, and then should presently pray to them again. Let us pause a moment before we laugh. Though in the sphere of religion our conduct does not