Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/187

Rh "Norwich Weaver-boy" (W. J. Fox), or the "Journeyman Engineer." Shall we then say that, in the case of literary culture, results are proportionate to appliances? or shall we not rather say that, as in other cases, the relation is by no means so simple a one.

Nowhere, then, do we find verified this assumption which we are so prone to make. Quantity of effect does not vary as quantity of means. From a mechanical apparatus up to an educational system or a social institution, the same truth holds. Take a rustic to see a new machine, and his admiration of it will be in proportion to the multiplicity of its parts. Listen to the criticism of a skilled engineer, and you will find that from all this complication he infers probable failure. Not elaboration but simplification is his aim; knowing, as he does, that every additional wheel and lever implies inertia and friction to be overcome, and occasional derangement to be rectified. It is thus everywhere. Up to a certain point, appliances are needful for results; but, beyond that point, results decrease as appliances increase.

This undue belief in appliances, joined with the general bias citizens inevitably have in favor of governmental agencies, prompts the multiplication of laws. It fosters the notion that a society will be the better the more its actions are everywhere regulated by artificial instrumentalities. And the effect produced on sociological speculation is, that the benefits achieved by laws are exaggerated, while the evils they entail are overlooked.

Brought to bear on so immensely complicated an aggregate as a society, a law rarely, if ever, produces as much direct effect as was expected, and invariably produces indirect effects, many in their kinds and great in their sum, that were not expected. It is so even with fundamental changes: witness the two we have seen in the constitution of our House of Commons. Both advocates and opponents of the first Reform Bill anticipated that the middle classes would select as representatives many of their own body. But both were wrong. The class-quality of the House of Commons remained very much what it was before. While, however, the immediate and special results looked for did not appear, there were vast, remote, and general results foreseen by no one. So, too, with the recent change. We had eloquently-uttered warnings that delegates from the working-classes would swamp the House of Commons; and nearly every one expected that, at any rate, a sprinkling of working-class members would be chosen. Again all were wrong. The conspicuous alteration looked for has not occurred; but, nevertheless, governmental actions have already been much modified by the raised sense of responsibility. It is thus always. No prophecy is safer than that the results anticipated from a law will be greatly exceeded in amount by results not anticipated. Even simple physical actions might suggest to us this conclusion. Let us contemplate one.