Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/146

134 mode of feeling and thinking; and that no mode of feeling and thinking not adapted to its degree of evolution, and to its surroundings, can be permanently established. Though not exactly, still approximately, the average opinion in any age and country is a function of the social structure in that age and country. There may be, as we see during times of revolution, a considerable incongruity between the ideas that become current and the social arrangements which exist, and are, in great measure, appropriate; though even then the incongruity does but mark the need for a readjustment of institutions to character. While, however, those successive compromises, which, during social evolution, have to be made between the changed natures of citizens and the institutions evolved by ancestral citizens, imply disagreements, yet these are but partial and temporary—in those societies, at least, which are developing and not in course of dissolution. For a society to hold together, the institutions that are needed and the conceptions that are generally current must be in tolerable harmony. Hence, it is not to be expected that modes of thinking on social affairs are to be in any considerable degree changed by whatever may be said respecting the Social Science, its difficulties, and the required preparations for studying it.

The only reasonable hope is, that here and there one may be led, in calmer moments, to remember how largely his beliefs about public matters have been made for him by circumstances, and how probable it is that they are either untrue or but partially true. When he reflects on the doubtfulness of the evidence which he generalizes, collected hap-hazard from a narrow area—when he counts up the perverting sentiments fostered in him by education, country, class, party, creed—when, observing those around, he sees that, from other evidence selected to gratify sentiments partially unlike his own, there result unlike views—he may occasionally recollect how largely mere accidents have determined his convictions. Recollecting this, he may be induced to hold these convictions not quite so strongly; may see the need for criticism of them with a view to revision; and, above all, may be somewhat less eager to act in pursuance of them.

While the few to whom a Social Science is conceivable may, to some degree, be thus influenced by what is said concerning the study of it, there can, of course, be no effect on the many to whom such a science seems an absurdity, or an impiety, or both. The feeling ordinarily excited, by the proposal to deal scientifically with these most complex phenomena, is like that which was excited in ancient times by the proposal to deal scientifically with phenomena of simpler kinds. As Mr. Grote writes of Socrates: