The study of sociology / by Herbert Spencer.

  • Herbert Spencer
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The study of sociology / by Herbert Spencer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    “ it is the duty of Government to provide a suitable national asylum for the reception of all illegitimate children.”4 And here it is doubtless thought by some, as it is in France by M. de Lagevenais, that Government, by supplying good music, should exclude the bad, such as that of Offenbach.5 We smile on reading of that French princess, celebrated for her innocent wonder that people should starve when there was so simple a remedy. But why should we smile ? A great part of the current political thought evinces notions of practicability not much more rational. That connexions among social phenomena should be so little understood, need not surprise us if we note the ideas which prevail respecting the connexions among much simpler pheno- mena. Minds left ignorant of physical causation, are unlikely to appreciate clearly, if at all, that causation so much more subtle and complex, which runs through the actions of incor- porated men. In almost every house, servants and those who employ them, alike believe that a poker leaned up in front of the bars, or across them, makes the fire burn ; and you will be told, very positively, that experience proves the efficacy of the device—the experience being that the poker has been repeatedly so jffaced and the fire has repeatedly burned ; and no com- parisons having been made with cases in which the poker wan absent, and all other conditions as before. In the same circles the old prejudice against sitting down thirteen to dinner still survives: there actually exists among ladies who have been at finishing schools of the highest character, and among some gentlemen who pass as intelligent, the conviction that adding or subtracting one from a number of people who eat together, will affect the fates of some among them. And this state of mind is again displayed at the card-table, by the opinion that So-and-so is always lucky or unlucky—that influences are at work which, on the average, determine more good cards to one person than another. Clearly, those in whom the consciousness of causa-
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