CHAPTER VII.

SUBJECTIVE DIFFICULTIES-EMOTIONAL.

THAT passion perverts judgment, is an observation sufficiently trite; but the more general observation of which it should form part, that emotion of every kind and degree disturbs the intellectual balance, is not trite, and even where recognized, is not duly taken into account. Stated in full, the truth is that no propositions, save those which are absolutely indifferent to us, immediately and remotely, can be contemplated without likings and repugnances affecting the opinions we form about them. There are two modes in which our conclusions are thus falsified. Excited feelings make us wrongly estimate probability; and they also make us wrongly estimate importance. Some cases will show this.

All who are old enough, remember the murder committed by Müller on the North London Railway some years ago. Most persons, too, will remember that for some time afterwards there was universally displayed, a dislike to travelling by railway in company with a single other passenger-supposing him to be unknown. Though, up to the date of the murder in question, countless journeys had been made by two strangers together in the same compartment without evil being suffered by either-though, after the death of Mr. Briggs, the probabilities were immense against the occurrence of a similar fate to another person similarly placed; yet there was habitually aroused a fear that would have been appropriate only had the danger been considerable. The amount of feeling excited was quite incommensurate with the risk. While the chance was a million to one against evil, the anticipation of evil was as strong as though the chance had been a thousand to one or a hundred to one. The emotion of dread

destroyed the balance of judgment, and a rational estimate of likelihood became impossible; or rather, a rational estimate of likelihood if formed was wholly inoperative on conduct.

Another instance was thrust on my attention during the small-pox epidemic, which a while since so unaccountably spread, after twenty years of compulsory vaccination. A lady living in London, sharing in the general trepidation, was expressing her fears to me. I asked her whether, if she lived in a town of twenty thousand inhabitants and heard of one person dying of small-pox in the course of a week, she would be much alarmed. Naturally she answered, no; and her fears were somewhat calmed when I pointed out that, taking the whole population of London, and the number of deaths per week from small-pox, this was about the rate of mortality at that time caused by it. Yet in other minds, as in her mind, panic had produced an entire incapacity for forming a rational estimate of the peril. Nay, indeed, so perturbing was the emotion, that an unusual amount of danger to life was imagined at a time when the danger to life was smaller than usual. For the returns showed that the mortality from all causes was rather below the average than above it. While the evidence proved that the risk of death was less than common, this wave of feeling which spread through society produced an irresistible conviction that it was uncommonly great.

These examples show in a clear way, what is less clearly shown of examples hourly occurring, that the associated ideas constituting a judgment, are much affected in their relations to one another by the co-existing emotion. Two ideas will cohere feebly or strongly, according as the correlative nervous states involve a feeble or a strong discharge along the lines of nervous connexion; and hence a large wave of feeling, implying as it does a voluminous discharge in all directions, renders such two ideas more coherent. This is so even when the feeling is not relevant to the ideas, as is shown by the vivid recollections of trivialities seen on occasions of great excitement; and it is still more so when the feeling is relevantthat is, when the proposition formed by the ideas is itself the cause of excitement. Much of the emotion tends, in such case, to discharge itself through the channels connecting the elements of the proposition; and predicate follows subject with

a persistence out of all proportion to that which is justified by experience.

We see this with emotions of all orders. How greatly maternal affection falsifies a mother's opinion of her child, every one observes. How those in love fancy superiorities where none are visible to unconcerned spectators, and remain blind to defects that are conspicuous to all others, is matter of common remark. Note, too, how, in the holder of a lottery-ticket, hope generates a belief utterly at variance with probability as numerically estimated; or how an excited inventor confidently expects a success which calm judges see to be impossible. That "the wish is father to the thought," here so obviously true, is true more or less in nearly all cases where there is a wish. And in other cases, as where horror is aroused by the fancy of something supernatural, we see that in the absence of wish to believe, there may yet arise belief if violent emotion goes along with the ideas that are joined together.

Though there is some recognition of the fact that men's judgments on social questions are distorted by their emotions, the recognition is extremely inadequate. Political passion, class-hatred, and feelings of great intensity, are alone admitted to be large factors in determining opinions. But, as above implied, we have to take account of emotions of many kinds and of all degrees, down to slight likes and dislikes. For, if we look closely into our own beliefs on public affairs, as well as into the beliefs of those around us, we find them to be caused much more by aggregates of feelings than by examinations of evidence. No one, even if he tries, succeeds in preventing the slow growth of sympathies with, or antipathies to, certain institutions, customs, ideas, &c.; and if he watches himself, he will perceive that unavoidably each new question coming before him, is considered in relation to the mass of convictions which have been gradually moulded into agreement with his sympathies and antipathies.

When the reader has admitted, as he must if he is candid with himself, that his opinion on any political act or proposal is commonly formed in advance of direct evidence, and that he rarely takes the trouble to inquire whether direct evidence justifies it; he will see how great are those difficulties in the

way of sociological science, which arise from the various emotions excited by the matters it deals with. Let us note, first, the effects of some emotions of a general kind, which we are apt to overlook.

The state of mind called impatience is one of these. If a man swears at some inanimate thing which he cannot adjust as he wishes, or if, in wintry weather, slipping down and hurting himself, he vents his anger by damning gravitation; his folly is manifest enough to spectators, and to himself also when his irritation has died away. But in the political sphere it is otherwise. A man may here, in spirit if not in word, damn a law of nature without being himself aware, and without making others aware, of his absurdity.

The state of feeling often betrayed towards Political Economy exemplifies this. An impatience accompanying the vague consciousness that certain cherished convictions or pet schemes are at variance with politico-economical truths, shows itself in contemptuous words applied to these truths. Knowing that his theory of government and plans for social reformation are discountenanced by it, Mr. Carlyle manifests his annoyance by calling Political Economy "the dismal science." And among others than his adherents, there are many belonging to all parties, retrograde and progressive, who display repugnance to this body of doctrine with which their favourite theories do not agree. Yet a little thought might show them that their feeling is much of the same kind as would be scorn vented by a perpetual-motion schemer against the principles of Mechanics.

To see that these generalizations which they think of as cold and hard, and acceptable only by the unsympathetic, are nothing but statements of certain modes of action arising out of human nature, which are no less beneficent than necessary, they need only suppose for a moment that human nature had opposite tendencies. Imagine that, instead of preferring to buy things at low prices, men habitually preferred to give high prices for them; and imagine that, conversely, sellers rejoiced in getting low prices instead of high ones. Is it not obvious that production and distribution and exchange, assuming them possible under such conditions, would go on in

ways entirely different from their present ways? If men went for each commodity to a place where it was difficult of production, instead of going to a place where it could be produced easily; and if instead of transferring articles of consumption from one part of a kingdom to another along the shortest routes, they habitually chose roundabout routes, so that the cost in labour and time might be the greatest; is it not clear that, could industrial and commercial arrangements of any kinds exist, they would be so unlike the present arrangements as to be inconceivable by us? And if this is undeniable, is it not equally undeniable that the processes of production, distribution, and exchange, as they now go on, are processes determined by certain fundamental traits in human nature; and that Political Economy is nothing more than a statement of the laws of these processes as inevitably resulting from such traits?

That the generalizations of political economists are not all true, and that some, which are true in the main, need qualification, is, very likely. But to admit this, is not in the least to admit that there are no true generalizations of this order to be made. Those who see, or fancy they see, flaws in politicoeconomical conclusions, and thereupon sneer at Political Economy, remind me of the theologians who lately rejoiced so much over the discovery of an error in the estimation of the Sun's distance; and thought the occasion so admirable a one for ridiculing men of science. It is characteristic of theologians to find a solace in whatever shows human imperfection; and in this case they were elated because astronomers discovered that, while their delineation of the Solar System remained exactly right in all its proportions, the absolute dimensions assigned were too great by about one-thirtieth. In one respect, however, the comparison fails; for though the theologians taunted the astronomers, they did not venture to include Astronomy within the scope of their contempt-did not do as those to whom they are here compared, who show contempt, not for political economists only, but for Political Economy itself.

Were they calm, these opponents of the political economists would see that as, out of certain physical properties of things there inevitably arise certain modes of action, which, as gen