statements of stern truths and endeavours to dissipate groundless expectations. Let him watch the process, and he will see that when the fermenting mass of political passions and beliefs is put into the electoral still, there distils over not the wisdom alone but the folly also-sometimes in the larger proportion. Nay, if he watches closely, he may suspect that not only is the corporate conscience lower than the average individual conscience, but the corporate intelligence too. The minority of the wise in a constituency is liable to be wholly submerged by the majority of the foolish: often foolishness alone gets represented. In the representative assembly, again, the many mediocrities practically rule the few superiorities: the superior are obliged to express those views only which the rest can understand, and must keep to themselves their best and farthest-reaching thoughts as thoughts that would have no weight. He needs but remember that abstract principles are pooh-poohed in the House of Commons, to see at once that while the unwisdom expresses itself abundantly, what of highest wisdom there may be has to keep silence. And if he asks an illustration of the way in which the intelligence of the body of members brings out a result lower than would the intelligence of the average member, he may see one in those muddlings of provisions and confusions of language in Acts of Parliament, which have lately been calling forth protests from the judges.

Thus the assumption that it is possible for a nation to get, in the shape of law, something like embodied reason, when it is not itself pervaded by a correlative reasonableness, is improbable à priori and disproved à posteriori. The belief that truly-good legislation and administration can go along with a humanity not truly good, is a chronic delusion. While our own form of government, giving means for expressing and enforcing claims, is the best form yet evolved for preventing aggressions of class upon class, and of individuals on one another; yet it is hopeless to expect from it, any more than from other forms of government, a capacity and a rectitude greater than that of the society out of which it grows. And criticisms like the foregoing, which imply that its shortcomings can be set right by expostulating with existing governing agents or by appointing others, imply that subtlest

kind of political bias which is apt to remain when the stronger kinds have been got rid of.

Second only to the class-bias, we may say that the political bias most seriously distorts sociological conceptions. That this is so with the bias of political party, everyone sees in some measure, though not in full measure. It is manifest to the Radical that the prejudice of the Tory blinds him to a present evil or to a future good. It is manifest to the Tory that the Radical does not see the benefit there is in that which he wishes to destroy, and fails to recognize the mischiefs likely to be done by the institution he would establish. But neither imagines that the other is no less needful than himself. The Radical, with his impracticable ideal, is unaware that his enthusiasm will serve only to advance things a little, but not at all as he expects; and he will not admit that the obstructiveness of the Tory is a wholesome check. The Tory, doggedly resisting, cannot perceive that the established order is but relatively good, and that his defence of it is simply a means of preventing premature change; while he fails to recognize in the bitter antagonism and sanguine hopes of the Radical, the agencies without which there could be no progress. Thus neither fully understands his own function or the function of his opponent; and by as much as he falls short of understanding it, he is disabled from understanding social phenomena.

The more general kinds of political bias distort men's sociological conceptions in other ways, but quite as seriously. There is this perennial delusion, common to Radical and Tory, that legislation is omnipotent, and that things will get done because laws are passed to do them; there is this confidence in one or other form of government, due to the belief that a government once established will retain its form and work as was intended; there is this hope that by some means the collective wisdom can be separated from the collective folly, and set over it in such way as to guide things aright;-all of them implying that general political bias which inevitably coexists with subordination to political agencies. The effect on sociological speculation is to maintain the conception of a society as something manufactured by statesmen, and to turn the mind from the phenomena of social evolution. While the regulating

agency occupies the thoughts, scarcely any attention is given to those astounding processes and results due to the energies regulated. The genesis of the vast producing, exchanging, and distributing agencies, which has gone on spontaneously, often hindered, and at best only restrained, by governments, is passed over with unobservant eyes. And thus, by continually contemplating the power which keeps in order, and contemplating rarely, if at all, the activities kept in order, there is produced an extremely one-sided theory of Society.

Clearly, it is with this kind of bias as it is with the kinds of bias previously considered-the degree of it bears a certain necessary relation to the temporary phase of progress. It can diminish only as fast as Society advances. A well-balanced social self-consciousness, like a well-balanced individual selfconsciousness, is the accompaniment of a high evolution.

CHAPTER XII.

THE THEOLOGICAL BIAS.

"WHAT a log for hell-fire!" exclaimed a Wahhabee, on seeing a corpulent Hindu. This illustration, startling by its strength of expression, which Mr. Gifford Palgrave gives1 of the belief possessing these Mahommedan fanatics, prepares us for their general mode of thinking about God and man. Here is a sample of it :

"When 'Abd-el-Lateef, a Wahhabee, was preaching one day to the people of Riad, he recounted the tradition according to which Mahomet declared that his followers should divide into seventy-three sects, and that seventy-two were destined to hell-fire, and one caly to Paradise. 'And what, O messenger of God, are the signs of that happy sect to which is ensured the exclusive possession of Paradise?' Whereto Mahomet had replied, 'It is those who shall be in all conformable to myself and to my companions.' 'And that,' added 'Abd-el-Lateef, lowering his voice to the deep tone of conviction, that, by the mercy of God, are we, the people of Riad.'” 2

For present purposes we are not so much concerned to observe the parallelism between this conception and the conceptions that have been, and are, current among sects of Christians, as to observe the effects produced by such conceptions on men's views of those who have alien beliefs, and on their views of alien societies. What extreme misinterpretations of social facts result from the theological bias, may be seen still better in a case even more remarkable.

By Turner, by Erskine, and by the members of the United States' Exploring Expedition, the characters of the Samoans are, as compared with the characters of the uncivilized generally, very favourably described. Though, in common with savages at large, they are said to be "indolent, covetous, fickle,

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and deceitful," yet they are also said to be "kind, good-humoured, . . . desirous of pleasing, and very hospitable. Both sexes show great regard and love for their children;" and age is much respected. "A man cannot bear to be called stingy or disobliging." The women are remarkably domestic and virtuous." Infanticide after birth is unknown in Samoa. "The treatment of the sick was . . . invariably humane and all that could be expected." Observe, now, what is said of their cannibal neighbours, the Fijians. They are indifferent to human life; they live in perpetual dread of one another; and, according to Jackson, treachery is considered by them an accomplishment. "Shedding of blood is to him [the Fijian] no crime but a glory." They kill the decrepit, maimed, and sick. While, on the one hand, infanticide covers nearer two-thirds than one-half of the births, on the other hand, "one of the first lessons taught the infant is to strike its mother:" anger and revenge are fostered. Inferiors are killed for neglecting proper salutes; slaves are buried alive with the posts on which a king's house stands; and ten or more men are slaughtered on the decks of a newly-launched canoe, to baptize it with their blood. A chief's wives, courtiers, and aidesde-camp, are strangled at his death-being thereby honoured. Cannibalism is so rampant that a chief, praising his deceased son, ended his eulogy by saying that he would "kill his own wives if they offended him, and eat them afterwards." Victims were sometimes roasted alive before being devoured; and Tanoa, one of their chiefs, cut off a cousin's arm, drank the blood, cooked the arm and ate it in presence of the owner, who was then cut to pieces. Their gods, described as having like characters, commit like acts. They live on the souls of those who are devoured by men, having first “roasted" them (the "souls" being simply material duplicates). They "are proud and revengeful, and make war, and kill and eat each other; and among the names of honour given to them are the adulterer, "the woman-stealer," "the brain-eater,' "the murderer." Such being the account of the Samoans, and such the account of the Fijians, let us ask what the Fijians think of the Samoans. "The Feegeeans looked upon the Samoans with horror, because they had no religion, no belief in any such deities [as the Feegeean], nor any of the sanguinary rites

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