once attached to the superstitious explanations of them becomes a mystery attaching to the scientific explanations of them there is a merging of many special mysteries in one general mystery. The astronomer, having shown that the motions of the Solar System imply a uniform and invariablyacting force he calls gravitation, finds himself utterly incapable of conceiving this force. Though he helps himself to think of the Sun's action on the Earth by assuming an intervening medium, and finds he must do this if he thinks about it at all; yet the mystery re-appears when he asks what is the constitution of this medium. While compelled to use units of ether as symbols, he sees that they can be but symbols. Similarly with the physicist and the chemist. The hypothesis of atoms and molecules enables them to work out multitudinous interpretations that are verified by experiment; but the ultimate unit of matter admits of no consistent conception. Instead of the particular mysteries presented by those actions of matter they have explained, there rises into prominence the mystery which matter universally presents, and which proves to be absolute. So that, beginning with the germinal idea of mystery which the savage gets from a display of power in another transcending his own, and the germinal sentiment of awe accompanying it, the progress is towards an ultimate recognition of a mystery behind every act and appearance, and a transfer of the awe from something special and occasional to something universal and unceasing.

No one need expect, then, that the religious consciousness will die away or will change the lines of its evolution. Its specialities of form, once strongly marked and becoming less distinct during past mental progress, will continue to fade; but the substance of the consciousness will persist. That the object-matter can be replaced by another object-matter, as supposed by those who think the "Religion of Humanity' will be the religion of the future, is a belief countenanced neither by induction nor by deduction. However dominant may become the moral sentiment enlisted on behalf of Humanity, it can never exclude the sentiment, alone properly called religious, awakened by that which is behind Humanity and behind all other things. The child by wrapping its head in the bed-clothes, may, for a moment, suppress the conscious

ness of surrounding darkness; but the consciousness, though rendered less vivid, survives, and imagination persists in occupying itself with that which lies beyond perception. No such thing as a Religion of Humanity" can ever do more than temporarily shut out the thought of a Power of which Humanity is but a small and fugitive product-a Power which was in course of ever-changing manifestations before Humanity was, and will continue through other manifestations when Humanity has ceased to be.

To recognitions of this order the anti-theological bias is a hindrance. Ignoring the truth for which religions stand, it under-values religious institutions in the past, thinks they are needless in the present, and expects they will leave no representatives in the future. Hence mistakes in sociological

reasonings.

To the various other forms of bias, then, against which we must guard in studying the Social Science, has to be added the bias, perhaps as powerful and perverting as any, which religious beliefs and sentiments produce. This, both generally under the form of theological bigotry, and specially under the form of sectarian bigotry, affects the judgments about public affairs; and reaction against it gives the judgments an opposite warp.

The theological bias under its general form, tending to maintain a dominance of the subordination-element of religion over its ethical element-tending, therefore, to measure actions by their formal congruity with a creed rather than by their intrinsic congruity with human welfare, is unfavourable to that estimation of worth in social arrangements which is made by tracing out results. And while the general theological bias brings into Sociology an element of distortion, by using a kind of measure foreign to the science properly so called, the special theological bias brings in further distortions, arising from special measures of this kind which it uses. Institutions, old and new, home and foreign, are considered as congruous or incongruous with particular sets of dogmas, and are liked or disliked accordingly: the obvious result being that, since the sets of dogmas differ in all times and places, the sociological judgments affected by them must

inevitably be wrong in all cases but one, and probably in all

cases.

On the other hand, the reactive bias distorts conceptions of social phenomena by under-valuing religious systems. It generates an unwillingness to see that a religious system is a normal and essential factor in every evolving society; that the specialities of it have certain fitnesses to the social conditions; and that while its form is temporary its subsistence is permanent. In so far as the anti-theological bias causes an ignoring of these truths, or an inadequate appreciation of them, it causes misinterpretations.

To maintain the required equilibrium amid the conflicting sympathies and antipathies which contemplation of religious beliefs inevitably generates, is difficult. In presence of the theological thaw going on so fast on all sides, there is on the part of many a fear, and on the part of some a hope, that nothing will remain. But the hopes and the fears are alike groundless; and must be dissipated before balanced judgments in Social Science can be formed. Like the transformations that have succeeded one another hitherto, the transformation now in progress is but an advance from a lower form, no longer fit, to a higher and fitter form; and neither will this transformation, nor kindred transformations to come hereafter, destroy that which is transformed, any more than past transformations have destroyed it.

CHAPTER XIII.

DISCIPLINE.

IN the foregoing eight chapters we have contemplated, under their several heads, those "Difficulties of the Social Science" which the chapter bearing that title indicated in a general way. After thus warning the student against the errors he is liable to fall into, partly because of the nature of the phenomena themselves and the conditions they are presented under, and partly because of his own nature as observer of them, which by both its original and its acquired characters causes twists of perception and judgment; it now remains to say something about the needful preliminary studies. I do not refer to studies furnishing the requisite data; but I refer to studies giving the requisite discipline. Right thinking in any matter depends very much on the habit of thought; and the habit of thought, partly natural, depends in part on the artificial influences to which the mind has been subjected.

As certainly as each person has peculiarities of bodily action that distinguish him from his fellows, so certainly has he peculiarities of mental action that give a character to his conceptions. There are tricks of thought as well as tricks of muscular movement. There are acquired mental aptitudes for seeing things under particular aspects, as there are acquired bodily aptitudes for going through evolutions after particular ways. And there are intellectual perversities produced by certain modes of treating the mind, as there are incurable awkwardnesses due to certain physical activities daily repeated.

Each kind of mental discipline, besides its direct effects on the faculties brought into play, has its indirect effects on the faculties left out of play; and when special benefit is gained

by extreme special discipline, there is inevitably more or less general mischief entailed on the rest of the mind by the consequent want of discipline. That antagonism between body and brain which we see in those who, pushing brain-activity to an extreme, enfeeble their bodies, and those who, pushing bodily activity to an extreme, make their brains inert, is an antagonism which holds between the parts of the body itself and the parts of the brain itself. The greater bulk and strength of the right arm resulting from its greater use, and the greater aptitude of the right hand, are instances in point; and that the relative incapacity of the left hand, involved by cultivating the capacity of the right hand, would become still more marked were the right hand to undertake all manipulation, is obvious. The like holds among the mental faculties. The fundamental antagonism between feeling and cognition, running down through all actions of the mind, from the conflicts between emotion and reason to the conflicts between sensation and perception, is the largest illustration. We meet with a kindred antagonism among the actions of the intellect itself, between perceiving and reasoning. Men who have aptitudes for accumulating observations are rarely men given to generalizing; while men given to generalizing are commonly men who, mostly using the observations of others, observe for themselves less from love of particular facts than from desire to put such facts to use. We may trace the antagonism within even a narrower range, between general reasoning and special reasoning. One prone to far-reaching speculations rarely pursues to much purpose those investigations by which particular truths are reached; while the scientific specialist ordinarily has but little tendency to occupy himself with wide views.

No more is needed to make it clear that habits of thought result from particular kinds of mental activity; and that each man's habits of thought influence his judgment on any question brought before him. It will be obvious, too, that in proportion as the question is involved and many-sided, the habit of thought must be a more important factor in determining the conclusion arrived at. Where the subject-matter is simple, as a geometrical truth or a mechanical action, and has therefore not many different aspects, perversions of view consequent on intellectual attitude are comparatively few; but