than on the abstract and remote. The representative faculty in women deals quickly and clearly with the personal, the special, and the immediate; but less readily grasps the general and the impersonal. A vivid imagination of simple direct consequences mostly shuts out from her mind the imagination of consequences that are complex and indirect. The respective behaviours of mothers and fathers to children, sufficiently exemplify this difference: mothers thinking chiefly of present effects on the conduct of children, and regarding less the distant effects on their characters; while fathers often repress the promptings of their sympathies with a view to ultimate benefits. And this difference between their ways of estimating consequences, affecting their judgments on social affairs as on domestic affairs, makes women err still more than men do in seeking what seems an immediate public good without thought of distant public evils. Once more, we have in women the predominant awe of power and authority, swaying their ideas and sentiments about all institutions. This tends towards the strengthening of governments, political and ecclesiastical. Faith in whatever presents itself with imposing accompaniments, is, for the reason above assigned, especially strong in women. Doubt, or criticism, or calling-in-question of things that are established, is rare among them. Hence in public affairs their influence goes towards the maintenance of controlling agencies, and does not resist the extension of such agencies: rather, in pursuit of immediate promised benefits, it urges on that extension; since the concrete good in view excludes from their thoughts the remote evils | of multiplied restraints. Reverencing power more than men do women, by implication, respect freedom less-freedom, that is not of the nominal kind, but of that real kind which consists in the ability of each to carry on his own life without hindrance from others, so long as he does not hinder them.

As factors in social phenomena, these distinctive mental traits of women have ever to be remembered. Women have in all times played a part, and, in modern days, a very notable part, in

determining social arrangements. They act both directly and indirectly. Directly, they take a large, if not the larger, share in that ceremonial government which supplements the political and ecclesiastical governments; and as supporters of these other governments, especially the ecclesiastical, their direct aid is by no means unimportant. Indirectly, they act by modifying the opinions and sentiments of men-first, in edu cation, when the expression of maternal thoughts and feelings affects the thoughts and feelings of boys, and afterwards in domestic and social intercourse, during which the feminine sentiments sway men's public acts, both consciously and unconsciously. Whether it is desirable that the share already taken by women in determining social arrangements and actions should be increased, is a question we will leave undiscussed. Here I am concerned merely to point out that, in the course of a psychological preparation for the study of Sociology, we must include the comparative psychology of the sexes; so that if any change is made, we may make it knowing what we are doing.

Assent to the general proposition set forth in this chapter, does not depend on assent to the particular propositions unfolded in illustrating it. Those who, while pressing forward education, are so certain they know what good education is, that, in an essentially-Papal spirit, they wish to force children through their existing school-courses, under penalty on parents who resist, will not have their views modified by what has been said. I do not look, either, for any appreciable effect on those who shut out from consideration the reactive influence on moral nature, entailed by the action of a system of intellectual culture which habituates parents to make the public responsible for their children's minds. Nor do I think it likely that many of those who wish to change fundamentally the political status of women, will be influenced by the considerations above set forth on the comparative psychology of the sexes. But without acceptance of these illustrative conclu

sions, there may be acceptance of the general conclusion, that psychological truths underlie sociological truths, and must therefore be sought by the sociologist. For whether discipline of the intellect does or does not change the emotions; whether national character is or is not progressively adapted to social conditions; whether the minds of men and women are or are not alike; are obviously psychological questions; and either answer to any one of them, implies a psychological conclusion. Hence, whoever on any of these questions has a conviction to which he would give legislative expression, is basing a sociological belief upon a psychological belief; and cannot deny that the one is true only if the other is true. Having admitted this, he must admit that without preparation in Mental Science there can be no Social Science. For, otherwise, he must assert that the randomly-made and carelessly-grouped observations on Mind, common to all people, are better as guides than observations cautiously collected, critically examined, and generalized in a systematic way.

No one, indeed, who is once led to dwell on the matter, can fail to see how absurd is the supposition that there can be a rational interpretation of men's combined actions, without a previous rational interpretation of those thoughts and feelings by which their individual actions are prompted. Nothing comes out of a society but what originates in the motive of an individual, or in the united similar motives of many individuals, or in the conflict of the united similar motives of some having certain interests, with the diverse motives of others whose interests are different. Always the power which initiates a change is feeling, separate or aggregated, guided to its ends by intellect; and not even an approach to an explanation of social phenomena can be made, without the thoughts and sentiments of citizens being recognized as factors. How, then, can there be a true account of social actions without a true account of these thoughts and sentiments? Manifestly, those who ignore Psychology as a preparation for Sociology, can defend their position only by proving that

while other groups of phenomena require special study, the phenomena of Mind, in all their variety and intricacy, are best understood without special study; and that knowledge of human nature gained haphazard, becomes obscure and misleading in proportion as there is added to it knowledge deliberately sought and carefully put together,

CHAPTER XVI.

CONCLUSION

Or readers who have accompanied me thus far, probably some think that the contents of the work go beyond the limits implied by its title. Under the head, Study of Sociology, so many sociological questions have been incidentally discussed, that the science itself has been in a measure dealt with while dealing with the study of it. Admitting this criticism, my excuse must be that the fault, if it is one, has been scarcely avoidable. Nothing to much purpose can be said about the study of any science without saying a good deal about the general and special truths it includes, or what the expositor holds to be truths. To write an essay on the study of Astronomy in which there should be no direct or implied conviction respecting the Copernican theory of the Solar System, nor any such recognition of the Law of Gravitation as involved acceptance or rejection of it, would be a task difficult to execute, and, when executed, probably of little value. Similarly with Sociology—it is next to impossible for a writer who points out the way towards its truths, to exclude all tacit or avowed expressions of opinion about those truths; and, were it possible to exclude such expressions of opinion, it would be at the cost of those illustrations needed to make his exposition effective.

Such must be, in part, my defence for having set down many thoughts which the title of this work does not cover. Especially have I found myself obliged thus to transgress, by representing