whole. There is, indeed, nothing like so close a dependence of the unit upon the aggregate; but still there is a very decided dependence. Speaking generally, the citizen's life is made possible only by due performance of his function in the place he fills; and he cannot wholly free himself from the beliefs and sentiments generated by the vital connections hence arising between himself and his society. Here, then, is a difficulty to which no other science presents anything analogous. To cut himself off in thought from all his relationships of race, and country, and citizenship—to get rid of all those interests, prejudices, likings, superstitions, generated in him by the life of his own society and his own time—to look on all the changes societies have undergone and are undergoing, without reference to nationality, or creed, or personal welfare; is what the average man cannot do at all, and what the exceptional can do very imperfectly.
The difficulties of the Social Science, thus indicated in vague outline, have now to be described and illustrated in detail.
V.—Objective Difficulties.
Along with much that has of late years been done toward changing primitive history into myth, and along with much that has been done toward changing once unquestioned estimates of persons and events of past ages, much has been said about the untrustworthiness of historical evidence. Hence there will be ready acceptance of the statement that one of the impediments to sociological generalization, is the uncertainty of our data. When we bear in mind that from early stories such as those about the Amazons, their practices, the particular battles with them, and particular events in those battles, all of which are recorded and sculptured as circumstantially as they might be were the persons and events historic—when we bear in mind, I say, that from such early stories down to accounts of a well-known people like the New-Zealanders, who, "by some .... are said to be intelligent, cruel, and brave; by others, weak, kindly, and cowardly,"[1] we have to deal with an enormous accumulation of conflicting statements; we cannot but feel that the task of collecting facts from which to draw conclusions, is in this case a more arduous one than in any other case. Passing over remote illustrations, let us take an immediate one:
Last year advertisements announced the "Two-headed Nightingale;" and the walls of London were placarded with a figure in which one pair of shoulders was shown to bear two heads looking the same way (I do not refer to the later placards, which partially differed from the earlier). To some, this descriptive name and answering diagram seemed sufficiently exact; for in my hearing a lady, who had been to see this compound being, referred to the placards and handbills as giving a good representation. If we suppose this lady to have re-
- ↑ Thomson's "New Zealand," vol. i., p. 80.
