Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/363

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THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
351

evidence, and even in spite of adverse evidence. Especially is this so among those of little culture. Not only may we see that strength of affirmation and an authoritative manner create faith in them, but we may see that their faith sometimes actually decreases if explanation is given. The natural language of belief in another is that which generates their belief—not the logically-conclusive evidence. The dependencies of this they cannot clearly follow; and, in trying to follow it, they so far lose themselves that premisses and conclusion, not perceived to stand in necessary relation, are rendered less coherent than by putting them in juxtaposition and strengthening their connection by a wave of the emotion which emphatic affirmation raises.

Nay, it is even true that the most cultivated intelligences, capable of criticising evidence and valuing arguments to a nicety, are not thereby made rational to the extent that they are guided by intellect apart from emotion. Continually men of the widest knowledge deliberately do things they know to be injurious; suffer the evils that transgression brings; are deterred a while by the vivid remembrance of them; and, when the remembrance has become faint, transgress again. Often the emotional consciousness overrides the intellectual consciousness absolutely, as hypochondriacal patients show us. A sufferer from depressed spirits may have the testimony of his physicians, verified by numerous past experiences of his own, showing that his gloomy anticipations are illusions caused by his bodily state; and yet the conclusive proofs that they are irrational do not enable him to get rid of them; he continues to feel sure that disasters are coming on him.

All which, and many kindred facts, make it certain that the operativeness of a moral code depends much more upon the emotions called forth by its injunctions than on the consciousness of the utility of obeying such injunctions. The feelings excited during early life toward moral principles, by witnessing the social sanction and the religious sanction they possess, influence conduct far more than the perception that conformity to such principles conduces to welfare. And, in the absence of the feelings which manifestations of these sanctions arouse, the utilitarian belief alone would be inadequate to produce conformity.

It is true that the sentiments in the higher races, and especially in superior members of the higher races, are now in considerable degrees adjusted to these principles; the sympathies that have become organic in the most developed men produce some spontaneous conformity to altruistic precepts. Even to such, however, the social sanction, which is in part derived from the religious sanction, is important as strengthening the influence of such precepts. And, to those endowed with less of moral sentiment, these sanctions are still more important aids to guidance.

Thus the anti-theological bias leads to serious error, both when it ignores the essential share hitherto taken by religious systems in