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But when the politico-social question is entered upon, the new science of sociology is overpowered by a sort of hypnotic sleep and remains suspended in a sterile, colorless limbo, thus permitting sociologists to be in public economy, as in politics, conservatives or radicals, in accordance with their respective whims or subjective tendencies.
They started for Paris. Yes, Paris remembered Jean Francois. How could Paris forget him he was so preposterous and his work so impossible! It was still a struggle for bread. Marriages and births have a fixed relation to the price of corn, the sociologists say. Perhaps they are right; but not in this case. The babies came along with the years, and all brought love with them.
Students were influenced by conclusions that were being reached in biology, in economics, and in other allied departments of thought, but the one science which became most prominent to the minds of sociologists was psychology. Ward's Dynamic Sociology, published in 1883, marked an epoch, because it called special attention to the psychic factors that enter into social life.
One of the early sociologists regarded every evil passion as a force which might by judicious management be turned to good, while among us even a fine, noble passion springs up and dies away in impotence, turned to no account, misunderstood or vulgarised. Why is it? The sledges stopped unexpectedly.
And what is true of the main arguments of the later, as of the earlier socialists, is equally true of their subsidiary arguments also, from those which refer to the generalisations of the sociologists of the nineteenth century, and base themselves on the confusion between speculative truth and practical, down to those which are drawn from the absurd psychological supposition that all motives are interchangeable, and that those which actuate the artist, the anchorite, and the soldier can be made to replace by means of a vote or a sermon those which at present actuate the masters of industrial enterprise.
I, for instance, disbelieve in oligarchy; so I would no more mend the House of Lords than I would mend a thumbscrew. On the other hand, I do believe in the family; therefore I would mend the family as I would mend a chair; and I will never deny for a moment that the modern family is a chair that wants mending. But here comes in the essential point about the mass of modern advanced sociologists.
At the present day it may be said that the principle of the voluntary control of procreation, not for the selfish ends of the individual, but in order to extinguish disease, to limit human misery, and to raise the general level of humanity by substituting the ideal of quality for the vulgar ideal of mere quantity, is now generally accepted, alike by medical pathologists, embryologists and neurologists, and by sociologists and moralists.
Although what some sentimental sociologists might call a victim of our civilization, Lise would not have changed it, since it produced not only Lise herself, but also those fabulous financiers with yachts and motors and town and country houses she read about in the supplements of the Sunday newspapers.
Eventually, this foresight department will expand. It may, if a leader of genius appear, become the first real corps of practical sociologists, which will substitute facts for the present hotch-potch of theories. It will prepare a "fundamental plan" of the whole United States, showing the centre of each industry and the main runways of traffic.
That testimony which trained doctors, sociologists, and psychiatrists give is entirely in favor of postponing all such relations until after the marriage ceremony. Furthermore, statistics show that marriages in which the engaged couple do not "go all the way" seem to have a higher chance of success.
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