408 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
race impulse. Rational belief must be always a calculation of the pay- ment which the individual is going to get later on for acting his part as a simple member of the species. Again we would ask how it is that M. Le Bon has written a long book presenting with great wealth of argument the proper course for Frenchmen to pursue. This under- taking, which would repudiate any reward in this world or the next, is surely a rational one, and yet not an egoistic one. It rises quite above the plane of the fight between the altruistic and egoistic element, and presents rational motives for conduct which are found in a conscious and sincere love of one's country. If in this case reason is able to get down into the hidden sources of action, to put to itself the task of clarifying these from their own moral standpoint, with no reference to the egoistic demand, why may not the crowd even eventually reach this position in which the reason in its exercise is not necessarily egoistic. In a word, the very existence of the book denies the author's sophistic epistemology and hedonistic ethics. If perception were a necessary process of deforming the world, M. Le Bon could never have discovered it. And if reason is universally egoistic, while our disinterested con- duct must always be, as such, unconscious and unanalyzed, the worthy purpose of this book could never have been rationally conceived or discursively carried out.
It is evident at once where socialism comes in. It is a late gospel, according to Marx, by which a bridge is laid between the race impulse and the demand for individual life and gratification. The promise of revenge upon the hated rich, the equalization of fortunes that is to bring comfort and gratification in this world, if not in the next, reconciles the crowd and the disaffected man to immediate life. It is a new religion — but a dangerous one ; for its realization is laid in this world and calls for the torch, the guillotine, and the dagger. Strangely enough, the author who says truth or falsity has nothing to do with the acceptance and maintenance of religious beliefs and dof^mas, is sure that no sooner has socialism been tried than the crowd will reject it. Though belief has the strange power of carrying along unreconcilable propositions as glittering truths, the socialistic dogma is sure to break down when put to the test.
Now, it is true that our perceptions are conditioned by our own natures and their past, and it is true that reason attempts to bridge the break between the more or less unconscious habit and the immediate situation which calls for its readaptation. But, so long as we are able to draw out of our natures and their past experience scientific rules for
