One of the great evils of this artificial simplification is its influence upon social science. Complicated provinces of life have been assigned to the jurisdiction of some special instinct or group of instincts, which has reigned despotically with the usual consequences of despotism. Politics has replaced religion as the set of phenomena based upon fear; or after having been the fruit of a special Aristotelian political faculty, has become the necessary condition of restraining man's self-seeking impulse. All sociological facts are disposed of in a few fat volumes as products of imitation and invention, or of cooperation and conflict. Ethics rest upon sympathy, pity, benevolence. Economics is the science of phenomena due to one love and one aversion--gain and labor. It is surprising that men can engage in these enterprises without being reminded of their exact similarity to natural science before scientific method was discovered in the seventeenth century. Just now another simplification is current. All instincts go back to the sexual, so that _cherchez la femme_ (under multitudinous symbolic disguises) is the last word of science with respect to the analysis of conduct. Some sophisticated simplifications which once had great influence are now chiefly matters of historic moment. Even so they are instructive. They show how social conditions put a heavy load on certain tendencies, so that in the end an acquired disposition is treated as if it were an original, and almost the only original activity. Consider, for example, the burden of causal power placed by Hobbes upon the reaction of fear. To a man living with reasonable security and comfort today, Hobbes' pervasive consciousness of fear seems like the idiosyncrasy of an abnormally timid temperament. But a survey of the conditions of his own time, of the disorders which bred general distrust and antagonism, which led to brutal swashbuckling and disintegrating intrigue, puts the matter on a different footing. The social situation conduced to fearfulness. As an account of the psychology of the natural man his theory is unsound. As a report of contemporary social conditions there is much to be said for it. Something of the same sort may be said regarding the emphasis of eighteenth century moralists upon benevolence as the inclusive moral spring to action, an emphasis represented in the nineteenth century by Comte's exaltation of altruism. The load was excessive. But it testifies to the growth of a new philanthropic spirit. With the breaking down of feudal barriers and a consequent mingling of persons previously divided, a sense of responsibility for the happiness of others, for the mitigation of misery, grew up. Conditions were not ripe for its translation into political action. Hence the importance attached to the private disposition of voluntary benevolence.