the existing social order, or a career "freed from religious
suppression and dogmatic conventions" outside. [Footnote: _Id_.,
p. 151.] What for a sociologist is a normal social career? Or one
freed from suppressions and conventions? Conservative critics do, to
be sure, assume the first, and romantic ones the second. But in
assuming them they are taking the whole world for granted. They are
saying in effect either that society is the sort of thing which
corresponds to their idea of what is normal, or the sort of thing
which corresponds to their idea of what is free. Both ideas are merely
public opinions, and while the psychoanalyst as physician may perhaps
assume them, the sociologist may not take the products of existing
public opinion as criteria by which to study public opinion.

7

The world that we have to deal with politically is out of reach, out
of sight, out of mind. It has to be explored, reported, and imagined.
Man is no Aristotelian god contemplating all existence at one glance.
He is the creature of an evolution who can just about span a
sufficient portion of reality to manage his survival, and snatch what
on the scale of time are but a few moments of insight and happiness.
Yet this same creature has invented ways of seeing what no naked eye
could see, of hearing what no ear could hear, of weighing immense
masses and infinitesimal ones, of counting and separating more items
than he can individually remember. He is learning to see with his mind
vast portions of the world that he could never see, touch, smell,
hear, or remember. Gradually he makes for himself a trustworthy
picture inside his head of the world beyond his reach.

Those features of the world outside which have to do with the behavior