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THE MEDICAL MISTAKE
A book of modern social inquiry has a shape that is somewhat sharply defined. It begins as a rule with an analysis, with statistics, tables of population, decrease of crime among Congregationalists, growth of hysteria among policemen, and similar ascertained facts; it ends with a chapter that is generally called "The Remedy." It is almost wholly due to this careful, solid, and scientific method that "The Remedy" is never found. For this scheme of medical question and answer is a blunder; the first great blunder of sociology. It is always called stating the disease before we find the cure. But it is the whole definition and dignity of man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before we find the disease.
The fallacy is one of the fifty fallacies that come from the modern madness of biological or bodily metaphors. It is convenient to speak for the Social Organism, just as it is convenient to speak of the British Lion. But Britain is no more an organism than Britain is a lion. The
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