Note 125 — Chapter III
Walter Armstrong translation
Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his ingenious and subtle analysis of primitive ideas draws our attention to their frequent inconsistencies and even positive contradictions; but he shows us at the same time that the most highly civilised races in these modern days admit and combine ideas which are logically quite as irreconcilable as those which seem to us so absurdly inconsistent when we think of the beliefs of the ancients or of savage races. Custom renders us insensible to contradictions which we should perceive at once were we removed to a distance from them. (The Principles of Sociology, vol. i. pp. 119, 185).