Swinging together
In his article 'Swinging Together' (18 ober) Christopher Hollis writes: 'The trine of original sin—that we are all n with a capacity to prefer the evil to good—is, as Chesterton once truly said, one Christian doctrine that is absolutely onstrable . . .' (emphasis mine). Would not agree that the belief in original sin be responsible for the 'evidence' °rtill8 ,that belief? -
There is the almost axiomatic sociologi- cal generalisation that 'if people define situations as teal they are real in their consequences'. If, at birth, or even before, human beings or beings to be are defined by those who have to deal with them from birth as evil, it is not surprising that they ably fulfil this prophecy in the majority of cases. Actually, I know of no evidence supporting the contention that man is born evil or with a predisposition to evil. On the evidence, admittedly imperfect, that is avail- able, most social scientists would no doubt agree with Kingsley Davis's statement in his Human Society that: 'Most of the human behaviour we regard as somehow given in the species does not occur apart from train- ing and example by others. Most of the mental traits we think of as constituting the human mind are not present unless put there by communicative contact with others.'
C. A. S. Hyman: Associate Professor of Sociology and Agri- cultural Economics, University of Alberta 12 Heath Drive, Hampstead, London Nw3
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