Social Theory. By G. D. H. COLE. Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1920. Pp. 220.

$1.50.

This is truly an exceptional book. It goes far toward vindicating the rash hope of a few super-sanguine American scholars that eventually Oxford, yea possibly Harvard, may discover what has been going on since the middle eighteen-seventies in the minds of American sociologists. The publishers inform us that false doctrine need no longer delude, for a prophet with a new truth has arisen at Oxford, and his book has already been adopted as a text at Harvard. We open the volume with reverence and fear. We wish to be devout in the presence of new truth, yet we tremble at the prospect of blinding revelation. What the effect may be upon Oxford or Harvard vision we are unable to state, but after the experiment of facing the demonstration we are in a position to assure normal readers that we have issued from the ordeal without insufferable enlightenment.

The substance of this "new" doctrine turns out to be the inflammatory thesis that "relations of a man to the state do not furnish the whole, or even the greater part of his social existence" (p. 4). Inasmuch as this idea has been remaking social science since Treitschke supposed he had strangled it a-borning before 1860, and inasmuch as multitudes of people who have had their schooling in the United States since 1900 would be hard to convince that anyone ever had a different thought, the author need have no fear that his doctrine will be received as a stranger and an alien upon our shores.

To function as a shock-absorber, to break the force of sudden collision with the "new" truth, the second chapter is devoted to elucidation of seven words, viz.: "community," "society," "customs," "institutions," "associations," "members," and "purposes." In this case again the seed need not waste itself upon sterile soil. Since Professor Sumner begain in 1874 to make Yale students acquainted with Spencer's version of facts to which these names have been applied, the number of Americans who annually learn about them, quite likely in more critical terms than these seven, and with more coherent exposition of them, has grown to thousands. Should fulsome advertising call the book to their attention, the reaction of the majority might conceivably be that of Oliver Twist-demand for a more satisfying portion.

In elaborating his novel version of Western society the author makes use of a bibliography of some forty titles. Of these, with a single exception, not one might be successfully impeached on the ground of an

American taint in its origin. This is well. Otherwise ingenuous American youth might fall under the illusion that Oxford notices American books. In spite of the fact that since 1883 Americans have been developing a literature which has brought to light much social reality that had previously been hid, and although it has long been a relatively belated American college in which the essentials of human association have not been analyzed with a creditable degree of competence, there is still room for a conspectus of the most commonplace sociological generalizations adapted to the comprehension of the youngest beginners. If teachers welcome the announcement of this book in the hope that it has met this want, they will be disappointed. It certainly does not fill any other gap.

From a first glance one receives the impression that the book has reduced profundities laboriously fathomed by many men to a simplicity of expression which had not previously been achieved. Further attention shows that the discussion is not aimed at a single public. At one step it appears to be addressed to children. A moment later it falls into a manner appropriate only in discussion with philosophers or seasoned politicians. In neither case does it "have the punch." Still closer inspection detects passages which might almost serve as samples of the sort of composition which deliberately exaggerates sententiousness into nonsense. On the whole candor compels the report that the author has brewed a few familiar concepts and some scattered observation into a turgidity against which adequate familiarity with the sociological analyses of the past two decades and a consistently observed purpose might have been a protection.

ALBION W. SMALL

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

National Evolution. By GEORGE R. DAVIES. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1919. Pp. xii+159. $0.75.

This little volume is a condensed treatment of social evolution or social progress, with the emphasis upon its economic features. In the first of its four chapters the author discusses the elements-especially economic of social evolution, such as the establishment of the principle of private property, the centralization and integration of capital, and their culmination in the nations of ancient history.

Under the title "Christian Civilization" he considers Western civilization as the direct evolution from the Roman Empire, the cultural movement being Christianity. He traces the evolution of Christianity

from the Hebrew civilization; its solidification in the papal empire and its evolution through the Reformation; Puritanism, with its Calvinistic theology; its spread through the rise and domination of English power, under which arose a new aristocracy of money-of commercial and factory properties; the changes of the nineteenth century, bringing in the rise of Germany through centralized organization and specialization; and finally American democracy based upon individualism.

The chapter on "Modern Capitalism" is an attempt to condense the fundamental principles of economic laws in regard to capital into fortysix pages and of course is technical and crowded.

Under "National Progress" the author calls attention to the necessity of rebuilding the nation on the basis of competitive service and the socialization of society instead of private ownership of capital properties. This brief, concise work is on the whole sound and constructive and will be of special value to the reader whose time is limited.

G. S. Dow

BAYLOR UNIVERSITY

Modern Science and Materialism. By HUGH ELLIOT. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1919. Pp. iv+211. $3.00.

It is difficult not to be unjust to Modern Science and Materialism. Its science is above reproach and occupies the center of the author's interest and the bulk of the book. The attitude of the modern scientist toward the physical universe has been represented with the perfect faithfulness and profound, detailed knowledge of a member of the cult. Beginning with a frank acceptance of "scientific agnosticism," of "a philosophy . . . . strictly based on facts" the author proceeds through the greater portion of the book to develop the cosmology of telescope and microscope. The problems, he finds, are: (1) the material structure of the universe; (2) the constitution of matter; (3) life and consciousness. These problems are treated convincingly; they can be unqualifiedly recommended to any reader who is interested in a bird's-eye view of modern astromomy, physics, and biology.

But it is impossible to say more of the author's "materialism" than that it is what physical science always is when it attempts to substitute itself for life. Granted that one's views should be strictly based on facts, but what are facts? Let us waive the author's omissions. Sociologists may, perhaps, wonder whether the philosophy of life need contain no reference to the facts of social organization and intercourse; theirs is very likely a narrow and sectarian interest.

It is the quality, not the identity, of the microscopic fact that gives offense. What are the facts of science? Conventions, says Poincaré; metaphysical entities, says Russell; preconceptions, says Veblen. In other words they are very like the ordinary facts of life-like the season's crop of profiteers and presidential nominees. There is nothing magical about them except the regard in which they are held.

The presumption is that life contains many things, some reduced to "science" and some not. "The majority of philosophers hold that there are other means to knowledge besides those of natural science” (p. 135). Quite so.

C. E. AYRES

AMHERST COLLEGE

Sovietism: The A B C of Russian Bolshevism According to the Bolshevists. By WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1920. Pp. ix+220. $2.00.

This book does well what it engages to do, viz., sift such evidence as is available from bolshevist sources in order to give the general public an authentic account of what the bolshevists themselves think bolshevism is. Mr. Walling has little sympathy with the men, like Alonzo E. Taylor, William C. Bullitt, Raymond Robins, and their kind, who virtually assume that bolshevism is to be judged by its utopian hopes rather than by its works and their total effects. He assumes on the contrary that the judgments of value which leading bolshevists have advertised are so repugnant to most Western minds that it is needless to wait for their refutation by the logic of events before condemning them. The book should do much as an antiseptic against the bolshevist poison.

ALBION W. SMALL

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

New Towns after the War: An Argument for Garden Cities. By NEW TOWNSMEN.

$0.60.

New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1919.

A brilliant statement of the housing situation in England with an epigrammatic analysis of the remedies that might be applied should English conservatism be bold enough to realize the dangers that superurbanism presents.

The book is mainly a plea for the distribution of population, the creation of garden cities with limitations upon populational growth, and

the decentralization of industry in order to bring workers in closer contact with rural life and rural resources for normal living.

The garden cities of the Letchworth type are held before the reader as the most successful experiment in the creation of new cities, and various methods of financing including co-operative methods, industrial financing, and government subsidy are advocated.

This small booklet, emanating from some friend or friends of the English Garden City movement, despite its brevity and somewhat propagandistic character, states clearly many of the recognized causes of our confused methods of municipal engineering and suggests practical solutions, which in the end are bound to find recognition in the city building efforts of both England and America.

SAN FRANCISCO

CAROL ARONOVICI

Inbreeding and Outbreeding: Their Genetic and Sociological Significance. By EDWIN M. EAST, PH.D., and DONALD F. JONES, SC.D. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1919. Pp. 285. $2.50.

The first eleven chapters of this monograph consist of conclusions carefully arrived at inductively from much data observed by the authors and others. The conclusion is presented that inbreeding is not in itself harmful (p. 139). It produces unfavorable results only when it uncovers undesirable recessive characters and tends to build up a homozygous type around them. When properly controlled, inbreeding is a valuable method of purging the stock of unfavorable characters. Any consequent loss of vigor can be regained by outbreeding with other favorable qualities (p. 140). On the basis of these findings the abolition of laws against the marriage of first cousins is suggested (p. 235). The conclusions set forth in the last two chapters with regard to the breeding of people of superior ability and the control of race intermixture on a biological basis are more tentative and possibly will be open to more objection. The authors hold that exceptional ability, although defined as "skill in accomplishment" (p. 232), is hereditary rather than environmental in its origin. They assert: "The hereditary factors which contribute toward the possibility of genius are numerous. Only occasionally is the proper combination brought together" (pp. 233-34), but they admit that "no one knows what the component parts of these desirable qualities are, or can distinguish by external traits the individual who carries them" (p. 234). They explain adventitious genius on the