Parker's point of view is that individual responsibility and individual selfishness are both seriously underrated. Further, Parker professed a so-called scientific unwillingness to give full recognition to the intangible but nevertheless highly influential forces of moral motivation.

In the essay on "Understanding Labor Unrest," Parker makes plain how unjust laboring conditions supported by abstract and harsh economic theories have suppressed the normal and healthy instincts of many laborers and created the spirit of radicalism. The essay on "The I.W.W." is the best available analysis of the type of mental attitude which is common among the defeated strata of American labor. In "Motives in Economic Life," Parker observes that "the domination of society by one economic class has for its chief evil the thwarting of the instinct life of the subordinate class and the perversion of the upper class." While this conclusion is correct as far as it goes, it overrates the importance of the instinct life. It fails to provide for the defeat of that virulent selfishness which is now so outspoken in both parties of the class struggle. It does not bespeak a socialization of the purposes of all classes.

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

E. S. BOGARDUS

New York: The $1.00.

Broken Homes. By JOANNA C. COLCORD. Russel Sage Foundation, 1919. Pp. 208. Statistics indicate that 10 per cent of the demands made upon organized charity come from family desertion. The proportion of time and money spent in dealing with such cases is in excess of that figure. For years it has been one of the most expensive and baffling of the problems faced by relief societies, and one productive of extensive harmful effects upon society at large. To professional charity workers, especially, this little volume of Miss Colcord's should prove of real value and serviceability, for it contains the most thoroughgoing and practical plan of dealing with desertion which has yet appeared. The writer is herself a specialist within this field, and she is able to supplement her own extensive experience and observation with first-hand knowledge of the methods and judgments of many of the ablest workers in the country. The book must be regarded as the authority to date on the important question of how to deal with cases of this type. Details of immediate treatment are supplemented by practical suggestions as to "next steps in corrective treatment." The closing chapter is devoted

to "next steps in preventive treatment," a topic of still greater concern; but with the exception of a suggested domestic consultation bureau to be established in connection with organized family agencies, it fails to afford as much practical assistance as the preceding chapters. Since the volume deals entirely with desertion and non-support, which constitute only one type of broken homes, the title is too broad, and somewhat misleading. EARLE E. EUBANK

Y.M.C.A. COLLEGE, CHICAGO

The Social Interpretation of History. A Refutation of the Marxian Economic Interpretation of History. By MAURICE WILLIAM. Brooklyn, 1920. Pp. 222.

Aroused by the disorganization and disintegration resultant from the Great War, Mr. William, a disciple of Marxian Socialism for more than a quarter of a century, investigated for himself and came to the conclusion that Marx was mistaken in his claim to have discovered the laws of social evolution. Mr. William repudiates the class struggle as anti-social and says that co-operation and harmonizing the interests of mankind is the true method of progress, hence the title of his book.

If this is an indication of what is going on in the minds of enough socialists to leaven the mass, if they begin to doubt the absolute reliability of the Marxian formulations and are willing to search for fresh guidance, it augurs well for a broadening and deepening of the socialist movement. Undoubtedly the greatest obstacle to that development has been and is the absolutely unquestioning faith in Marxian principles and failure to accept the scientific method that is emerging in the social sciences.

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

VICTOR E. HELLEBERG

The Modern Household. By MARION TALBOT and SOPHONISBA PRESTON BRECKINRIDGE. Boston: Whitcomb and Barrows, 1919. Pp. 1-93. $1.00.

This volume is a revision of the 1912 edition. There is little change in the text except the inclusion of a page or two setting forth concisely the effect of the war upon fashions in dress. The suggestive questions at the end of each chapter have been carefully revised and the bibliographies accompanying the several chapters have been enriched by the addition of new titles, especially those dealing with food, clothing, and household management.

More revision of the text might have been desirable. The effects of the very general instruction of housewives during the war in dietetics and in modern canning methods might have been noted. It seems hardly true at present that "only here and there traces remain" of household processes of food preservation. Then, too, various community and co-operative movements affecting the household would seem to be of sufficient significance to deserve notice in so suggestive a volume. MARY LOUISE MARK

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Defective Housing and the Growth of Children. By J. LAWSEN DICK, M.D., F.R.C.S. London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1919. Pp. 94.

This is a most disappointing book. It is neither about defective housing nor about growth of children. It is merely a study of the prevalence and the effects of rickets upon child health, but at no time does the author indicate the actual relation between the physical and mental growth of the child and specific conditions of health, stature, scholarship, physical strength, or any other condition of growth. The only instances of evidence regarding the actual housing conditions in their relation to health were obtained from sources other than Dr. Dick's investigations.

As a study of rickets in schools the work is no doubt valuable, but it lacks adequate consideration of those factors in housing upon which a classification of child growth could be based without danger of attributing to housing results which might as easily be attributed to other causes, such as nutrition, methods of living rather than housing conditions, and such habits and traditions of child care as may be due to racial characters or the industrial life of the mother.

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.

CAROL ARONOVICI

RECENT LITERATURE

NOTES AND ABSTRACTS

La Raison et le Progrès Moral.-The fact of a practical judgment seems to constitute the initial impulse to conduct; we acquire the sentiment of rationality which reinforces this impulse; the principal function and the raison d'être of reason is to discover occasions of action for the other tendencies and the methods of assuring their success. Intelligence can be the instrument of the satisfaction of any desire, good or bad, but the intellectual desire itself is clearly on the side of virtue, because it searches for the significance of our acts as they actually are. Though individuals may blind themselves, in the long run society conspires with intelligence and will not let us escape the facts. The mind predicts the future consequences of our acts, and if the ordinary man refuses to recognize the facts, his mind cannot always be debauched to the point of not seeing them, because they will be pointed out to him by others who share neither his prejudices nor his particular interests which warped his vision. Pride and the social motives can be transported to the side of virtue, but the need to know the truth is always on that side. Virtue is nothing but the adaptation of life to the facts which intelligence discovers. Thus reason, which alone permits social control to define its exigencies and to elaborate its own methods for satisfying them, in a way that creates a situation in which it is ordinarily recognized as disadvantageous if not stubborn to do wrong, becomes also the principal factor in the development of codes of conscience and an effective stimulant for individual virtue.-Edward Cary Hayes, Revue de L'Institute de Sociologie, July, 1920. V. M. A.

Psycho-Pathologie Individuelle et Sociale. Not only has a comparison between individual morbid states and collective morbid states been established, but as far as possible it has been attempted to give positive explanations, that is, to attach the observed facts to laws. The same laws have been invoked for collectivity as for the individual, after being assured that there is nothing more in the "collective consciousness" than the psychic states modified by the solidarity of beings, by intellectual interdependence, affective and practical. It has been shown that the reciprocal actions between the individual and the collective consciousness, bind up the fate of each, from the psychical point of view, with that of all, and that of all with the influence of each. It was thus legitimate to study how the great social troubles are causes of individual psychic pathology: statistics have indicated the quantitative relationships; but it has taken extended development to establish that great social upheavals have an accelerative influence upon the psychoses, which demand a bio-psychic predisposition, and which are not really causes but less serious troubles, more or less lasting, attaining above all fitness for personal control, for the domination of self, for deliberate and voluntary action, for strength of character, for regular development of personality. It was not less legitimate to study how individual psychopathies are causes of social troubles, or at least of the aggravation of many of the pathological processes. Social psycho-pathology thus affirms its rights to take its place among the studies destined to enable us to more fully know human nature. It does not forget that man lives necessarily in a social milieu which is also natural, that is to say is subject to laws as the physical milieu; the social conditions of health and of psychic malady have their importance in the same rank as biological conditions; the concrete being is bio-psycho-sociological, and whoever neglects to study in the light of factor and product, cause and effect, the collective psychical life, puts himself beyond understanding or explaining many of the aspects of normal or morbid life.-G. L. Duprat, Revue Internationale de Sociologie, July-August, 1920. V. M. A.

Mysticism and Art.-Western civilization is many-sided and its problems are difficult to handle. Each aspect of life makes a demand often compatible only with the oblivion of all the rest. Science often gives the sense of mastery without

recognition of the alienation which is its price. One of the most interesting modes of the reaction of the mind against itself is that from thinking to the enjoyment of beauty in art. It is perhaps so interesting because of the conviction that things of beauty differ toto coelo from the process and results of thinking. Thus to many severely scientific thinkers music seems to offer refuge from the dispeace of thought. Thought is forever inadequate to achieve the perfect comprehension that it desires of the world which it sets out to know. Yet there is actually an experience by which in some sense this wish is achieved. The point is reached when thought can no longer take refuge from its own dissatisfaction with itself by passing outside of itself, as, for example, into art. It is now compelled to transform itself while yet maintaining itself. This is the experience of mysticism. As opposed to the movement by which thought abandons itself and seeks refuge in the emotional and sensuous, mysticism is the demand which thought makes upon itself to reconcile its aim with its method.M. Thorburn, The Monist, October, 1920. O. B. Y.

La Guerre et la Paix d'après les Prévisions des Sociologues.-What verifications or what challenges has the European catastrophe brought to bear upon sociology as regards the presumed certitude of its assumptions? Sociology has for its object the unraveling of the immense chaos of events, of discovering the necessary laws of the constitution of human societies, in order to deduce therefrom the science of government. The first law which it has formulated is that of progress, but one sociological school sees the causes of progress in the development of right, founded upon justice and reason, and considers peace to be the principal factor of social amelioration; the other regards war as the most precious form of national solidarity and discipline, recognizing no other right than the right of force. The essential traits of the latter school, propagated in Germany for half a century, have been admirably exposed during the recent hostilities, while the pacifist sociology, widespread in France, England, Italy and Russia, has not been studied, either in its detail or entirety. Saint-Simon and Comte felt that war no longer had a place in Europe, probably reflecting the ambient opinion in favor of disarmament at the time. The revolution of 1848 exalted to a paroxism the sentiments of international fraternity, and at the Congress of Paris in 1849 Victor Hugo announced the creation of the United States of Europe. England, in insular isolation, provided with flourishing colonies, and enriched by her commerce and industry, offered fertile soil for pacifist ideas. Spencer, inspired by Darwin, felt that the industrial type tends to supplant the military type and to gradually replace the forced collaboration of earlier ages by voluntary co-operation in the exploitation of nature. The war of 1870 awoke France to rude reality, but thirty years later a new generation arose, forgetful of the past, and the proselytism of pacifism in France, Italy, England, and Russia became more intense as the war clouds gathered. Ferrero believed that the industrial civilization had created new conditions of peace, that the predominance of nations loving justice and right was assured, and was struck with astonishment by the European war. The science of economics has erred in thinking that sentiments and ideas follow economic facts like their shadows. The national sentiment, overlooked by pacifists in sociology and economics, has rebelled against foreign domination all over the world, and being satisfied seemingly in the unification of Germany, it was changed under the domination of Prussia into invading militarism. The war registered the fallacy of pacifist sociology which had concluded that war was impossible among the great European states. Such a profound error in the assumptions of sociologists puts us on guard against those that we may make in the future. The crowds of laborers striving for social democracy do not signal the triumph of reason in the conduct of society. The irrational is still dominant in history. Science lays aside the search for final causes which relate to metaphysics, but sociology, whether inclined toward materialism or idealism, has always been finalistic. Its assumptions have been dictated by feeling, long before the field of the social sciences was classified and delimited. To pretend to the character of science, remarks Durkheim, sociology must enter the era of specialism. Even then prediction far into the future will be denied it. The course of history reveals itself to us as an evolution at once destructive and creative, which means that it is not predictable. We must limit ourselves, for the present, to an attempt to sense tendencies.-Jean Bourdeau, Revue Politique et Parlementaire, July, 1920. V. M. A.