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the "staggering blow which made ecclesiastical establishments impossible in America" seems to us greatly exaggerated. In smiting the Half-way Covenant and throwing the weight of his great influence against the evils it had wrought, Edwards unquestionably helped in bringing about the conditions which made the efforts of Backus and his associates in New England successful. But when the utmost has been said, the work of Edwards in establishing religious liberty was slight in comparison with that of Backus.

Aside from a few such defects as have been mentioned, Mr. Cobb's work is one of great merit, and it will receive grateful recognition as an exceedingly able and valuable history of the rise of religious liberty in this country.

PORTLAND, ME.

HENRY S. BURRAGE.

Crime in its Relations to Social Progress. By A. C. Hall. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1902. Pp. 427.

A RATHER startling thesis is announced: Society makes crime, and increase of crimes is an evidence of advancing civilization. But what the author actually seeks to prove in this very instructive and encouraging exposition is the less sensational and more correct proposition : Society, with an advancing and more refined moral standard of conduct, raises its demands on the individual, and brings a larger number of antisocial actions under the definitions and sanctions of penal law. Crime is properly defined (p. 10) as "any act or omission to act, punished by society as a wrong against itself." When the author confuses the word "crime" with "definition or "category" of crime, he confuses the issue. Thus (p. 6): "the production of crime and criminals is one of the saving processes of nature;" and (p. 2): “ the nation that persists in choosing its crimes wrongly is on the highroad to degeneration and decay;" and (p. 126): "Now we shall study the growth of crime and its usefulness in relation to social progress."

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To the ordinary definition of crime already cited the author adds (p. 19) still another factor: "Unless it actually succeeds in punishing, often enough to make the average citizen believe offenders likely to be brought to justice, the act is not yet a crime." Selling liquor in Portland, Me., is not a crime.

The evidence on which the argument rests is historical, and the book is a very clear and strong survey of the efforts of society to attain clearer notions of the requirements of general welfare and to enforce obedience to the law of welfare.

The topics treated are: the evolutionary function and usefulness of crime and punishment; social punishment among animals; crime among savages; savage races in Australia, America, Asia, and Africa ; the European Aryans; the Anglo-Saxons in England; England under Normans and Plantagenets; parliamentary government and the new feudalism; Tudor England; England under the Stuarts; modern England; increase of crime in the nineteenth century; the efficacy of punishment; the trend in modern times; an ethical theory of crime. The interpretation of the familiar fact that serious crime is diminishing while milder forms of offenses are increasing in progressive countries is itself not altogether novel; but, in the massing of historical and statistical evidence and the critical sifting of the material, the author has rendered a valuable service to students of the subject.

He accounts for the enormous increase in the number of less grave offenses by the increase of social regulations required by the more complex structure and activities of modern industrial and urban life, and by the inability of many persons to adjust themselves to these new conditions and to the more exacting requirements of a rapidly advancing society. He believes there is reason in the statistics for the hope that society will finally succeed in reducing the truly antisocial elements to a minimum and in educating the majority of the capable and sound members of society to intelligent and voluntary acceptance of the law of general welfare. The discussion of this argument is so strong and competent that it places the book distinctly in the class of works to which students of criminology must give attention.

CHARLES RICHMOND HENDERSON.

Annales de l'Institut international de Sociologie. Publiées sous la redaction de RENÉ WORMS, Secrétaire général. Tome VIII: Travaux des années 1900 et 1901. Paris Giard et Brière. Pp. 330.

L'Année sociologique. Publiée sous la direction d'ÉMILE DURKHEIM. Cinquième année, 1900-1901. Paris: Alcan. Pp. 634. IN former years we have referred to these journals together, and it is a natural association. The subject treated in this number of the Annales is "Le matérialisme historique." The contributors are Messrs. Casimir de Kellès-Krantz, J. Novicow, A. Loria, Maxime Kovalewsky, R. de la Grasserie, Ad. Coste, N. Abrikossof, F. Toennies, G. de Greef,

Lester F. Ward, Ch. Limousin, A. Groppali, F. Puglia, E. de Roberty, René Worms, Alfred Fouillée, G. Tarde, Ed. Sanz y Escartin, L. Winiarski. The discussion is a portion of the material treated at the fourth congress of the Institut, in 1900, another portion having appeared in the issue of last year. A disciple of Marx, M. KellèsKrantz, submits a statement of the doctrine of this school, and around it the symposium centers, as though it had been a debate in which all actually participated. Readers will doubtless agree with the editor (p. 45) that the impression left by the discussion is that it is another display of the impossibility of accounting for the social process as the working of a single principle, and consequently that neither of the special social sciences can maintain a claim to supremacy over the others. The strength and the weakness of historical materialism are nowhere, to my knowledge, more clearly exhibited than in this discussion. It ought to be of permanent value as an approach to a tenable philosophy of social forces.

Professor Durkheim's journal contains two original papers: one by the editor, on totemism, the other by M. F. Simiand, "Étude sur le prix du charbon, en France et au XIXe siècle." The monographs in this publication have always been important, and the present volume continues the tradition. We must repeat our former judgment, however, that the reviews leave much to be desired. As a bibliography the list is far from complete, yet an attempt is made to pass judgment on more material than the contributors have time to examine carefully enough to give their judginent weight. There are so many evidences of hasty conclusions that this part of the volume has very doubtful value. It would be worth more if it merely catalogued two-thirds of the works named, and gave more critical attention to the more important of the remaining third.

A. W. S.

Le Dottrine Sociologiche. Del DR. FAUSTO SQUILLACHE. Roma: C. Colombo, 1902. Pp. 539.

TO AMERICANS this volume will be interesting chiefly as an index of the attention which Italian scholars are paying to the subject of sociology. We have gone over the ground covered by the book so often that we have feeble interest in another review of the literature of the subject, unless it has decided superiority of some sort. If we had no other account of the different schools of sociology, we should cer

tainly welcome this. So far as essentials are concerned, Dr. Ward has packed as much into his three recent papers on "Contemporary Sociology" (AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Vol. VII, Nos. 4, 5, and 6) as this book contains. It is divided into four parts, following a preface on "The Actual Status of the Study of Sociology," and an introduction on "The Precursors of Sociology." Part I treats of "Sociology Based on Physics and Natural Science;" Part II is entitled "Sociology Based upon Biology;" Part III deals with "Sociology Based upon Psychology;" and Part IV designates its subject as "Sociology Based upon Social Science."

More writers are cited than in Barth's Philosophie der Geschichte als Sociologie, but there is no advance upon Barth's diagnosis of the tendencies betrayed by people at each of their view-points. Dr. Squillache has presented a very well-balanced account of the different schools of sociological doctrine, but, while his estimates of the writers. are interesting, they are by no means novel. Students of sociology need such a text as this, and it is a matter of congratulation that the Italians are producing a literature of the subject worthy to be used in the higher institutions of the country.

D'où nous venons. des peuples. Pp. 381.

A. W. S.

Essais suivis d'une Étude sur la décadence
Par LÉON POUTET. Paris Fontemoing.

THIS is a sort of thesaurus of picturesque details picturing evolution, and especially social evolution, at different stages of its progress, and in different divisions of human activity. It is hardly a philosophy, but rather a panorama of evolution.

A. W. S.

Les classes sociales: Analyse de la vie sociale. Par ARTHUR BAUER. Ouvrage récompensé par l'Institut de France. Paris: Giard et Brière. Pp. 359.

WITHOUT finding in this book a very long journey toward the goal of sociology, we may still pronounce it worthy of serious attention by the most competent sociologists. Its object is to discover what are "the social facts." The second chapter discusses the possibility of a social science. The third chapter analyzes various methods of social science. The fourth chapter presents "the method," and the fifth

chapter contains a classification of social facts under the general rubrics: (1) the state, (2) the moral powers, (3) economic facts, (4) family and education, (5) social pathology.

Our readers will not be likely to find this classification very persuasive, and it is doubtful if the author's argument would remove the objections. It would be possible to apply much of his method regardless of the theory of social classification. For this reason it would be worth while for sociologists to weigh well the fourth chapter. It is practically a program for the study of social psychology.

A. W. S.

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