co-operating group from such discrimination? Could the system be used, as it has been in France and Belgium, to weaken the position of trade unions? These and other important questions, such as those concerning the advisability of state or private administration of compulsory or voluntary plans, are considered. Mr. Douglas' conclusion is that the plan is a panacea for all our problems in wage policy.

He even goes so far as to state that the method "would abolish poverty." (p. 272) But would a wage system providing family allowances wipe out at one fell swoop all unemployment, all accidents, all sickness, all desertions?

He argues, too, that such a plan would prevent the development of a "more or less open sex warfare." In this connection, he says:

The present assumption that men have dependents and that women do not, causes the wage for men to be necessarily higher than that for women, even when they are performing virtually identical work. This offers a direct inducement for the employer either to substitute women for men or to cut the wages of the men, both for those who have and for those who do not have dependents, to an equality with those of the women.

How these two statements can be made at once, the reviewer is at a loss to understand, for they seem to be contradictory.

The book is clearly written and is a valuable collection of information for the student of wage policy. But does it not involve the cardinal error of totally neglecting the American philosophy of life? Family allowance schemes seem based upon the assumption that members of the wage-earning population will forever be content with the rôles of their fathers. It follows that we should distribute rations among them according to their needs as we would among good cattle. The ideal of family saving that the son may become a civil engineer has no place here. Shall we seek merely to prevent dependency, or shall we seek to open the door to opportunity? Shall we look out for poverty, or for progress? If for the latter, the family of five may continue to be our standard, an ideal one, perhaps, but an ideal of that vision requisite to progress, for "man's reach should exceed his grasp."

WESTMINSTER COLLEGE

FRANC L. MCCLUER

Old and New Viewpoints in Psychology. BY KNIGHT DUNLAP. St. Louis: C. V. Mosby Co., 1925. Pp. 166. $1.50.

Old and New Viewpoints in Psychology is a misleading title for a right readable book which consists of five essays that have no more in

common than that they express the conservative and largely negative attitude of a single psychologist. There seems to be no reason why a number of scattered papers or addresses should be given a factitious unity by coming before the public in a synthetic guise that is quite foreign to their spirit.

The first of these papers, "Mental Measurements," distinguishes carefully between experimental psychology and mental testing. In the former the individual is merely a random sampling of his type, the results aimed at being such as are capable of general human application in the form of psychological principles; in the latter the psychological differentia which characterize the individual are themselves the object of study. The author seems to believe that between the two of these laboratory procedures the complete human being, psychologically considered, may be captured for definition. But he does not overestimate the diagnostic value of such mental measurements as intelligence tests; he expressly warns us that these are no adequate substitute for specific examinations.

The second paper, "Present Day Schools of Psychology," is a rapid survey of various schools of psychological thinking to which Mr. Dunlap takes exception. He has as little use for the orthodox "introspectionalism" of James as for the behaviorism of Watson and his school; McDougall's instinct psychology is no more acceptable to him than to anybody else, while psychoanalysis gets a scolding in the grand manner. One would like to believe, at the end of Mr. Dunlap's sweeping out of the Augean stables of psychology, that an inadvertent pearl or two lay hidden in the muck, but perhaps the hope is vain, for psychology seems to be the science par excellence in which a step in advance necessitates the complete abandonment of all previous trails.

"Psychological Factors in Spiritualism" and "The Reading of Character from External Signs" are mildly entertaining causeries. The conclusion arrived at in each case is that "there is nothing in it." More positive in its claims, if not in its results, is the essay on "The Psychology of the Comic." The comic, Mr. Dunlap thinks, is an expression of triumph at the recognition of our superiority to those unfortunates at whose expense the joke comes into being. His theory is thus a variant of the class of theories of the comic to which Bergson's famous essay Le Rire belongs. A profounder analysis will probably disclose their superficiality. The lightning-like response to a capital joke suggests an intuitive grasp of certain formal incongruities which has little to do with such clumsy functional concepts as superiority or awkwardness in practical adjustment.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

EDWARD SAPIR

Prolegomènes à une Méchanique Sociale. By PETRE TRISCA. Tome I. Aperçu sur l'histoire des doctrines économiques et sociales. Tome II. Etude sur la méchanique sociale. Tome III. Opus igne, auctor patibulo dignus. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1922. Vol. II, 176 pp. Vol. III, 296 pp. (Vol. I not supplied for review). Each volume (paper) 25 francs.

The three volumes of Prolégomènes à une Méchanique Sociale constitute a very curious addition to the literature of social science. Volume I was not supplied for review; the title implies, however, that it is a study of the history of economic and social doctrines, with especial reference, presumably, to the concept "social mechanics." Volume II is a summary and critique of some of the principal attempts which have been made to construct a theory of human society in mechanical terms, the works of Sp. Haret, Lester F. Ward, Winiarski, and Portuondo y Barcelo being most extensively treated. Briefer mention is made of the trend toward mechanical explanation in economic theory, and of the mechanistic theories of Lillienfeld, Loeb, Poirson, Hauriou, and G. Martin. The author criticizes all these mechanistic theories unfavorably, in the main, supporting in contradistinction to them the non-mechanistic theory of Durkheim.

Volume III is based on the thesis that it is futile at present to attempt to construct sociological theory in abstract terms. In place of any such attempt at a positive contribution to "social mechanics," the author offers in this volume an extended criticism of contemporary society, which he finds to be immoral, unwholesome, and disorganized. The social structure and culture of Rumania, of which the author is a native, is taken as the principal source of material for this criticism. Finally, in Book III of this volume, there is proposed a utopian plan for the reconstruction of Rumanian society. It is only after this plan has been put into practice, he holds, that further progress can be made in the development of social theory. This volume is without scientific value. Volume II may prove serviceable to advanced students of sociological theory.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

FLOYD N. HOUSE

Youth and the East, An Unconventional Autobiography. By EDMUND CANDLER. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1925. Printed in Great Britain. Pp. 331.

Edmund Candler has spent a large part of his life in the Near East and in India. In this travel-autobiography he has set down his impressions with an unusual freedom and intimacy. The book consists of ten essays, little related to one another. They describe the author's life in the East as a curious and impecunious Cambridge graduate, as a newspaper correspondent, as a schoolmaster. The last three chapters give sidelights on the war as he saw it in Syria and Mesopotamia. The book does not present an argument. There is no attempt to solve a problem. It is a delightfully informal comment on things seen and heard.

Anyone who is studying the peoples of India will find Youth and the East suggestive. The chapters entitled "The Indian Student" and "Bow and Adore" give Mr. Candler's opinions on the Young Indian. He makes few generalizations. Rather he tells his readers of his own students in the colleges where he

taught in Bengal and the Punjab, of young princes he tutored, of student nationalist movements as he encountered them. An Englishman first and always, he does not pretend to understand the Indian with whom he has lived more than half his life. There is a peculiar frankness and honesty of observation which gives Mr. Candler's work a great deal beside literary interest. With his rare touch he has kept the charm of the Orient without avoiding sharp criticisms. He is primarily an artist, but his pictures have real significance for the sociologist.

ISABELLA C. MCLAUGHLIN

Social Classes in Post-war Europe. BY LOTHROP STODDARD. New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925. Pp. vi+178. $2.00.

Mr. Stoddard has done a capable piece of social reporting in this book, from which those who shriek at the name of Stoddard would be ill-advised to flee. He tells in straightforward prose how the war affected the position of the European peasants, urban working classes, middle classes, intellectuals, and upper classes. While there is nothing essentially new either by way of fact or analysis for the alert student of contemporary affairs, there is a convenient compression of valuable matter from which the wise may refresh their wisdom and the neophytes may extract perspective. The chapter on the peasants is particularly full of apt anecdote and is happy in its treatment of the Green International, which is important in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Jugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Rumania. The biggest change in the balance of classes is the rise of the peasant and the fall of the middle class and the intellectuals. The story of the urban workers and the upper classes is more intricate.

The rough and ready generalizations in this book ought to stimulate some statistical sociologist to devise a more rigorous method of measuring the distribution of social power than we now possess.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

HAROLD D. LASSWELL

Origins of the Whig Party. By E. MALCOLM CARROLL. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1925. Pp. viii+257. $2.50.

Mr. Carroll's volume may be treated as a case study in the formation of a balance of party power capable of ultimate ascendancy. Jacksonian democracy sat in the Federal saddle from 1828 to 1840, and the problem before the opposition was to devise a means of dislodging it. Issues, leaders, party tactics, and party names were altered until the successful combination emerged. With copious particularity the author traces the flux of accommodation, conflict, invention, and accident which produced the Whigs. Painstaking, if illegible, maps are appended.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

HAROLD D. LASSWELL

England on the Eve of the Industrial Revolution. By L. W. MOFFIT. New York: International Publishers, 1925. Pp. xxi + 278 and Appendixes. $3.50.

Few would deny to the industrial revolution in England a large place in modern social history. Accordingly, any book touching upon the subject attracts immediate attention. Professor Moffit has put together many facts about

agriculture, manufacture, mining, marketing, and labor conditions, particularly in Lancashire, which was so eminently the field of innovation when the revolution got under way. Generally speaking, the author regards the revolution as much more of a progressive change, spread out over several generations, than is usually held by economic historians.

The author has leaned heavily upon Defoe, Arthur Young, and Postlethwayte, of the eighteenth century, and upon Unwin, Clapham, Westerfield, and Daniels, of the twentieth. Accordingly, it is not to be expected that many new facts would be presented. The book is indeed a synthesis of facts and generalizations to be found in printed sources, which, barring a few pamphlets, are readily accessible in the larger libraries. If the author had chosen to base his researches upon the manuscripts of the time, he might have provided fresh material for a more comprehensive story of the industrial revolution; but then he would have covered a narrower field.

An interesting comparison, partly prophetic, is made between conditions in present-day Ontario (Canada) and eighteenth-century England, both on the eve of industrial changes.

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

N. S. B. GRAS

Social Origins and Social Continuities. BY ALFRED MARSTON Tozzer, Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. A course of lectures delivered before the Lowell Institute. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1925. Pp. xix + 286. $2.50.

The orthodox modern American anthropology is here put into the form of popular lectures. The author frankly admits his indebtedness to the recent general treatises of Lowie, Goldenweiser, Wissler, and Kroeber. He thinks of culture as largely a product of group contacts, but keeps the term "psychic unity" to describe the occurrence of similar traits that appear to him to have been separately developed.

The remaining chapters give representative examples of the crisis rites, family organization, political and social groupings, and other forms of social control in primitive societies. An Appendix contains material from the themes of Harvard Freshmen confessing their authors' cherished superstitions. Here are interesting examples of the origin of personal fetishes. Success in an examination is ascribed to the necktie worn at the time, and thereafter at all examinations that necktie is worn-it has acquired mana.

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO

ROBERT REDFIELD