The author credits Simmel, Waxweiler, and Ross with parts of the impulse to which the book is a response. He says (VIII): "My aim was to shape sociology into a distinct science, definitely set off from other disciplines, firmly jointed, and consistently systematized. I hope that I have succeeded in distinguishing it from psychology, economic science-economic sociology as well-and the other social sciences; also from the theories of art, and especially from philosophy, including social philosophy." The analogy is not altogether happy, but we may use the Chicago building trades to carry the idea. The mechanics are not interested in organization from our point of view, but back of their politics is an implicit logic which amounts to this: It turns out that so and so many different kinds of jobs go into the construction of a modern building. Every job should be covered by a union, and each union should stick to its job. That means a certain dependence of the jobs upon one another. The stone masons' jobs cannot be done by the carpenters, and the painters must wait for the plasterers.

Von Wiese's position is that in erection of social science one essential job is the listing and characterizing of all discoverable human interrelations. He would reserve the name "sociology" for this division of labor. The present Part I sets forth a survey of relationship types with the assistance of a table of which the following is an abstract.

HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS FROM THE SOCIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW

I. SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS OF THE FIRST ORDER

A. Relationships in the form of to and with one another (4 subtypes).

B. Relationships from and without one another (3 subtypes).

II. SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS OF THE SECOND ORDER

(SOCIAL PROCESSES IN THE NARROWER SENSE)

C. Differentiating processes (5 subtypes).

D. Integrating processes (3 subtypes).

E. Destructive processes (6 subtypes).

F. Modifying and constructive processes (3 subtypes; cf. pp. 50 ff.). The book exhibits, in more or less detail, characteristics of approximately 650 human relationships, from the most specific to the most abstractly generalized, as suggested by the condensed table.

Waiving the question of restricting the name "sociology" to this division of labor, can there be any doubt that in this work of minute analysis Von Wiese is making an important contribution to social science? Men of a certain cast of mind will say, "This is only a list, an inventory,

an illustrated catalogue; it is not science, any more than a list of chemical reactions is chemistry, or a list of variations in breeding is biology." To which the answer is, if we mean by science explanation of phenomena, an inventory of the phenomena to be explained must be presupposed.

The book is not as easy reading as Ross's Principles, from which the author has adopted many suggestions; but it should be taken by American sociologists as a solemn warning of the hard work ahead before they can rightfully claim to have completed the foundations of any section of social science. It is to be hoped that the second part of the work, carrying the analysis over to "the structures of relationships," will not be long delayed.

ALBION W. SMALL

The New History and the Social Studies. By HARRY ELMER BARNES. New York: The Century Co., 1925. Pp. xvii+605. $4.00.

To one whose memory of the social sciences covers the period since the early seventies, this book reads like a fairy tale. Less because of its new facts than because of its dramatic pageantry of details new and old, but imperfectly evaluated, the exhibit has moved one reader to audible ejaculation of the ancient piety, "What hath God wrought!"

Without essential perversion, the story of the social sciences in the United States during the past generation might be told under the figure of a pack of mongrels foraging for their keep and each snarling at each whenever one found a consumable bite. All the needed reduction of exaggeration in the analogy might be effected by the substitute that until recently the typical American social scientist has acted as though he feared that the supply of truth in the world is not enough to go around, and that his share of it might run short if anybody else went in search of it along any but his own beaten paths. The social scientists have manifested a maximum of short-diametered clannishness each toward his own kind, and a minimum of magnanimity toward everybody else. The result has been stunted and shriveled social scientists and social science.

While showing this seamy side of the picture, Professor Barnes is chiefly concerned with the brighter outlook that is taking its place. It is equally true that the period of puckered programs and policies has also been a time in which broad and liberal conceptions have germinated and taken root, and in a measure already become fruitful. Each division of social science has enlarged and enriched and empowered itself

by taking knowledge of all the others. This process is still in its becomings, but the atmosphere has been so highly organized by it that today sanitary properties are much more notable than toxic factors in our social science.

After an introductory chapter containing a brief conspectus of the past and probable future of history, the book devotes a chapter each to influences which have been exerted upon the writing and interpretation of history by (a) geography, (b) psychology, (c) anthropology, (d) sociology, (e) science and technology, (f) economics, (g) political science, (h) ethics, (i) the rising level of intellectual leadership.

Better perhaps than by any other single sentence in the book, the author compresses his conception of the function of history and of the animus of "the new history" into the proposition, "History may have some value as literature, even if its content is not accurate or relevant, but it can safely be asserted that it has only literary significance unless it furnishes us with a clear understanding of the genesis of civilization as a totality" (pp. 566-67).

It is not within the immediate purpose of the book to show how the major divisions of social science have themselves at the same time become "new." The fact emerges in some form in each chapter, however, if not on every page, that history and the other types of social interpretation have been in an almost equal action and reaction upon one another. Not history alone is "new," but each constituent part of our social science has been renewing its youth through interaction with every other. Perhaps it were more accurate to say that each chief part of our social science has exchanged an uncanny pretension of maturity for normal and healthy youthfulness, in the course of an increasingly candid approach to reality. Everyone who is studying human experience, whether as a mere learner or with the purpose of becoming a teacher or an investigator, should hold this book up to himself as a mirror, to reveal whether his mental life is of the mid-nineteenth century or of the twentieth.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

ALBION W. SMALL

The Social and Political Systems of Central Polynesia. By R. W. WILLIAMSON, 3 vols. Cambridge University Press, 1924. 75s.

net.

These three volumes are, as indicated in the subtitle, an attempt to sift, arrange, and co-ordinate the vast amount of ethnological material

accumulated in the past by travelers, explorers, missionaries, government officials, and others, in order to show Polynesia as it was not as it is today. The handling of the material gives evidence of thorough familiarity with the older literature, but it is to be regretted that the author did not have access to the recently published results of the Polynesian survey conducted under the auspices of Bishop Museum.

The first chapter is devoted to a discussion of theories of early migrations. The evidence indicates that the Polynesians came originally from India, pushed into and inhabited Indonesia for a period of 300 to 400 years, and then, due to pressure of the Malay, began to push out into the Pacific-probably as a succession of migrants. Churchill is quoted as determining, on linguistic evidence, two great periods of migration from the Asiatic Archipelago, the first about two thousand years ago, the second a thousand years later. The first is supposed to have passed north of New Guinea, while the second pursued a route to the south of that island. The difference in time of arrival and the routes traveled would doubtless account in part for the diversity of custom and mixture of blood now found in different portions of Polynesia. Rivers' hypothetical reconstruction of Melanesian culture and its bearing on Polynesia is discussed in some detail, also the widely current idea that the chiefs and their families must be regarded as descendants of a conquering race. The author is convinced of the mixed character of the population, but he holds that this intermixture was too far in the past for the families of the chiefs to have maintained their purity. He agrees that the descendants display the physical characteristics of one or another of their ancestral groups in varying degree, but that the mixture is so ancient and so thorough that the population can now be considered to be homogeneous.

No attempt is made to trace in detail the movements of the groups after their entry into the Pacific. Some settlements are known to have existed many generations; some were long isolated in their new homes, while outside influences especially during the periods of migration— had great effect in changing and molding both people and institutions. Hence it is not surprising that at the coming of the whites there were great differences between the Samoans, Tongans, Marquesans, and other groups. It should be kept in mind that the author is confining his study to Central Polynesia, and therefore excludes Hawaii, New Zealand, and, except for occasional references, Fiji. He does, however, include Easter Island in his discussion.

The evidence of the former presence of a Polynesian people in Malaysia is conclusive both from the standpoint of physical anthropology, of

language, and of rather frequent elements of Polynesian culture found among the Batak of Sumatra, the people of Nias, and other islands off the west coast of Sumatra. There is reason, however, to question the rather late dates assigned to these movements from Java and neighboring islands. Both history and ethnology show that the Malays were well established in Sumatra, Java, and probably as far north as the Philippines, by the beginning of the Christian era, while Hindu influence was making itself felt in much of this region by the second century A.D.

The real subject-matter of the work is taken up in the second chapter, under the heading "Political Areas and Systems." The author's treatment of this topic is typical. He presents a hypothesis or a series of observations in which he outlines the probable course of events as they are presented to us in the very extensive genealogies, tradition, folklore, and the picture of native life and custom given by various writers. The latter are quoted at great length, and for so many islands and districts that one not widely read in Polynesian ethnology soon finds himself in a hopeless tangle. For the specialist, however, this procedure is excellent, as it allows him to draw his own conclusions from the evidence.

Samoa is used as the type group and is usually discussed in detail, hence a brief review of the situation here gives us a general idea of widely diffused but not necessarily identical ideas and institutions of Polynesia.

We learn that there was an official head or king for all Samoa; below him were heads of districts, village districts, and villages. Such heads attended the very important councils of the areas, but power was not vested solely in them, for representatives of land-owning families and larger units were also a part of any such gathering. Theoretically the king ruled the chiefs, and the chiefs ruled the people, but this situation seldom actually obtained.

Samoa was divided into three main self-governing areas; each of these was again divided into three districts, and these were again subdivided. The village, consisting of from 300 to 400 individuals, was made up of ten or more families, each of which was represented by titled heads, one of whom was the village chief. The family itself was a group of sons, daughters, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, perhaps fifty in all, living in four or five houses and having one common gathering hall or guest house. Control and administration of justice begin in this unit. The family is the basis of the state, and Samoa might be called "a family state." Each village or village district considered itself independent in its internal affairs, and it might depose its chief and confer his title upon some other