directed effort. This proposition with variations is found in every chapter of the book, e. g.:

Our social inheritances come from two radically different forces that have been acting upon us from the first. One springs from universal deficit the poverty of the early world. The other emerges from the later store of goods which builds a social surplus. The bonds uniting the first society were made by wars, famines, irregularity of supplies, and the other causes of common primitive poverty which forced men into groups that could survive the reign of want, when the free individual must have perished. The dread of foes and the craving for sympathy in disaster bound men together even while economic advantages might have called them apart. Terror and suffering developed social solidarity long before men were intellectually able to conceive the economic value of co-operation (p. 34).

Disease, oppression, irregular work, immature old age, and race hatreds characterize the vanishing age of deficit; plenty of food, shelter, capital security and mobility of men and goods define the age of surplus in which we act (p. 186).

The confusion of the transition is stated or intimated on almost every page, but perhaps as good a statement as any is to be found on p. 10, as follows:

We must admit that such a process of amelioration in world affairs is going on. But the changes wrought by that process are so recent that the effects of old conditions have not disappeared. They persist in a revolutionized order of things which has not yet definitely reconstructed the traditions and orthodox modes of thought. Mental habits continue long after the economic conditions which fashioned them have disappeared and popular beliefs reflect the passing age of nature's deficit, while the actions of men who hold those beliefs are chiefly governed by the new age of surplus in which they live. The economic revolution is here, but the intellectual revolution that will rouse men to its stupendous meaning has not done its work.

Or again:

Men are now squarely confronted with two issues. They may continue to cultivate ancestral qualities of strife and sacrifice in surroundings of peace and plenty, or they may consciously develop a new type of man fitted for the society without poverty toward which we aspire (p. 150).

The constructive argument rests upon the proposition that, Provision for the future should be made henceforth from the current body of society's riches rather than out of the weakness of mothers; the human being must cease to be the frail yet all-important vessel upon whose capacity depends the progress of the type. World riches may

replace the living sacrifice and become the social contrivance that lowers human costs; and we must cease to think that the anguish of sentient creatures is compensated by the development of moral qualities which merely reconcile men to repeating the experiences of suffering. Each generation may spend the current wealth of commodities as formerly it spent the current wealth of womanhood; but Capital in its destruction reproduces itself and passes onward without the deterioration caused by pain. The social surplus is the superlative machine brought forth in a machine age for the quickening of progress. It is an advance upon nature, her waste being saved by human ingenuity at work upon her illimitable resources (p. 55).

Or again:

On the one hand are the obstacles economic (that hinder advance), maladjustments between men and nature, which forced men in the past to submit to a poverty they did not know how to escape; on the other hand are the obstacles social, which do not originate in nature, but in those past conditions retaining present potency that have aligned men into antagonistic classes at home and into hostile races abroad. The economic obstacles are being slowly weakened by the application of knowledge, science and skill; but the social obstacles will never be overcome until an intellectual revolution shall have faced men's minds from the stultifying social traditions that hand down hatreds and shall have given to thought the freedom that now marks industrial activity. Thought must be as mobile as action if social institutions are to be remodeled to serve economic ends by giving to the poor such intense and steady purposes that they shall be lifted from one income level to another until they are emancipated into their culture rights (p. 68).

As to the origin of many present conventions the author declares that sacrifice (p. 153), abstinence (p. 141), and the loftier emotions (p. 41; see also p. 56), sympathy, friendliness, courage, and love, were conceived in deficit and arrested action, and reminds us of the universal belief that the finest character is the product of suffering. In a recent magazine article he sets over against the several deficit-born qualities their proper constructive surplus-born activities. Thus he sets over against neighborliness, citizenship; against pity, harmony of interest; against sympathy, faith in humanity; against consciousness of kind, organization; against goodness, efficiency; against service, generosity; against character, improved conditions. (Cf. Charities and The Commons, p. 1644 [February 29, 1908].)

Professor Patten has given us as a final chapter in his book a

programme of social work which contains suggestions as to how society may realize upon its surplus now at hand.

One cannot read the New Basis of Civilization without being reminded of Miss Addams' book, The Newer Ideals of Peace. "The immediate theme of Miss Addams' book is the inadequacy of a governmental order that has arisen out of, and is still unconsciously dominated by military ideals to express the democracy of an industrial community" (Mead, American Journal of Sociology, p. 121 [July, 1907]). She maintains that the ideals and institutions called upon to function today in an industrial community were born of war and conquest and, being belated, are misfits. Professor Patten maintains that the incompetent virtues, precepts, and traditions of today are the offspring of economic and social parsimony and are therefore out of step with the more abundant life. But the difference between the two authors is rather one of interest and of emphasis, than of essence. Both maintain that a redefinition of virtues, morality, and institutions must be made before the present chaos and inaction can be resolved into efficient functioning.

The New Basis of Civilization joins issue with The Good Neighbor (by Miss Mary Richmond) as to the comparative values of service-altruism and income-altruism, or of friendly visiting and community improvement. (See The Good Neighbor, pp. 16 ff.; and Charities and The Commons, February 29, 1908, "Social Forces," by the editor, and an article, "The Good Neighbor," by Professor Patten.)

The difference [between service-altruism and income-altruism] is that which separates the old from the new charity. The one crossed the road to help the Samaritan after he had suffered under bad conditions of highway management; the other patrols the road and arrests the wayside thieves before the traveler falls among them. Service-altruism binds the wounds, breathes forgiveness, and solaces the victims of recurring disasters without attacking their causes. Income-altruism hews to their base, for it has money power to police and to light the road to Jericho (p. 86).

But Professor Patten does not regard the two as exclusive, as a careful reading of the book will show and as he has said in a rejoinder to Miss Richmond. For example, he says:

Neighborliness and kind-heartedness thrive in the help that those in temporary distress give each other. Without these qualities we might have a super-man with excellent adjustment to nature; but if this super-man

mocked the weak instead of saving them, his strength, excellence and beauty would be those of an animal. He would have power but not virtue (p. 170).

To the reviewer it seems there is no essential contradiction involved. There are relations in which friendly visiting is perfectly natural, such as the poor with the locally neighboring poor and in intra-group and intra-class relationships; and others where it closely approximates naturalness as in the case of a friendly visitor in a charity organization society, or sometimes in that of the resident of a social settlement. Also there are relations in which income-altruism is a perfectly natural form of service, e. g., in all forms of mediated and endowed charity, civic improvement, and general constructive social work. In these latter relations neighborliness-as the result of territorial or group community— and friendly visiting are unnatural and incompetent. The comparative value of the two kinds of service is difficult to determine, but that both have value in their appropriate spheres is not to be doubted.

The New Basis of Civilization is exceedingly suggestive, provokes one to thought, and submits a programme for the reconstruction of our civilization. It is perhaps too much to require that a book of such small compass should be convincing at all points. There are, moreover, some statements that are not at all evident. It may be doubted whether an "income-altruism" and a "socializedcapitalist" would have any raison d'être in a reign of surplus. The author challenges our faith as to the reality of the land of surplus, and it is hard saying when he bids us say farewell to certain homely virtues even though born of need.

THOMAS J. RILEY

THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI

Report of the Librarian of Congress and Report of the Superintendent of the Library Building and Grounds. For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1907. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907.

This report from the pens of Mr. Herbert Putnam and Mr. Bernard R. Green deserves notice in a sociological journal, not only for the reason that it is an interesting document concerning governmental provision made for the knowledge interest of the

population, but also for the further academic reason that it is an instructive study in the art of making a report. To the professional librarian pp. 54-60 will be of special interest. We learn that 774,144 cards were filed; 43 sections were either recatalogued entirely or are now in process of recataloguing; considerable progress has been made in securing uniformity of Catalogue rules in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Considerable interest attaches to the acquisition by the Library of Congress of the private library of Mr. Yudin of Siberia, comprising 80,000 volumes all relating to Russia and Siberia, and all save about 12,000 volumes in the Russian language. So ample a collection, so well balanced, in this particular field may not exist outside of Russia. The owner's manuscript catalogue accompanies the collection.

It is rather significant that in the same year in which the library secured this valuable collection of books concerning Russia there was also added a similar library concerning Japan. This is a valuable "working collection for the student of Japanese literature, history, and institutions. It is the personal selection of Professor Asakawa, formerly of Dartmouth, now of the faculty of Yale University.

The general reader may be interested in the figures of the Copyright Office. There were in the fiscal year 11,255 foreign and 112,574 domestic entries, a total of 123,829. The present status of the copyright law is discussed in an interesting manner. The attention of serious investigators may justly be called to pp. 70-78, and the last appendix, which give complete information concerning the unique privileges accorded to unique persons by the most unique library in the civilized world.

HUGO P. J. SELINGER

CHICAGO, ILL.

New Reading of Evolution: A Study Plan Correlating the Known Facts of Nature and Forming a Scientific Basis for a Synthetic Philosophy of Individual and Social Life. By HENRY CLAYTON THOMPSON. Chicago: New Reading Publishing Co. Pp. 355.

Reading this book one gets the impression that the author is an intelligent man of fair general education, but with no scientific or