the whole personality, which the present type of study fails to show. In our opinion both types of study should be used since each can throw light on the other." And Dr. Davis in her Preface states, too, that without more extended studies of the general population accurate comparisons with delinquent groups are impossible.

To the reviewer's mind, even more important is the acknowledgment: "It should be remembered that the women delinquents regarding whom we offer information are those convicted of legal offenses, through due process of law: and that they do not include those closely related cases who offend in essentially the same way but escape arrest and conviction." This comes late in the book, but in statistical studies of delinquents in institutions and, even more necessary, when making statements about sex offenders, it should be the honest start of discussion, set forth in large type, and it should never be lost sight of in any heading or conclusion, because of the citations that will be continually made from the text of such statistical works. The point is that these are merely studies of a few caught offenders-what are the characteristics of offenders who rarely if ever are caught and convicted? It is the difference between success and failure in evading the law. A Massachusetts public commission gave out findings on prostitutes in publications based on seeing or interviewing women. What women could or would be seen? Of course, only those who had been jailed the night before or who were willing to be talked to on the streets, and so on. The findings, 50 per cent or more apparently feeble-minded, are significant enough, but they have been widely quoted as if they covered the facts about women sex offenders. It must never be forgotten in compiling any tables that it is the bright, the clever, the attractive, the woman from a background that has taught her savoir faire who can do many things and not be caught in the trammels of the law. And there are many analogous situations in other fields of delinquency.

This book, then, is a statistical table of certain conditions only, not even the physical conditions, of a comparatively small number (for statistics) of women offenders in one state. Figures are mulled over and over because these particular data were available, and the outcome is a well-ordered, fair-minded exhibition of training in technic as an ideal. In the summary with its very few conclusions one is struck by the statements of the slightness of distinctions that can be fairly drawn. For instance:

The most that we are prepared to say is that, other things being equal, there is apparently a greater presumption in favor of delinquency in a group

of women who are below the average in intelligence than in a group above the average.

(And this, too, means delinquency detected and convicted.) Again, when speaking of all the general influences associated with delinquency:

Nevertheless, when we turn to any specific comparison, involving these factors in relation to some aspect of delinquency, we are even more impressed by the smallness of the relationships than by the fact of their existence. Even when we compare the delinquent group with the general population we find relatively slight distinctions and much overlapping.

More important for those of a slightly older school of reading is, however, the one outstanding conclusion of these authors-it follows close on the foregoing citation:

The evidence available indicates very strongly, however, that even with fuller data we should still be dealing with small differences. This suggests, further, that any search for a well-defined type of individual, appearing as the delinquent woman, will probably be fruitless. Apparently the concept of such a type can not be saved even by expanding it beyond Lombroso's anthropological criminal type and pruning off certain of the absurdities incorporated in his idea.

The reviewer, perhaps through temperament, but also, he hopes, through judgment cultivated during years of practical observation concerning reconstructive possibilities, cannot, for sociologists particularly, allow it to be unsaid that this work of fine method, with its 542 tersely texted pages, its 223 tables, and 46 charts, offers nothing whatever, unless it may be by way of negative conclusions or most indirectly, either concerning the solution of the situation in general or concerning reforming the life of any one delinquent in particular. And if it is not calculated to directly further a better achievement, what is such extensive and expensive effort worth in the field of delinquency and crime? WILLIAM HEALY

JUDGE BAKER FOUNDATION, BOSTON

The Control of Ideals: A Contribution to the Study of Ethics. By H. B. VAN WESEP. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920. Pp. 154. $2.00.

"As a contribution to ethics, this book represents an attempt at a fresh approach to some old problems. The aim has been to limit the discussion to fundamental issues connected with the preservation of war. Abstruse and hackneyed terms peculiar to ethics or economics

have been avoided as the book is intended to appeal first of all to the average intelligent reader with no special training in technical terminology" (p. vi). "It is impossible to acknowledge. . . . indebtedness but an exception should be made in the case of the published works of Professor Warner Fite" (p. vii).

"The comprehensiveness of our ideals is best brought out by dividing them into groups of which there are three: ideals of power, ideals of beauty, ideals of truth" (p. 3). "All of these ideals of power, beauty, and truth are of incalculable importance to the human race. If today we have somewhat outgrown the animals, it is because our ideals have shown us the way" (pp. 13-14)

"From the habit of regarding these ideals as strangers from another world, comes an undignified servility toward them, a blindness toward their true meaning, a misapprehension of their possibilities, and a total failure to enter the doors that these new gods could open to us. Eventually our wrong attitude may lead to anesthetisation, gradual paralysis, cessation of growth, and death. But none of these things need happen, for it is unnecessary that to our own gentle children we should accord an extreme worship and sacrifice such as they were never meant to receive" (p. 17). "By setting life beneath instead of over our ideals we check human development; for to cherish any ideal above all else means that we accept the enjoyment of that ideal as the ultimate desire of human life beyond which we do not care to go" (p. 33). "The moral is that we should keep our ideals well within their environment until we are sure that in real life they will not do more harm than good” (p. 47).

"Without being either a socialist or an anarchist one may wish to hasten the day when all men will clearly see that wars divide the house of humanity against itself, and that the great struggle is not the fight between man and man but the fight between man and the blind powers that make him. This is the philosophy of Earthianism, that our real problem is right here below and that the only question is whether the earth will overcome us or whether we will overcome the earth" (p. 62). "Society as at present constituted is the result of a shallow co-operation of individual human natures working together on the principle that each display and expend as little of his real self as possible. It is made up not of men and women but of incomplete and fractional men and women. . . . He who looks into society, into public laws, customs, religions, and history to find humanity, looks amiss, for there is not a single complete man or woman in it" (pp. 71-72).

"Democracy is the name now given to the theory that every man has an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and as many other rights and blessings as are not inconsistent with these fundamental ones" (p. 92). "It is one thing to say that each individual is worth something and therefore ought to be allowed to live, and quite another thing to say that each individual is worth as much as any other. Making democracy a synonym for indiscriminate equality has done more than any other single error in leading democracies astray" (p. 93). "All theories of radical inequality, untempered by democracy, must sooner or later advocate brute force as the final arbiter of human destinies. If men are not even equal to the minimum extent that all are human beings with the right to live, any part of humanity that can demolish any other part has the right to do so" (p. 97).

“...

"Tolerance, an enlightened form of liberty, is a compound of love and understanding born from the free development of the individual” (p. 102). ... we developed from members of a primitive tribe with no personal life at all into members of prosperous States, jealous of governmental interference in the affairs of our inner, complex, personal lives" (p. 103). "Dimly conscious of a desire to be different from the old regime and as yet not hardy enough to be anything but a reversion to remote types, men in some countries are fanning the flames of an aboriginal class consciousness that sets its face like flint against all differentiation. This goes back of mediaeval guilds, back of primitive tyrants, to the kind of bondage in which animals are held by the chains of a class instinct which compels each member of a species blindly to repeat the acts of every other member. The attempt to iron out all the century-wrought distinctions between man and his neighbor goes back of the ants and the bees to the buffaloes who stupidly grazed. . . .” (p. 105).

"The way to peace and tolerance lies through a greater tolerance of all for all, of the rich for the poor and the poor for the rich, of the weak for the strong and the strong for the weak; for we are all mortals here below, whirling through space on a fragile planet, and as long as possible there must be room for us all" (p. 107). "Thorough differentiation is essential to that fulness of harmony for which we all in our hearts are seeking" (p. 119). "Then let men be unequal; it will only be an inequality that results from growth. At the same time it must be remembered that our human structure is composed of atoms with certain 'inalienable' rights among which are 'life' . . . let us stop

right there" (p. 129; author's dots). "Nor is it true that society, the State, etc., exist for the individual-nothing in the human world lives or exists in the first place for anything else—they exist not for but because of the individual" (p. 137).

"The crux of the situation is the personal problem of changing our attitude toward ideals. The attitude aimed at is expressed in the phrase that 'we can afford to laugh a little at our own ideals and hold them no less dear'" (p. v).

AMHERST College

C. E. AYRES

Psychoanalysis, Its History, Theory, and Practice. By ANDRÉ TRIDON. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1919. Pp. 272. $2.00. It is difficult to understand the rapid progress in popularity of the theory of psychoanalysis. Many orthodox psychologists think of psychiatrists and sociologists, who have embraced it, with the same lack of respect which a well-known biologist had of the psychologists, who, he said, were simply men who knew some biological names without knowing their meaning. Be that as it may, psychoanalysis has an amazing and significant vogue considering its years. Whether it will do all that is claimed for it or not, is not so important as that it explains some things that were never explained before, and it seems to point to possible applications that are really revolutionary.

The subject is so new that most of the literature is still in the form of the original contributions of the originators. Each of these men have special enthusiasms, so that a novice reading them may worry about his perspective. We hear that Freud overdoes the sex explanation, and yet Freudianism is synonymous with psychoanalysis so that there was great need of a general book on the subject. Tridon has made a commendable attempt to supply this need. The history, the terminology, and a bibliography down to the date of publication cannot all be found in one book elsewhere. It is not easy to make the new terminology clear and there will be need of other attempts.

The ultimateness and assurance of the author is indicated by the two sentences from the first page: "It offers to the average man and woman a new rational code of behavior based on science instead of faith"; "Psychoanalysis is too accurate a scientific instrument to be mastered in one day." This last is true, but one cannot help wondering whether the scientific accuracy will all weather the test of time. And yet its cocksureness is one of the reasons for popular acceptance, for