containing, besides original essays, extended analyses and reviews of all important books and articles in the fields of religion, law, ethics, economics, statistics, and demography, have well fulfilled this purpose. Too much credit can scarcely be given to the editors of the Année for the skill, patience, and critical spirit with which they have carried on what must have been a most laborious task. Recently, the scope of this publication has been somewhat changed: it is henceforth to consist entirely of reviews covering the sociological field and appearing in triennial volumes. Meanwhile, the work of the school is to be continued by means of a series of independent volumes issued irregularly as "Travaux de L'Année sociologique." Of these, the book under review forms the fourth and latest.1

The monographs published in the Année and its supplements deal almost exclusively with subjects belonging to social anthropology. Durkheim writes on the prohibition of incest, totemism, the Australian matrimonial system, the definition of religious phenomena, and the elementary forms of religion. Hubert and Mauss collaborate in producing valuable studies of magic, sacrifice, and the collective representation of time. Bouglé treats of castes; Hertz, of the collective representation of death; and Lévy-Bruhl, of the mental life of primitive peoples. All this work is animated by certain general principles which are in sharp contrast with those either implicitly held or outwardly professed by the English social anthropologists (Tylor, Frazer, Jevons, Hartland, et al.), the only other group of systematic workers in this field. The French sociologists accuse their English neighbors of overemphasis on the resemblances between anthropological and sociological facts gathered from far and near; we must, it is urged, pay as much, or even more, attention to the real differences which may exist between facts superficially alike. This further implies that social facts shall be studied in situ, and not rudely wrenched from their original setting. Spencer's Sociology and Westermarck's Moral Ideas are held up as conspicuous examples of defective method in these respects. The French school, moreover, very properly emphasizes the need of studying social function as well as social structure; of showing how a particular custom or institution works under given circumstances. Perhaps their most original contribution to methodology is the theory of "collective representations," by them applied to a wide range of social phenomena. Such

The others are: C. Bouglé, Essais sur le régime des castes, Paris, 1908; H. Hubert and M. Mauss, Mélanges d'histoire des religions, Paris, 1909; L. Lévy-Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures, Paris, 1910.

a theory discards altogether the psychological or intellectualist account of origins: religion, for example, would by it be explained as the outcome of blind social forces which are utterly independent of individual ratiocination.

It is this principle of "collective representations" which underlies the elaborate, scholarly, and well-reasoned book before us. Australian totemism is here studied as the most elementary form of religion known to us; connected with it are ideas of mana (commonly defined as magicoreligious energy, but, according to M. Durkheim, mana totémique), ideas of the soul, of spirits, and of gods (all totemic in origin, declares M. Durkheim), and the great mass of positive rites and negative rites or taboos. There is a wide variety of forms, but always one explanation: "The religious life is the most developed and abridged expression of the collective life in its entirety. If religion has engendered everything of importance in society, it remains none the less true that society is the soul of religion" (pp. 598-99).

It is obvious that our author is here giving us a sort of sociological apologia for the important place which religion has ever held in human affairs. He is not concerned with the truth or falsehood of our ideasor the Australians'—about divinity; sociology has no verdict to pronounce on theological systems, high or low. Many, before M. Durkheim, have declared that religion is a social phenomenon and must be studied from the social standpoint. It has remained for him to raise such unsupported affirmations into a scientific generalization resting on much evidence carefully gathered, sifted, and analyzed. From this point of view his work may serve as a model study in social anthropology.

To the reviewer, this book, however, is more valuable for its sociological method of investigation than for its positive additions to our knowledge on specific points. The author surely exaggerates the significance of totemism as a primitive institution. At the very hour when Mr. J. G. Frazer in England is proclaiming throughout four bulky quartos that totemism, though important, is not the whole of savage society, and when Mr. Goldenweiser in America is making an "analytical study" of totemism to prove that it has no specific content at all, being merely a "process of socialization," comes M. Durkheim to assure us that everything significant in Australian religion is an outgrowth of totemic conceptions. In this way he would even explain the "high gods" (pp. 409-22) round whose misty personalities so much debate has raged. I am persuaded, too, that, in common with other members of his school, M. Durkheim makes far too much of the mana idea, not only in Australian, but in other

savage religions. More evidence than is yet available will have to be presented that the notion of mana is a truly primitive conception and not, as seems more likely, a relatively developed philosophical explanation, the investigation of which does not take us very far into the rudiments of the religious emotion. The time has gone by for "keys to all the mythologies." The elaborate systems which attempt to explain the totality of primitive religion by reference to a single factor-ancestor worship with Herbert Spencer, taboo with M. Reinach, totemism with M. Durkheim -"have their day and cease to be."

The volume is enriched with an ethnographic map of Australia. The proofreading, especially in the case of proper names, shows an accuracy unusual in a French book. It is a matter of real regret, however, that a work of such importance should be allowed to go forth without an index. For the latter, the detailed table of contents forms only a partial substitute.

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

HUTTON WEBSTER

Race Improvement. By LAREINE HELEN BAKER. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1912. Pp. 137. $1.00.

Among the shoal of books which the recent interest in eugenics has called into existence, none deserves less favorable comment than the one now under review. The author has set out with the intention of writing 'a little book on a great subject," yet for the most part the statements which she makes would lead the reader to suppose that she was covering the entire subject with perfect adequacy. Nor are her general statements justifiable. "Nurture, or environment, has its place, and an important one, in race improvement, but the overwhelming fact remains that more than three-fourths of the elements which build up a human soul are in its nature, not its nurture. The formative factor of greatest importance in the making of human life and character is heredity" (p. 14). Similar looseness of statement is displayed when she writes, "Degeneracy is not a disease by specific intention, it is an attribute to our social neglect, it is the result of our inattention to vital issues, it is a sign that we are no longer keenly anxious to elevate the race" (p. 32). It is not necessary to go further into the analysis in order to demonstrate the gross inadequacy of the author's treatment. The book is not well written; it represents no new viewpoint; it is neither scientific nor popular.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

SCOTT NEARING

Genetics. An Introduction to the Study of Heredity. By HERBERT E. WALTER. New York: Macmillan, 1913. Pp. 274. $1.50.

In Genetics Professor Walter has succeeded in placing before the general reader a simple, clear, comprehensive, and scientific statement of the fundamental principles of heredity based upon experiments recently made by himself and others in this field.

The social worker more than any other class of professional men and women comes in daily touch with the wasteful and cruel results of conventional methods of man-breeding. Professor Walter faces the problem fearlessly and scientifically. His suggestions for improvements are practical and based upon facts.

The first part of the book may be of little interest to the social worker beyond the value which it presents as a means of explaining the laws to which heredity is subjected. The last two chapters, namely, "The Application to Man" and "Human Conservation," should prove of great value to those interested in the development of the human race along normal lines and the reduction of the defective and delinquent classes to a minimum.

Although a believer in heredity as a determining factor in human progress, the writer recognized the science of euthenics or the science of living as essential in race development, and admits that "without euthenic opportunity the best of heritages would never fully come to its own."

In dealing with the practical problems of eugenics and the application of recent discoveries in this field Professor Walter suggests that in order to "dry up the streams that feed the torrent of defective and degenerate protoplasm" the following expedients should be used: control of immigration; more discriminating marriage laws; a quickened eugenic sentiment; sexual segregation of defectives and drastic measures of asexualization and segregation, when necessary.

In discussing the present immigration laws the following criticism is made: "Eugenically the weak point in the present immigration laws is that the criteria for exclusion are phenotipic in nature rather than genotipic, and consequently much bad germplasm comes through our gates hidden from the view of inspectors. . The suggestion is made that inspectors be placed abroad so that applicants for admission to the United States would be subjected to investigation not only relative to their personal condition, but also as to their hereditary tendencies.

The other methods of control suggested are discussed with a wellselected fund of information and with a broad vision of race regeneration

and development. The social worker will be fully repaid for the time spent in reading this simple treatise on a most important and difficult subject.

NEW YORK CITY

CAROL ARONOVICI

New

The Fetish Folk of West Africa. By ROBERT H. MILLIGAN. York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1912. Pp. 328. $1.50. This book deals with the customs, habits, and beliefs of the Mpongwe and Fang of West Africa, and contains chapters replying to the criticisms made by Professor Frederick Starr and Miss Mary Kingsley upon missionary methods. In its descriptive aspect the book is one of the best on Africa. It is interesting and gives a luminous insight into the native mind.

The part of the book, however, dealing with the views of Professor Starr and Miss Kingsley is not altogether commendable and not at all refutatory. It is captious, unfair, and superficial. The objections to missions by Professor Starr and Miss Kingsley are in line with those of the traders, administrators, and most eminent modern scholars. Briefly, they are that the native faith is undermined too rapidly, resulting in moral disorganization, before the new religion has had time to take root; too sudden undermining of native institutions; too much emphasis on creed and ceremony; that the education imparted to the African is not suited to his needs and not given in its proper sequence, promoting vanity, disinclination to work, and contempt for his untutored brother of the bush.

These criticisms seem to be fully borne out by Mr. Milligan's exhibition of his own methods and the results thereof. Mr. Milligan is a theologian of the old school, believing in God as a great miracle-maker (p. 231), in the “justness of vicarious atonement" (p. 255), the cleansing of conscience by sprinklings of the blood of Calvary (p. 253), making much of the atonement (p. 256), emphasizing miracles (p. 245), hymnsinging and reading of the Bible (p. 191), and preaching much from a "barrel of sermons" (p. 104). His ideal convert seems to be one who can attain to the position of "Catechist" (p. 258). He holds that the missionary is first of all "an evangelist, not a reformer."

The effect of this teaching is to substitute one great fetish for many of them, and cannot have wide-reaching influence on conduct. The good results of Mr. Milligan's mission are due evidently to his personal example and not to his doctrines. The same result might have been