refuse to help diminish distress so far as possible. Talk of Utopias in some future state, here or hereafter, comes with poor grace from those who totally neglect the miserable victims of personal fault and of social misrule. It is not fair to say that all charity is mere opium taken to relieve the remorse of willing exploiters. As Miss Sears well says, the direct use of these pathetic histories is to improve our methods of immediate relief, but our ultimate and larger purpose is "to accumulate data concerning poverty, disease, social exploitation, and industrial abuse-data that may prove effective in securing an investigation and amelioration of the conditions, social, industrial, and economic, that produce dependency." SOPHONISBA P. BRECKINRIDGE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO A Psychological Study of Religion. By JAMES H. LEUBA. New York: Macmillan, 1912. Pp. xiv+371. A wide range of topics is discussed. Chapters i-ix contain the writer's psychology of feeling, intellection, and volition; criticize numerous definitions of religion; repeat his well-known distinction between the mechanical, the magical, and the "anthropopathic" types of behavior; and detail the varieties of magic and the essential qualifications of a god. In chaps. x-xiii there is a brief treatment of religion in its relation to morality, mythology, and metaphysics, followed by extended criticism of recent utterances of apologists for religion. The aim is to show that when theologians fall back on "inner experience" and satisfying states of mind as proof of the validity of religion they cannot logically claim that such experiences are exempt from the interpretation of the psychologist. Admitting the psychologist's way of approach, theology will become fruitfully empirical and shake off the incubus of an old-fashioned metaphysics. The concluding pages deal with oriental religions, "psychotherapic cults," such as New Thought and Christian Science, the Religion of Humanity, and the Ethical Culture movement; finally, the bases of a religion of the future are prophesied. Among the contentions advanced are the following: religion is a type of behavior, an appeal to a kind of power believed in, an agency psychic, superhuman, and (usually) personal; originating in impulses and needs of human nature, primitive religion had biological value in the struggle for existence; out of mechanical behavior (dependence upon quantitative, causal relations) science has developed; magic, eliminating mechanism and causality, is opposed to science in spirit and method as caprice is opposed to systematic control; moral values are superior to religious values; a tenable religion should not run counter to "well-established scientific or philosophical conclusions," should stress ethical imperatives and general happiness, and should listen to Bergson's intuition of God"unceasing life, action, freedom." Anyone who writes on religion and magic today may not legitimately confine himself to the researches of Tylor, Fraser, Jevons, and others who have not sufficiently realized the implications of the collective background of primitive groups. Professor Leuba freely takes exception to the conclusions of the English anthropologists, yet he follows their leading to the extent of ignoring the work of Durkheim, Lévy-Bruhl, Hubert, and Mauss. Whatever exaggerations may be found in the categories of the French social anthropologists, they have demonstrated that the ordinary psychology of the textbook falls short in method and interpretation if it is invoked to explain the genesis of magic and religion. A suggestive example of what may be done when an investigation is based upon specific group contexts is the study of Greek magic, religion, and philosophy made by F. M. Cornford, who derived his standpoint from Professor Durkheim and his colleagues. It is worthy of note that Dr. Leuba sees fit to include a somewhat full analysis of the social philosophy of Comte. Positivism is reproached because of its inadequate view of Nature and its defective philosophical assumptions. However, the religion of the future described in chap. xiii is a revised version of the Religion of Humanity. Dr. Leuba urges that "Humanity idealized and conceived as a manifestation of Creative Energy possesses surpassing qualifications for a source of religious inspiration. . . . . The sense of weakness and imperfection, the need of comfort and encouragement, the desire for the final triumph of good are sentiments which might readily enough be collectively expressed in declarations addressed to the religious brotherhood, or even perhaps to the Ideal Society. And I see no sufficient reason why a religion of Humanity should not incorporate in a modified form elements of the therapeutic cults which have been found effective in the healing of mind and body. "A religion in agreement with the accepted body of scientific knowledge, and centered about Humanity conceived as the manifestation of a Force tending to the creation of an ideal society, would occupy in the social life the place that a religion should normally hold, even the place that the Christian religion lost when its cardinal beliefs ceased to be in harmony with secular beliefs" (pp. 335–336). UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO E. L. TALBERT The Psychology of Revolution. By GUSTAVE LE BON. Translated by Bernard Miall. New York: Putnam, 1913. Price, $2.50. Pp. 337. In this study, Le Bon has endeavored to unravel some of the tangled skeins of history with the aid of modern psychology. He shows that we have arrived at a more profound understanding of the principles of this science, and he makes practical application of them in his interpretation of events. The discoveries in this science which the author puts forth as applicable to history are as follows: a knowledge of ancestral influence, the laws which rule the actions of a crowd, data relating to the disaggregation of personality, mental contagion, the unconscious formation of beliefs, and the distinction between the various forms of logic, rational, affective, collective, and mystic. Revolutions are classified and the relation of government to social interaction analyzed. All violent social disturbances are shown to have a logical basis which may rest wholly or partly upon psychological premises. There is a wide range of difference between a scientific, a political, and a religious revolution. The scientific revolution hardly makes a ripple upon the surface of society; it is merely an evolutionary process. The causes leading up to a political revolution may be summed up in the one word discontent. Intolerance is back of the force that sweeps society into religious controversy, with its attendant excess and crime. In political and religious revolutions, rational logic is swept aside and is replaced by affective, collective, and mystic logic. The keynote of the analysis is found in the different forms of mentality prevalent during revolution. These are classified as the mystic, the Jacobin, the revolutionary, and the criminal. The classification is evidently made with special reference to the French revolution. Man as a collective unit under leadership without legal restraint or substantial moral and religious moorings is a different creature from man as a segregated unit under centralized authority. It is this dual nature of personality which admits of the excesses and crimes against civilization committed by a revolutionary body under the influence and leadership of an abnormal mind. Such a character would be restrained in times of order by a fear of the law; but in times of revolution, there is no such restraint. The origins of the French revolution are found mainly in the weakness of the government. Le Bon does not subscribe to the fatalistic theory, nor yet to the theory that the philosophers exerted a powerful influence. He holds rather that those who inaugurated the revolution did not perceive clearly what they wanted; popular political ideals had been shattered, and the French people consequently passed through a period of demoralization and anarchy seeking new ideals. Le Bon thinks that there was a logical basis for many acts of the French revolution which heretofore have been passed over as inexplicable. Such bases depend for establishment upon the acceptance of Le Bon's system of reasoning. In the discussion of the conflict between ancestral influences and revolutionary principles, it is contended that the main issues of the French revolution were early accomplished. The ancestral influences then dictated the return to law and order, which was not accomplished by reason of the fact that the revolutionary principles were still burning issues with the leaders and the mercenary class of the revolutionists. Their preservation depended upon a continuation of the revolutionary régime. Le Bon concludes that the heritage of the French revolution may be summed up in the words: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. In the present-day movements toward social equality, he sees the fruitage of the seeds that were planted at so great a sacrifice and cost. ISAAC A. Loos STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Les principes sociologiques du droit public. Par RAOUL DE LA GRASSERIE. V. Paris: Giard et E. Brière, 1911. Prix, broché, 10 francs; relié, 11 francs. Pp. 1-430. This book is an attempt to interpret public law in the light of social conditions and social history. It is divided into three parts. The first part, the sociology of constitutional law, considers first at length and by means of historical analysis the sociology of the constitutional law of the state. This might very well be called a sociological interpretation of the history of the forms or machinery of government. It differs little from what a contemporary historian of constitutional law would write even if he did not call his work sociological. Since Lavigny, public law is interpreted by historical conditions. The first part concludes with a very brief section on eccentric and concentric units of the state, namely, colonies, provinces, and communes. Part II, public administrative law, is similar in treatment to Part I and almost of equal length. Part III is grouped under two divisions: one relating to the international public law between autonomous states, and the other to that between dependent or interdependent states. Part IV discusses the sociology of the limits and the relations between individual rights and public law. STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA ISAAC A. Loos La théorie de l'homme et de la civilisation. Par ERASME DE MAJEWSKI. Paris: Librairie H. Le Soudier, 1911. Prix, 8 francs. Pp. vii-xvi+351. This book is similar in spirit and method to the same author's La science de civilisation, published three years earlier. The book is at once biological and sociological, or perhaps we should say blends the biological and sociological analysis of life by means of the psychological analysis. The author lays great stress on the phenomena of language in an account of the development of l'homo sapiens. The psychisme of man is not the result of the psychisme of animal; the former is interphysiological (whatever this may mean), instead of physiological. Language and ideas constitute the form and substance of society. The social form is as real as the cell or the plant, but it is not so obvious! The interphysical content in a material substratum is the form of the social reality. STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA ISAAC A. Loos |