striking or dangerous objects of nature or occurrences affecting men's lives. Once aroused it is often transmitted by custom until sometimes it happens that the cause of its origin is lost sight of.

It seems to the present writer that Dr. King has performed two notable services in this book. He has shown that the religious attitude is related in its psychical nature to the processes by which all values, of whatever kind, are brought into consciousness. In its origin it does not stand as a thing apart. In the second place, he has shown that the evaluating attitude which gives us religion differs from all others in the fact that it evaluates those things which stress and strain have brought to the attention of group consciousness. This means that the religions which history and ethnology show us could not have risen outside of social organizations, for the form of social organization not only determined the form the religion took, but, as the author points out, only the valuations arising from groupal activities could be emotionally intense and persistent enough to give us the religious attitude.

It should be added that he has also made an advance upon most writers on magic by his hypothesis that certain acts which later become magical rites at first are spontaneous responses to emotional tension produced by some mysterious or dangerous situation. These he classes as pre-magical, and adds that if they had happened to be closely connected with group consciousness, they might have furnished the starting-point for religion, or had they been more closely related to individual interests, they would have developed into magical practices. According to our author, religion grows out of group activities; magic out of individual reactions to difficulties. This hypothesis of the social origin of religion and the individual origin of magic is interesting, but one has to confess that the evidence adduced for it is by no means conclusive.

While one agrees with the book in general, there are some questions which it suggests. One would like to ask why sex, as well as food and defense, was not noted as furnishing the occasion of emotional strain sufficient to cause religious valuations to arise (p. 139); why some magical practices may not be the result of conquest, whereby once recognized religious practices are driven into exile and thus become "individualistic" and magical as a result of being outlawed, etc. (pp. 194-95). Moreover, a

different emphasis doubtless would be given several matters by the sociologist. For example, it is doubtful whether our author is correct when (p. 67), to illustrate his point that among primitive peoples the sense of personality is indefinite, he says that the Australian applies the term for relationship to groups rather than to individuals, "not because the Australian is in doubt as to his blood relationship, but because his own sense of personality is so vague." Students of the Australians tell us plainly that the latter have no conception of the connection between offspring and the sexual act (Spencer and Gillin, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 124-25, 265, 337). Moreover, their customs are such on many occasions that even if they did connect sexual intercourse with offspring, it would be impossible to tell who is the father. On the other hand, they have clear ideas of putative relationships. Here it seems to the reviewer that our author has allowed a psychological prejudice to blind him to the facts. However, these are but secondary points, and detract but little from the valuable contributions made. One cannot fail to observe the contrast between this book and another which has recently appeared on almost the same subject. In method and spirit they are as wide apart as the poles.

STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

J. L. GILLIN

The Education of Women. By MARION TALBOT, Dean of Women, and Professor in The University of Chicago. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1910. Pp. ix+ 255. $1.37 postpaid.

So much has been said and written in recent times about woman that it is with a sense of weariness one opens a book devoted to a consideration of the "education of women." However, before the reading of the first page of this book is finished, the weariness vanishes and the mind is on the alert for the unfolding of a record that "will always be a source of courage to increasing numbers of women who will be eager to take an active part in controlling the stream of women's activities." Though in spreading this record before the reader the mistakes made by women's colleges in copying the narrow courses of study offered boys and men in high schools and colleges are made evident, yet there is

no trace of that antagonism between the sexes which is one of the bugbears of the opponents of higher education for women. Miss Talbot is a representative college woman, not only in her education but also in her work as dean and professor in a coeducational university, so her book may be considered a representative book in defining unconsciously the attitude of college women toward social questions, particularly those involving the relation of men and women. The treatment of college life as it is and as it should be is plainly frank. The elective system and the college curriculum are both discussed freely, but with a constant trend toward insistence upon the necessity for making the college experience, both academic and social, function in the life of the students after their college days are ended.

A fetich has been made of the term "liberal education." Only that body of knowledge has been supposed to be available for the higher intellectual training which has no immediate relation to the life interests of the student. . . The college faculty seems content to prescribe a dietary, regardless of the person to be fed.

....

It was a happy decision on the part of Miss Talbot to print in full the programs or courses of study in the elementary and high. schools of Boston from 1859 to 1909, and of Chicago from 1861 to 1909. To students of education in America these courses will outline very clearly the trend of the public schools, notwithstanding the incorporation of a large percentage of immigrants from continental Europe in their membership. All the material in the book has been organized to give a moving panorama of the industrial and educational life of women belonging to the great middle class in the country. The changes, industrial and commercial, educational, civic, philanthropic, and social, are presented by means of statistics well annotated. The machinery of education is analyzed through the courses of study in two cities (Boston and Chicago), Vassar College, and the University of Wisconsin. Parents intending to give their daughters a collegiate education will do well to read the chapters on that subject: "The Elective System," "The College Curriculum," "Social Activities," "Hygienic Education," "The Domestic Environment," "Educational Needs of College Women." In them are answered specifically many questions that must arise in the minds of parents who are unfamiliar with the college and its life.

One point on which the theory of social life and educational

theory tend to go awry in vocational training develops out of utilitarianism pushed to the limit. It finds expression in practice (described on p. 154) that separates the great field of knowledge into boy-and-girl divisions. There is in that technical school boy-chemistry, physics, English, and mathematics, and girl-chemistry, physics, English, etc. It is surprising that so keen an observer of the social life, and so impersonal a constructionist of the meaning of the intellectual life, should let slip the opportunity to indicate the dangers attendant upon drawing early in life, in the high school, a sharp line of demarkation between the fields of activity of men and of women, not the least of these dangers being an explicit separation of language, science, mathematics, and art, each into two distinct types so alien in aim that boys and girls cannot meet intellectually in a joint study of even their mothertongue-English. If a teacher wishes to brace his educational theory by social theory this book will be invaluable; contrariwise, if a teacher of sociology wishes to construct a theory of social progress in this country by way of education he will find in this work abundant material for his purpose.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF CHICAGO

ELLA FLAGG YOUNG

Eugenics: The Science of Human Improvement and Better Breeding. By C. B. DAVENPORT. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1910. Pp. 35.

This little book marks a new departure in eugenics. Instead of the well-known and more or less generally accepted Galtonean theory which has selection as its basic principle, Mr. Davenport bases eugenics upon the principle advanced by Mendel, namely, the principle of scientific mating with the idea of the preponderance of special characters rather than the selective mating which considers the highest possible average, regardless of the highest possible development of a single quality of character. In other words, if the principles advanced by Mendel and proven to be more and more applicable to biology are applicable to the human race with the same exactness, we have found a means of controlling and reducing to a minimum undesirable characters and this not by a process of reckless and cruel elimination but by a process of scientific

mating which each individual can apply for himself with the least amount of social control.

The theory advanced by Mendel and elaborated by other biologists, of whom one of the most prominent is the writer of this booklet, may be stated in Professor Davenport's own words as follows:

1. The principle of independent unit characters states that the qualities or characteristics of organisms are, or may be analyzed into, distinct units that are inherited independently.

2. The principle of the determiner in the germ plasm states that each unit character is represented in the germ by a molecule or associated groups of molecules called a determiner. These determiners are transmitted in the germ plasm and are the only things that are truly inherited.

3. The principle of segregation of determiners in the germ plasm states that the characteristics do not blend. That if one parent has a characteristic and the other lacks it, then the offspring get a determiner from one side only. . . . .

This brief statement of the doctrine shows clearly the drift of this new field of biological inquiry; and a more complete and accurate knowledge of the preponderance of one characteristic or set of characteristics against the preponderance or the absence of such a characteristic in the offspring according to the existence or nonexistence of such a characteristic in either one of the mates would naturally lead toward a more scientific mating. This will not imply the total abolition of those unfit for marriage from Galton's standpoint, but will make possible such a selection of mates as will result in the preservation of the best characters of even some of those who, either as physical or mental specimens, are not wholly desirable.

That Mendelism will finally become the basis of eugenics is quite probable. Whether it will do for eugenics what seems reasonable to expect that it will do is still a matter of speculation. Workers such as Dr. Davenport have a vast field and virgin soil to work upon, and much in the way of sociological speculation will surely be ventured upon as soon as this new field of inquiry becomes sufficiently popularized to strike the fancy of the theorist. It is possible that Mendelism will solve for us the race problem and determine whether we are to develop along the line of eudemics1

1The word eudemics is suggested by Prof. Koopman of Brown University as a substitute for national eugenics.