court illustrates the second tendency: "In some juvenile courts no other charge is placed against the child except that of juvenile delinquency. Under these conditions it will become increasingly difficult for the public to learn the precise nature of the offense committed. The author does not approve of this tendency" (p. 416). Under the circumstances, one is surprised to find Healy's books in the bibliography. They might be expected to convince the author that it will profit the public more to understand its own part in motivating delinquency than to classify types of acts committed. The belief that children of superior mental ability are potential geniuses, in position to contribute immeasurably to social life if adequately directed, led to a five-year experiment by Miss Stedman at the University of Southern California Training School. Several "opportunity" classes were formed for children of seven years and over whose intelligence quotients ranged from 125 to 214. Sixteen case histories, with graphs and tables, show the progress made. Instruction based on individual differences stimulated each child to study independently, in a scientific attitude. At the same time, the use of group research projects in public speaking, dramatizing history, etc., promoted intellectual exchange and social interaction. An enriched curriculum, covered, with little drill or repetition, in less than the usual number of hours per day, was preferred to a "speeding-up" which would catapult children into high school three to five years early. The sociologist finds of greatest interest the conclusions that (1) gifted children trained at home for several years come to school with richer and more mature personalities than normal children of the same age. (2) Such gifted children adapt themselves very easily to school life with other children of their own mental level, with few exceptions. (3) They are no more conceited, egotistical, or vain than average children, with occasional exceptions; and (4) some gifted children who are maladjusted to other schoolrooms can become socially co-operative through "opportunity room" methods. The New York State Charities Aid Association investigated the success records of 910 children placed in family homes who had reached an age of eighteen years or more on January 1, 1922. Of those who could be found, 77.2 per cent were judged "capable" in the sense of able to manage their own affairs and maintain standing in their communities. In view of the adaptability of this 77.2 per cent, the sociologist is interested to learn that 80 per cent of the total came from bad families, 12 per cent from "mixed," and 8 per cent from good background; that the homes in which they were placed were 72 per cent good average, 13 per cent below average, and 15 per cent above; and that a larger proportion of the group placed at an age under 5 became "capable" (86 per cent) than of the group over 5 at placement (72.6 per cent). "There exists in individuals an immense power of growth and adaptation . . . . there were potentialities within these people which revealed themselves only under certain conditions . . . . the primary condition of successful development lies in the kind of relationship . . . between the child and his foster parents . . . . human environment matters more than the material surroundings . . . the child's adjustment to his foster family governs to a significant degree his adjustment to society, and his adjustment to his foster family has less to do with their standards of comfort and their place in the community than with their human qualities and their understanding" (p. 164). The difficulties of such research are obvious throughout: The data are hard to secure; the criteria of success and failure are as yet only crude pragmatic ones; and no statistical presentation could do the subject justice. A supplement should be published composed of five or six complete life-histories of the successful cases, including complete description of the foster families and the communities in terms of the social forces operating. Sex for Parents and Teachers is a medical man's attempt to serve a dual purpose. He thinks parents need facts, and must have idealism to present them properly. His program thus involves on the one hand a scientifically accurate, but not highly technical, biological approach to sex facts, progressing through plant, insect, fish, bird, and animal to human reproductive processes. Plates picturing generative organs of lily, corn, bee, man, and woman, and development of the human embryo are explained in detail. Mendel and the Edwards family tree serve their usual purpose. Ductless glands and hormones and diseases of sex organs receive notice. The author's second purpose is served by chapters interlarded indiscriminately on "Man," "Puberty," "Marriage," "Eugenics," "Purity," "Sex Education," and "Habits." By these he conveys a conventional though not harsh social philosophy-little more. The use of such a presentation and some imagination on the part of parents might perform the "salvaging" process so much desired by Dr. Davenport in The Salvaging of American Girlhood. OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY EVELYN BUCHAN Farmers and Workers in American Politics. BY STUART A. RICE, PH.D. "Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law," Vol. CXIII, No. 2. New York: Columbia University, 1924. Pp. 231. $2.50. "The problem with which the politician and the sociologist are concerned is to determine the kind of potential alignments which now exist spontaneously among the voters, regardless of party, with respect to various types of issues" (p. 30). Dr. Rice's contribution to this large problem is an appraisal of farmers and workers, and his conclusion is that they are likely to disagree upon issues which arise from prejudice and tradition such as prohibition, sex, gambling, and the regulation of personal conduct generally-but that agreement is possible upon issues which involve rational calculation of interests. His conclusion may or may not be important, but his technique marks a substantial advance. He develops an index of cohesion within each group and an index of likeness between any two groups (pp. 186 ff.), and these are likely to prove helpful additions to the sociologist's tool box. He goes on to suggest the hypothesis of political culture areas, stressing the probability that the general laws which govern the diffusion of cultural elements apply to types of opinion as well, and that an "agitator" may "infect" a discontented group with a definite doctrine which spreads from the central point over adjacent and receptive areas (pp. 177 ff.). The book is a very creditable scientific achievement. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO HAROLD D. LASSWELL Leaves from a Russian Diary. BY PITIRIM SOROKIN. New York: Religion in Russia under the Soviets. BY RICHARD J. COOKE. New Revolution took this sociological professor of socialist propensities, Sorokin, made him secretary to Kerensky in spite of his sententious forebodings, toppled him from power, hunted him, imprisoned him, banished him, disillusioned and embittered him. The girondist is a definite revolutionary type, and the present diary, while it supplies a relevant case study for scientific purposes, omits the intimate facts and the early autobio graphical material which is indispensable to accurate generalization. There is too much sophistication about the writer to render the narrative naïve, and not enough ruthless skill in self-revelation to make it profound. His observations upon the people around him are deformed by the very mélange of passion, fact, rumor, and polemic which reveals so much about the witness. Bishop Cooke, of the Methodist church, has written "solely that those who are interested in the welfare of Christ's Kingdom among the nations might have some clear conception of the conflict between atheism and religion in Russia." The result is a valuable specimen for the student of ecclesiastical propaganda. Miss Blanc has prepared a well-documented survey of co-operation in Russia, which began in the sixties and seventies as the imported toy of well-meaning intellectuals, grew steadily prior to 1914, expanded phenomenally in war time, clashed disastrously with the Bolsheviki in 1919, and recovered in 1921. The facts are here for a sound explanation of the greatest achievement of non-official initiative in Russia. HAROLD D. LAasswell UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Matrimony Minus Maternity. By M. H. SEXTON. New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1922. Pp. vii+271. $2.00. Sex and Dreams: The Language of Dreams. BY WILLIAM STEKEL, M.D. (Vienna). Authorized translation by JAMES S. VAN TESLAAR, M.D. Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1922. Pp. 322. $6.00. Sex and Common Sense. By A. MAUDE ROYDEN, Preacher at the Guildhouse, Eccleston Square, S. W. I. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1922. Pp. xviii+211. $2.50. The Laws of Sex. BY EDITH HOUGHTON HOOKER. Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1921. Pp. 373. $5.00. Little Essays of Love and Virtue. BY HAVELOCK ELLIS. New York: George H. Doran, 1922. Pp. 187. $1.50. Biology of Sex: For Parents and Teachers (Revised). By T. W. GALLOWAY, PH.D. New York: D. C. Heath & Co., 1922. Pp. xiii+149. $1.24. Sexton's book is a hodge-podge of material, incoherent in purpose and with evident attempts to be sensational in method. Claiming as its object a general attack upon all forms of sex immorality, the book more than fulfils the author's prophecy: "In the following pages the reader will see that the steed of thought swings along the human highway, check free." For if one gets nowhere in the flow of words, one at least discovers how wildly the mind can gallop when the emotions set the pace. According to Stekel, dreams are a form of symbolism. They express wishes, including moral wishes, though not wishes exclusively. Some dreams reflect somatic conditions. Freud deserves credit for opening up the meaning of dreams as an agent for explaining mental life, but his view of dreams as merely wishes was one-sided. Stekel demonstrates his scheme of dream interpretation by analysis of various dreams, making liberal use of "the well-known dream symbolism." "Water," for example, "always stands for a reference to birth" (p. 97). Farther on, however, we find this rigid attitude modified: "There are no fixed symbols, and under certain circumstances a symbol may mean something else" (p. 289). The book is largely a collection of dreams followed by the author's analyses, which for the most part we are expected to accept as correct interpretations on his assertion. The reader, if at all critical, naturally wonders why human nature should dream only of sex matters; does sleep turn all wishes into sex desires, or is it rather that the interpreter must find a sex significance or nothing? Sex and Common Sense is a conventional and moralizing presentation of the problems of sex control in an interesting form and with suggestions of tolerance; it reveals little scientific background for the discussion of problems of sex. The Laws of Sex is a lengthy and somewhat padded collection of material concerning marriage, prostitution, venereal disease, and sex education. At times dogma, it is nevertheless a convincing plea for a more vigorous attack upon the prevention of venereal disease. The treatment of the sex interests of children and the wholesome parental approach to related problems is especially useful (pp. 319-30). The book contains some case histories valuable for the sociologists. Ellis presents in Little Essays of Love and Virtue brief statements of points of view regarding sex, marriage, and family life, either expressed or implied in his larger Studies in the Psychology of Sex. He writes with the hope that his essays will fall into the hands of adolescent youth and prove useful. The spirit of the discussions is revealed in the following sentences: "Sublimation, we see again and again, is limited, and the best developments of the spiritual life are not likely to come about by the rigid attempt to obtain a complete transmutation of sexual energy." "No |