content. The myth of a science of society has been exploded. What remains is a series of social sciences of which sociology is merely one, even if it finds its subject-matter through a different abstraction.

If Dr. Spykman's proposition is not yet established sociological orthodoxy, it is at least a somewhat widely published heresy (cf. Encyclopedia Americana, title "Sociology," p. 207).

American sociologists have made a gallant fight for existence. They have won standing ground. No one is more clearly aware than the survivors of the generation who made the fight, that, considered either as a body of knowledge or as a method of procedure, their sociology is thus far relatively incoherent, shallow, and sterile. They know, too, that this situation is the natural result of attempting to extemporize a science without first paying the dues to methodological preconditions. It is the fate not of sociology alone-it is the common lot of the entire group of programs known as "social sciences." It was not conscious hypocrisy-it was the expediency of semiconscious desperation for the sociologists of the passing generation to claim for their specialty as a science more than it has performed. Sociology is now academically intrenched, and can afford to be honest with itself and the world. For the good of their souls, "and other valuable considerations," sociologists should set the example which the other social interpreters will eventually have to follow, of acknowledging that as yet we have only embryonic science. Rather, "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” in convulsive birth-pangs of science.

Dr. Spykman's book should be accepted as the signal for the consolidation of a Section on Methodology within the American Sociological Society. The men of the coming generation who are able to see the strategic importance of methodology should make it their business to win for it the recognition which its functions deserve.

American methodology will remain provincial unless it maintains vital relations with the two European movements which seem likely to be the path-breakers in continental sociology during its next stage of development. The one tendency we have ventured to call post-Simmelism (A. J. S., XXX, 352) in Germany. The other is the reorganization of the Durkheim following in France. It would be inviting disaster if American sociologists should act as though they could afford to be ignorant of either of these movements. Dr. Spykman's book is a sufficient and an indispensable pathfinder for the beginnings of the former tendency.

In heartily assenting to the author's judgment (XIV)-"If the discussion of methodological problems is to be resumed. . . . Simmel's work is the best starting-point"--we by no means commit ourselves to the

belief that Simmel's conceptions of method must be adopted. That would rather be the first problem, viz.: As a way of developing methodological criticism, how does the account stand with Simmel? The desideratum is to start with the spirit of Simmel's desire for a methodology, not necessarily with his specific conclusions.

For instance, the present writer's last conversations with Simmel were in 1903. At that time he reiterated one of his most familiar doctrines, viz., that sociology should be "the geometry, the morphology, the crystallography of groups." Probably the writer would have had the support of most American sociologists in declining to accept such delimitations for sociology. A little further consideration, however, might have brought us into agreement with Simmel, and Simmel with us, that social science needs a technique of social forms, whatever it be called. Pursuing the analysis, we might presently find ourselves in agreement that social science needs techniques of the dynamic and evaluating aspects of experience, regardless of labels which might be used to designate them. Thus apparent disagreement might be reduced in large measure to matters of nomenclature more than of procedure. The important thing is Simmel's contention that science must have a foundation. Without a respectable and a respected methodology we are wise men in a tub.

The author has not escaped liability for the usual quota of proofreading oversights. For instance, the word "epistemology" is misspelled in the sixth line of the table of contents. Dr. Spykman also shows that he is assimilated to the great majority of native users of the English language in their inability to control the insuperable adverb, "only" (passim). Beyond these trifles, judicious additions and subtractions might add to the value of the second, third, and fourth sections of the bibliography.

It is devoutly to be hoped that American sociologists will show themselves wise enough to use the book as it deserves.

ALBION W. SMALL

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Allgemeine Soziologie als Lehre von den Beziehungen und Beziehungsgebilden der Menschen. Von LEOPOLD VON WIESE. Teil I: Beziehungslehre. München und Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1924. Pp. xiii+309.

First of all, this book must be understood as a leading expression of the present animus of post-Simmelism. To use a Yankeeism, here the sort of method toward which Simmel pointed is "getting down to brass tacks."

The author credits Simmel, Waxweiler, and Ross with parts of the impulse to which the book is a response. He says (VIII): “My aim was to shape sociology into a distinct science, definitely set off from other disciplines, firmly jointed, and consistently systematized. I hope that I have succeeded in distinguishing it from psychology, economic science economic sociology as well-and the other social sciences; also from the theories of art, and especially from philosophy, including social philosophy."

The analogy is not altogether happy, but we may use the Chicago building trades to carry the idea. The mechanics are not interested in organization from our point of view, but back of their politics is an implicit logic which amounts to this: It turns out that so and so many different kinds of jobs go into the construction of a modern building. Every job should be covered by a union, and each union should stick to its job. That means a certain dependence of the jobs upon one another. The stone masons' jobs cannot be done by the carpenters, and the painters must wait for the plasterers.

Von Wiese's position is that in erection of social science one essential job is the listing and characterizing of all discoverable human interrelations. He would reserve the name "sociology" for this division of labor. The present Part I sets forth a survey of relationship types with the assistance of a table of which the following is an abstract.

HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS FROM THE SOCIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW

I. SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS OF THE FIRST ORDER

A. Relationships in the form of to and with one another (4 subtypes).

B. Relationships from and without one another (3 subtypes).

II. SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS OF THE SECOND ORDER

(SOCIAL PROCESSES IN THE NARROWER SENSE)

C. Differentiating processes (5 subtypes).

D. Integrating processes (3 subtypes).

E. Destructive processes (6 subtypes).

F. Modifying and constructive processes (3 subtypes; cf. pp. 50 ff.). The book exhibits, in more or less detail, characteristics of approximately 650 human relationships, from the most specific to the most abstractly generalized, as suggested by the condensed table.

Waiving the question of restricting the name "sociology" to this division of labor, can there be any doubt that in this work of minute analysis Von Wiese is making an important contribution to social science? Men of a certain cast of mind will say, "This is only a list, an inventory,

an illustrated catalogue; it is not science, any more than a list of chemical reactions is chemistry, or a list of variations in breeding is biology." To which the answer is, if we mean by science explanation of phenomena, an inventory of the phenomena to be explained must be presupposed.

The book is not as easy reading as Ross's Principles, from which the author has adopted many suggestions; but it should be taken by American sociologists as a solemn warning of the hard work ahead before they can rightfully claim to have completed the foundations of any section of social science. It is to be hoped that the second part of the work, carrying the analysis over to "the structures of relationships," will not be long delayed.

ALBION W. SMALL

The New History and the Social Studies. By HARRY ELMER BARNES. New York: The Century Co., 1925. Pp. xvii+605. $4.00.

To one whose memory of the social sciences covers the period since the early seventies, this book reads like a fairy tale. Less because of its new facts than because of its dramatic pageantry of details new and old, but imperfectly evaluated, the exhibit has moved one reader to audible ejaculation of the ancient piety, "What hath God wrought!"

Without essential perversion, the story of the social sciences in the United States during the past generation might be told under the figure of a pack of mongrels foraging for their keep and each snarling at each whenever one found a consumable bite. All the needed reduction of exaggeration in the analogy might be effected by the substitute that until recently the typical American social scientist has acted as though he feared that the supply of truth in the world is not enough to go around, and that his share of it might run short if anybody else went in search of it along any but his own beaten paths. The social scientists have manifested a maximum of short-diametered clannishness each toward his own kind, and a minimum of magnanimity toward everybody else. The result has been stunted and shriveled social scientists and social science.

While showing this seamy side of the picture, Professor Barnes is chiefly concerned with the brighter outlook that is taking its place. It is equally true that the period of puckered programs and policies has also been a time in which broad and liberal conceptions have germinated and taken root, and in a measure already become fruitful. Each division of social science has enlarged and enriched and empowered itself

by taking knowledge of all the others. This process is still in its becomings, but the atmosphere has been so highly organized by it that today sanitary properties are much more notable than toxic factors in our social science.

After an introductory chapter containing a brief conspectus of the past and probable future of history, the book devotes a chapter each to influences which have been exerted upon the writing and interpretation of history by (a) geography, (b) psychology, (c) anthropology, (d) sociology, (e) science and technology, (f) economics, (g) political science, (h) ethics, (i) the rising level of intellectual leadership.

Better perhaps than by any other single sentence in the book, the author compresses his conception of the function of history and of the animus of "the new history" into the proposition, "History may have some value as literature, even if its content is not accurate or relevant, but it can safely be asserted that it has only literary significance unless it furnishes us with a clear understanding of the genesis of civilization as a totality" (pp. 566-67).

It is not within the immediate purpose of the book to show how the major divisions of social science have themselves at the same time become "new." The fact emerges in some form in each chapter, however, if not on every page, that history and the other types of social interpretation have been in an almost equal action and reaction upon one another. Not history alone is "new," but each constituent part of our social science has been renewing its youth through interaction with every other. Perhaps it were more accurate to say that each chief part of our social science has exchanged an uncanny pretension of maturity for normal and healthy youthfulness, in the course of an increasingly candid approach to reality. Everyone who is studying human experience, whether as a mere learner or with the purpose of becoming a teacher or an investigator, should hold this book up to himself as a mirror, to reveal whether his mental life is of the mid-nineteenth century or of the twentieth.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

ALBION W. SMALL

The Social and Political Systems of Central Polynesia. By R. W. WILLIAMSON, 3 vols. Cambridge University Press, 1924. 75s.

net.

These three volumes are, as indicated in the subtitle, an attempt to sift, arrange, and co-ordinate the vast amount of ethnological material