REVIEWS

Individuum und Gemeinschaft: Grundlegung der Kulturphilosophie. Von THEODOR LITT. Zweite völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage. Leipzig-Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1924. Pp. x+265. Bound, 8 gold marks.

This is one of a considerable body of comparatively recent German publications which challenge Americans to take notice. We have been losing touch with developments in German sociological theory since, let us say, the publication of Simmel's Soziologie (1908). Meanwhile new tendencies have developed which are striking out lines of inquiry quite different from these which we are following. I have not yet made myself sufficiently acquainted with the cross-currents in this recent movement to be able to speak with assurance about the connections between the different writers. I began to be aware, however, that a new sociology was developing in Germany, from reading the first number of Kölner Vierteljahrshefte für Sozialwissenschaften. (See this Journal, XXVII, 92.) Pending closer acquaintance with the movement, I am testing out, as designations for it, the terms post-, super-, and neo-Simmelism. I am by no means certain that either of these phrases is the most intelligent index to the movement. I am not even sure that in its present peculiarities it does not largely antedate Simmel. Tentatively, however, without pressing the question of origins, we may indicate a mere chronological zone of the movement as post-Simmelism. The present author almost expressly classifies himself in that way when he credits Simmel with having laid the foundation for his distinctive argument (p. 113).

Litt adopts from Simmel the triad formation—the Ego, the Alter, and Third-as the key group in social structures. He promotes it to the rank of a leading category, which he designates as "the closed circuit" (der geschlossone Kreis). In the functionings of "the closed circuit" he finds promise of penetration into the mysteries of the relations between persons in general and their social milieu.

The book is thus an attempt to restate the issues between the atomistic and the societary preconceptions of the human lot, and to reach an adjustment between them. It is impossible briefly to indicate its importance. Indeed it cannot be justly evaluated except as a term in an already complicated dialectic.

The author warns his readers (p. vii) that he is not addressing himself to a general public, not even to sociologists at large, but only to the

esoteric few whose thinking is most closely related to his. The debate has isolated certain concepts, each of which calls for an introduction. It has developed an idiom of its own, which would yield up its full meaning only to wide contextual interpretation. It could not be literally translated. It could not even be adequately paraphrased without extensive enlargements or drastic adaptations of our vocabulary. Yet Americans cannot afford to be ignorant of this movement. I fancy that I detect an analogy between the relation of this volume to present German sociology and the place of Professor Cooley's first book in the American sociological movement. The prospect that this impression may be correct should insure for the German book and its connections careful study in this country.

The closing paragraph indicates the place which, in the author's judgment, his analysis occupies in the growing scheme of sociological interpretation. It is a link in the evolutionary chain on which Simmel began to work in his earliest ventures in the methodology of social exegesis (e.g., Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, 1892, and Zur Methodik der Socialwissenschaft, in Schmoller's Jahrbuh für Gesetzgebung, etc. 20 (1896), p. 575.):

"It thus appears that turning of attention to the object of the psychical sciences implicitly carries with it a portion of the methodology of the physical sciences; the epistemological theory of history is imbedded in the metaphysic of the mind. But whatever comes to light, in especially tangible form, in the particular case of history, as a central member of the psychical disciplines, the same is true in fact of each science in the group. This is not the place for further elaboration of the proposition. Accordingly the foregoing may be characterized as a basis for a metaphysic of the psychical sciences, and as containing the principles of the epistemological theory of the same."

Prophecy would be rash, but it is quite possible that post-Simmelism will prove to be a pillar in the ultimate sociology.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

ALBION W. SMALL

Soziologie: Untersuchung des menschlichen sozialen Lebens. Von DR. PHIL. A. ELEUTHEROPULOS, Professor an der Universität Zürich. Dritte gänzlich umgearbeitete und erweitete Auflage. Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1923. Pp. xv+238.

To the best of my recollection nobody has attempted to reduce all the different projected sociologies to a single pair of types. To supply that lack, I propose the following: All the different schemes of sociology have been either, first, projects to assemble from all sources accessible to

the author all the information available about different kinds of happenings wherever human beings have lived together, and efforts to arrange those happenings into correlations which to the author seem plausible; or on the other hand they have been, second, attempts to devise a technique for discovering new facts about human beings living together, or new relations of cause and effect between previously known facts. For convenience I will call these respectively the rationalizing type and the research type. To be sure, a precise line of separation could not be drawn between the sheep and the goats without dismembering the majority of both. Few sociologists could be assigned absolutely to either category. Whatever their prevailing tendency, each has his fortunate or unfortunate moments of wandering into the other path.

The book before us is an example of the former type. It presents sociology as "the investigation and understanding of the organized livingtogether of mankind, or 'social life"" (p. 3). It adds: "Analytically expressed, the task involved in investigation of the organized association of human beings requires that we shall arrive at understanding of the origin of this association, together with its conditions, the development of this association together with its conditions and laws, in short that we shall comprehend this associated life of human kind in accordance with its nature." That is, a philosophy of the human lot in general.

The book is also an excellent illustration of how soothing such a sociology may be to readers whose critical faculties are unobstrusive. One after another, obvious phases of human life are assigned to places in which they do not disturb the author's conception of other phases nor provoke disturbing inquiries. This particular philosophy will satisfy no one, however, who cannot repress his demand for proof that reality runs in accordance with its scheme.

ALBION W. SMALL

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Pleasure and Behavior. By FREDERIC LYMAN WELLS. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1924. Pp. xvi+267. $2.50.

Anger: Its Religious and Moral Significance. By GEORGE MALCOLM STRATTON. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1923. Pp. 267. $2.25.

Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual. By F. MATTIAS ALEXANDER. With an Introduction by JOHN Dewey. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1923. Pp. xxxiii+317. $3.00. These three books are essays in the applications of the newer social psychology. Each has its aspects of significance for sociology. Pro

fessor Wells thinks that civilization has brought no increase in pleasure. "Pleasure values tend to decrease as one's desires are further removed from the direction of the fundamental instinctive urges. Such removal is an inevitable effect of civilization, and this is one reason why the pleasure-value of life exhibits no general increase with civilization's advance but moves in cycles, with some tendency to become lower as life grows more complex" (pp. ix, x). He wishes to reduce the psychology of pleasurable response to the categories of science in order that enjoyment may be increased. He recognizes the relative or subjective nature of feeling and specifically points out that feeling-values may become conditioned to various types of responses (p. 238). Yet he does not make adequate use of this fact in building up his theory of pleasure control. He reviews the correlations of feeling with self-maintenance, eroticism, gregarious contacts, ethics, emotional expression, and the intellectual life. He has a more complete treatment of the feeling complements of frustrated urges than one usually finds in a psychological work of this sort. Much of the content of the book is rather commonplace, but the treatment after all is primarily for the general reader. The viewpoint is also rather subjective. If he could have brought the outlook of a thorough knowledge of social processes and pressures to bear upon his interpretation he might have found more room for a constructive treatment of methods of utilizing our resources for the redirection of pleasure experience through the control of conditional responses. Certainly pleasure patterns may be more effectively and constructively manipulated than he has indicated. But this is a problem which must be worked out jointly by the sociologist and the social psychologist. A rather pessimistic conclusion challenges attention to the problem which he has raised: "The general tendency of advanced civilization seems to be toward concentrating the resources of pleasure among relatively few persons. In the later stages of society's life, the moralist contrasts the luxury and extravagance of the rich with the misery of the poor. Uneven distribution of pleasure means social tension; and this sufficiently increased means explosion, spontaneous or otherwise. Ancient kingdoms were mostly shattered from without. Pre-revolutionary France and Russia broke under their own internal strain. The one thing which is practically as sure as that the world endures is that science will advance and make life more complicated. The historical result of this change is increased inequality in pleasure distribution. This means more unstable societies and shortening cycles in the life of nations" (pp. 263-64). This view is scarcely justified. Pleasure is a function of adequate expression through organization. It is by no means impossible to have increas

ing complexity of social life with a decrease of conflict. Hence pleasure might easily be made to increase rather than diminish with social progress through science. But a society in which this was brought about would have to be scientifically planned by the sociologist and other social scientists.

Stratton's volume is a rather detailed study of the place of the anger emotion in the great world-religions. It strikes this reviewer that its chief sociological significance is to be found in the implied correlations between forms of emotional expression and environmental conditions. Certainly anger is extolled most highly in those religions which have been evolved in the regions of the melting-pots, or, perhaps better, the boilingpots of the world. The isolated peoples have had religions of peace. The author's general reflections on the geography of hatred, anger and the origins of religion, the psychic forces creating religion (pp. 192–96), and the relation of anger to war have decided significance for the sociologist. He believes that anger may be of great value socially and morally as an energizer, especially of the higher social values in the conflict with social evils. But to secure this service of anger for society, it must be freed from the direction of instinct and rationalized by means of socialized knowledge. He summarizes his ideas in this connection in his final chapter on "Rules for the Fighting Mood."

Mr. Alexander has written a peculiar, and in many ways a valuable book, in a most abominable manner. This volume is a continuation of his former work entitled Man's Supreme Inheritance. It carries the strong approval of Professor Dewey. Mr. Alexander is a practitioner of the art of correcting postural and similar physical, and resulting mental and moral, defects. His thesis, repeated scores of times, is that effective physical and moral reintegration cannot be accomplished on the basis of following verbal directions in a subconscious manner. It is necessary to think out the plan of action or of conduct before we even attempt the correction; otherwise the old errors will be perpetuated through re-innervation of the old habit responses. His insistence is upon what the philosopher calls rational response to stimulus. What is really implied, in behavioristic terms, is that the old internal or nueral habits must be replaced by the establishment of new internal or neural habits as the initial stage of the act before the second stage of overt habit response can be set up successfully. The author refers to this process as the building of new instincts; he does not distinguish instinct from habit.

1 For an explanation of the mechanisms involved in this process see the present writer's article, "Neure-Psychic Technique," Psychological Review, November, 1923.