Study and observation. Consequently one may write much of psychological factors and motives without setting forth the historical and observational bases.
Still, there are occasions where the psychological factor might have been seen by the author more clearly and with greater accuracy through more attention to history. For instance, he gives the impression that strikes are caused by a breaking out of resentment due to repression. This seems hardly compatible with the fact that there are more strikes in periods of prosperity than during business depression, when the repression of the working man is much greater. Similarly, the author explains the business cycle as due to impulsive profit-seeking; but two hundred years ago there was no business cycle, and yet there was impulsive selfishness.
On the whole, however, the unsophisticated reader will probably get from the book a pretty good idea of many of the major motives in the functioning of present-day social institutions. The author seems particularly interested in singling out such tendencies as rivalry, egoism, and domination, and contrasting them with sympathy, altruism, and intellectual attitudes. Here he is concerned with values. Of the motives in this conflict he values most highly the sympathetic altruistic group, and he thinks that education may do much to lessen the evil influence of selfishness.
So, it is thought, Dr. Williams's book should not be judged as a comprehensive account of the various streams of thought that now go under the term social psychology, which one naturally thinks of as the materials for a Principles of Social Psychology. As an interesting account of certain important motives operating in our institutional life, his work deserves praise.
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology. Margaret Alice Murray. Oxford University Press, 1921.
In this recently published book, Miss Murray has presented a survey of the belief in witchcraft as it developed on the continent and in England during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. She has treated the subject in an entirely novel fashion, for while the consensus of opinion among modern scientists, such as Alfred Lehman and William Sumner, has been to consider the belief in witchcraft as due to hysteria and suggestion, Miss Murray considers the witches to have been members of a secret religious cult, organized in opposition to Christianity.
