708 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
tained by positive science. To deny sociology access to this ideal sphere is to keep it inadequate and fragmentary. VixcENZO TANGORRA, Rivista Italians <h ' Scciolo^ia, September, 1897.
Sociology and Juridical History. The plodding scholar who turns from his minute and patient historico-juridic investigations will be struck by the abundance of sociological works lately produced. He may comfort himself by thinking that a little truth is better than a gigantic hypothesis. What he makes known may be little, but is never irrelevant or meles>. He cooperates in the common work, as the microscop- ist contributes to natural history. Most sociologists do not recognize the value of his work. Since Darwin and Spencer the savage is their chief material. Historic erudi- tion, minute investigation to wrest from antiquity a small secret, seem to many useless pedantry. Travelers' tales of barbarians, colored by preconceived theories and uncor- rected by philology, have been unduly valued. The juridic student believes as firmly as anyone in evolution. He sees it today in the struggle between institutions. He understands the advantage of applying to sociology the methods of natural history, but he has seen with regret a mania for generalizing, a borrowing of terms rather than methods. Juridic history should furnish the bones for reconstructions. We ought not yet to say what society is, much less to describe its future phases. Imitate naturalists. They do not say what a species will be two centuries from now. True, many students of the philosophy of law spread their wings in an atmosphere far from things of this world, while many devotees of sociology, without knowing at all the history of their own country, fancying that great biological principles are enough, confidently declare the past, present, and future of human society. It is time for all to use judgment. True science will gain when the study of human society is begun and continued by a study of facts, in a scientific spirit, with all the means that ethnical, philological, and juridical culture offers. What is lost in extension will be gained in intensity. N. TAMASSIA, Kirista lialiana di Sociologia, September, 1897.
The Sociology of Suggestion. In a recent volume Nordau has treated the theory of social suggestion in much the same manner as Tarde. His main point is his conception of the genius as exercising the same functions in society as the nerve ' centers in the individual. Nothing appears to him more delusive than the search for permanent characters in the social mind which is in reality constantly modified by individual minds. Under the term suggestion is put another phenomenon, that of the powerful action of the social environment upon the individual. This seems more easily sustained than the former. The influence of tradition is so great that men seem incapable of adopting a universal language. The fact that the actual leaders of a people are seldom its superior men stands in marked opposition to Nordau's theory of genius suggestion. The explanation of suggestion by a study of hypnotism as merely an exaggerated form is incorrect. The causes of hypnotism are secondary and abnormal in themselves, and do not form the law of normal states. The theory of hypnotism cannot be carried over and applied to unconscious suggestion. The " sense of imitation " is put upon a purely mechanical basis. " In normal conditions the more perfect individual exercises suggestion over the less perfect, but the inverse does not occur." Experience does not favor this doctrine. An explanation of intel- lectual phenomena is not found in suggestion. Suggestion comprehends only the affective states, whose intensity and duration have no relation to culture, intelligence, or the normal action of the will. A great difference exists between the reproduction of examples (imitation) and the socialization of general inventions. History presents this general law : "A doctrine can conquer the world only by loosing its personal con- nection with its founder; example operates to maintain small groups of disciples who vanish; the mass adapts the invention to its conditions of life, makes it its own, and renders it sometimes unrecognizable." Le Devenir social, August-September, 1897.
Official Investigation of the George Junior Republic. The Committee of the New York State Board of Charities on Placing out Dependent Children, after a visit in the summer of 1897 to the George Junior Republic, made a report derogatory to the
