REVIEWS.
Altersklassen und Männerbünde, Eine Darstellung der Grundformen der Gesellschaft, von Heinrich Schurtz. Berlin: G. Reimer. 1902. Pp. ix., 458. Price 8 M.
In this work Dr. Schurtz pursues and expands an idea which had already found a place in his Ursprung der Kultur, published two years earlier. Sociologists have devoted much time and labour to the discussion of clan and family relationships and their developments, which are in the main dissociative, and in so doing have frequently overlooked the associations built up on a broader basis, whose influence has tended to knit the tribe, and eventually the state, together by counteracting the influence of blood kinship and local patriotism. He divides social phenomena into two groups, at the same time admitting that in practice they rarely correspond in all respects to a single theoretical type, but are more often "mixed forms." We have in the first place the primary, natural organisations, which depend on blood relationship, real or supposed, membership of which seldom depends on the will of the individual. On the other hand we have the secondary organisations ("artificial" is, as Dr. Schurtz admits, an unfortunate denomination for them), the existence of which is due to individual choice and the play of the social instinct.
Among the lower races these voluntary associations are represented according to Dr. Schurtz's view (1) by the "Altersklassen," the divisions into which primitive peoples in many parts of the world are grouped, at any rate roughly, according to age, and, especially in Australia, where the system is closely connected with marriage regulations, according to sex; (2) by male societies, which Dr. Schurtz is probably right in regarding as the direct outcome, in many cases, of Altersklassen, with the Männerhaus,
