the facts is impressive in the breadth of knowledge and balance of judgment which it displays.
The book is divided into three parts. The first treats of some biological errors of the 'Darwinians.' (A chapter devoted to Darwin's theory of the origin of species may be skipped without loss.) They think only of the struggle for existence between members of the same species, and forget the importance of the constant struggle with the whole environment the struggle for light, warmth, air, and nourishment. They "ignore the existence of the universe." Even the one phase of the universal struggle of which they take account is wrongly interpreted as a literal fight to the death. Besides, they commit the gross error of treating social facts as if they were biological phenomena. All social processes are essentially psychological. Institutions are shaped by ideas; and ideas are 'selected' not by butcheries but by suggestion, argument, and persuasion.
Parts II and III have to do with errors of a sociological character. The former (in my opinion the least convincing part of the work) discusses the significance of association, which the 'Darwinians' are accused of ignoring. All evolution is increase in the breadth and complexity of association; and this for society means the increase of travel, commerce, and the interchange of ideas. War is intrinsically a form of dissociation, and hence cannot without paradox be said to be a cause of evolution. Civil wars are confessedly a curse; and national boundaries do not change the curse into a blessing. If it be urged that conquest, by enlarging national boundaries, results in increased association, the reply is that it may or may not so result; and that when the increased association does follow, it is properly due not to the war itself but to wise government.
Part III deals with a variety of topics, but is in the main devoted to showing the preponderant part which peaceful industries have in all times played in the formation and development of states. The 'Darwinian' sociology is in a position analogous to that of geology before Lyell: it explains the origins of society by catastrophies, instead of by slow, imperceptible changes. The primitive state is not a product of war, but necessarily precedes it. No considerable part of any people could ever be for any considerable time engaged in war. Every society is first and foremost an industrial society. Its energies are of necessity far less occupied by struggles with other societies than by the unceasing struggle with the natural environment; and it is to this latter that social evolution is in the main ultimately due.
These are but a few salient features of the argument, which give no hint of its richness in suggestive observations.
Bryn Mawr College.
The following books also have been received:
By Bertrand Russell. London, New York, Bombay, and Calcutta, Longmans, Green and Co., 1910.—pp. vi, 185. $2.00. }}
