288 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899
reality it is due to Dr Jacoby. According to this doctrine, which Ammon accepts without reserve, the rural population, being in excess of what is needed for agriculture, migrates to the cities and there presently rises to the top of fortune and possessions, supplanting the decadent city families, which are either extin- guished or precipitated into the social abyss. So long as the agricultural class furnishes a strong, robust contingent, suitable to replace the ruined city classes, the process of social disinte- gration and reintegration goes on regularly and efficiently ; but the moment the agricultural class becomes exhausted and no longer able to contribute men and force capable of reviving the city people, social decomposition is inevitable, and the state, society, and the race all drift miserably toward ruin.
All history, continues Ammon, shows that decay and ruin overtake nations always and exclusively when the superior classes become extinct while no equally vigorous and active stock is at hand to take their place. At some prehistoric time the autochthonous black-eyed race of Italy succumbed to the long- headed Aryans ; Rome fell when the Aryan race of the patri- cians was overwhelmed by the inferior race of the plebeians. In Gaul, when the national aristocracy was destroyed by Caesar, the mass of the population, composed of halfbreeds and roundheads, soon fell under the dominion of Rome. Subsequently the round- heads, which to Mr Ammon are veritable Medusa heads, multi- plied, and thereupon the politics of France degenerated. In fine, when the revolution of 1789 raised to power the bourgeoisie, whose cephalic index corresponds to that of the mass of the population, the politics of France began to dissolve and the triumph of anarchy was at hand.
Sociology, and its related science, the philosophy of history, thus by itself points out, according to the author, the path which society must follow to effect reforms ; so that this society, over which the author is so enthusiastic, after all requires, by his own admission, some wise reform. Nor does he hesitate to formulate
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