148 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
bank account, it must be remembered that very few of the more prosperous classes are contented with that standard. Investments are cut off from the poor, and a larger proportion of fraudulent agents are found among them. Among the poor, insurance stands simply as a guarantee <>f slight reimbursement after the death of the wag^- earner, and actually does little more than provide for an extravagant funeral. Perhaps the greatest evils are connected with child insurance. About 1000 agents canvass New York for this class of insurance, and about 1,000,000 policies are issued. If the insured pays premiums to the full amount of the policy, the money is not available unless he continues to pay premiums until his death. Flaws are frequently made in writing policies preventing payment when premiums have been regularly made. If the insured is ill, the agent frequently refrains from calling, knowing that if premiums are not paid within two weeks of death, there will be no payment of the policy. Probably two-thirds of the policies lapse, though seldom without a struggle on the part of the insured. When such insurance is compared with that secured from regular companies, the inequalities of advantage are apparent. In regard to rent, the thrifty must pay for the unthrifty and irregular. If the poor man has to resort to law, he must employ a lawyer who has little ability, will hold on to his client as long as possible, and who arouses distrust in the mind of the judge. The courts are not hopelessly corrupt, but victory lies with brains which cost money. The rich man can borrow at a low rate of interest, and have the use of the property given as security. But the poor man must borrow at 30 per cent, and pawn his property as security. Another disadvantage of the poor is in the purchase of furniture on the installment plan at excessive prices and frequent losses from failure to make payments. There can be no relief for this situa- tion except through legislation. J. B. REYNOLDS, in Yale Review, May 1896, New Haven : Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor.
Necessity of a Psychological and Sociological Interpretation of the World. Transcendent monism places the unity of the physical and psychical in one substance, as that of Spinoza, in one force, as that of Spencer, or in one unknown. The theory which makes the physical and the psychical two parallel aspects of one and the same unknowable reality is a dualism in fact, encompassed by a unity wholly nominal and abstract. This is a pseudo-monism, without application in theory or in practice. The true monism is found by the reduction of the psychical to the physical or the reduction of the physical to the psychical. Two principal attempts are made to form one idea of the universe: (i) In its general laws or forms ; (2) In its foundation and elements. The positivism of Comte and Littre" is bounded by mathematical, physico-chemical, biological, and sociological laws, while the psychological laws are neglected. All scientific laws tend to this conclusion: there has been in the universe unity of composition. The consciousness of other men and of other animals is a mean term which warrants the passage from a philosophy of law to a philosophy of beings. A philosophy at once speculative and ethical opens to me the heart of things and authorizes me to conceive of my consciousness as a revela- tion of other consciousnesses, as well as a means of action to them. Intelligence depends on the life, which itself depends on that which we call matter; but how can we say that matter is truly foreign to the whole psychic element? The individual in exclusive particularity is an abstraction, since the individual does not exist. When we live our proper life, we live the universal life. It is unintelligible to explain experience except as produced by a mental function. The general properties which we assign to objects of exterior perception are the qualities of processes of perception themselves. Such phenomena are in such representations the results of psychical activity. The objects are the products of the subject. The true monism ought to be the unity of the subjective and objective points of view. The mechanical synthesis of the world is not a point of view which unifies the quantitative relations in space and time. The biological conception of the universe, which makes it a living organism, where all is in functional correlation, is superior to this. But the biological is on one side, an appli- cation of the mechanical, on the other, by its sensitive element, of the psychical soci- ology, which implies the psychological, furnishes a better type of the most important laws of univeisal synthesis. Human reason is in great part, a social product. Our
