REVIEWS.
To those who are in any way interested in the racial development of Europe, or in the historical and social movements which are intimately bound up with racial questions, and especially to those who have endeavored to get light upon some of these most important aspects of European civilization by reference to the maze of contradictory material on the subject scattered through all kinds of books and journals by all kinds of writers, this new work by Dr. Ripley will be most welcome. "Containing little that may be called original, strictly speaking, it represents merely an honest effort to coordinate, illustrate, and interpret the vast mass of original material—product of years of patient investigation by observers in all parts of Europe—concerning a primary phase of human association: that of race or physical relationship" (Preface, p. v). The object of the book, as specified by the author, is to "disentangle" the forces represented by physical environment and race from the "intricate mass of forces working in and through each other," and "to analyze them separately and apart, as if for the moment the others were non-existent" (p. 2). Dr. Ripley has faithfully and skillfully performed his task. The enormous labor expended by the author is fully made manifest by a perusal of the work, and by the very complete and well-arranged bibliography printed by itself in a volume of 160 pages. While the conclusions derived from the critical examination of all this material leave room for difference of opinion in some cases, the result on the whole is very satisfactory, and gives evidence of a fair-minded and judicial examination of all the facts.
The basis of the whole work is anthropological. Before it is possible to determine the influence of the racial factor—temperament, etc.—in the historical and social movements of Europe, such as the movements of population, etc., and before it is possible to distinguish
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