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Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil and Thus Spake Zarathustra, and Spencer's First Principles and Facts and Comments, the latter being No. 13 and the last volume issued.

The present volume presents the results of the various researches in Indo-European ethnology, especially those of recent years, which have revolutionized the opinions of scholars in regard to the Aryan question, and advances a tentative theory in regard to the origin and diffusion of the Indo-Europeans and the Indo-European culture. After setting forth the data of the problem and its traditional solution, the writer discusses the inductions of philology concerning the protoAryan epoch, and then passes to a consideration of the results of anthropological investigation concerning the primitive inhabitants of Europe. He stands with the anthropologists rather than with the philologists, holding, with Broca Topinard and others, that a primitive unity of speech does not imply a primitive unity of race. The genesis of the Aryan language and culture, he says, is something quite different from the genesis of the anthropological type or types which constituted the people who spoke that language and possessed the Aryan culture. Finding a brachycephalic type present and preponderant in all the primary and secondary centers of Indo-European ethnology, he concludes that such a type was the principal, if not the only, propagator of Aryanism. In this he is partially in accord with Sergi, whose recent contributions to the Aryan controversy have attracted wide attention, but unlike Sergi he rejects in toto the whole Asiatic hypothesis. The brachycephalic type from which sprang the Aryan culture has been recognized with certainty in France, Belgium, Switzerland, in the Balkan regions and the countries of the Danube, and existed there long before the formation of the proto-Aryan people. The ancient home of our ancestors, then, according to this writer, is not in Bactria, as Professor Max Müller and others long maintained, or in Scandinavia, as Penka contended, or in the Rokitno swamp, as suggested by Pösche, but in Central Europe, which Cuno, as long ago as 1871, declared to be the cradle of the human race. The Urheimat, says our author, must have been between the Danube and the Volga, that is, in the eastern part of the middle zone of Europe. "The most probable conclusion," he says, "is that the evolution of the proto-Aryan language took place at some point in the median zone of the European continent, in a group of tribes, in which the brachycephalic element was certainly represented, and in which just as certainly were more or less of other elements of European ethnology, each of which brought its own con

tribution now impossible to distinguish in the unity of the final resultant" (p. 691).

Any new theory of Indo-European origins must, of course, contend with the various hypotheses that have been hitherto advanced. It is not surprising, therefore, that a large part of the present work consists in a critical exposition of these hypotheses and a demonstration of their inadequacy. The conclusions of the author are set forth with becoming modesty, and he closes his work with a recognition of its relative value, and the assurance that he stands ready to change his opinions with the discovery of new facts showing his present position untenable.

IRA W. HOWERTH.

La recherche de la paternité. Par ABEL PONZAL. Bérenger, Sénateur, Membre de l'Institut. et E. Brière, 1902. Pp. 579.

Préface par M. Paris: V. Giard

THE title page declares that this book is a study in sociology and comparative legislation. The argument is sociological; the conclusion is framed in the form of a projected amendment to civil, penal, and administrative law. The volume is a practical proof that neither the science of economics nor of jurisprudence is adequate for the treatment of problems of this class, because every interest of society is affected and many agencies are required to co-operate in providing a remedy. The first part is historical, traces the development of the French law from early times down to the present, and gives a comparative view of legislation in other modern countries. The second part criticises the general principles of that part of the code known as Article 340; answers objections; discusses modes of proof, seduction as a crime, and necessity of penal repression.

By an elaborate presentation of statistics the author fortifies his argument by showing how the French law affects birth-rate, mortality of illegitimate infants, marriage, and juvenile crime.

Then he discusses reform measures proposed and offers his own solution. A full bibliography adds to the value of the volume. There is every evidence of conscientious study of facts and of a high moral purpose.

CHARLES RICHMOND HENderson.

The Lower South. By WILLIAM GARROTT BROWN. New York: The Macmillan Co. Pp. 271

WHAT might be called the sociological aspect of American history finds a good illustration in the title essay of The Lower South, by William Garrott Brown. Several of the five essays have appeared in different periodicals, where they called attention to one of the few unprejudiced students of past and present conditions in the South. In both his essays and lectures Mr. Brown has shown an appreciation of the tragedy of defeated ambitions and misplaced hopes, but he has never attempted to condone a fault or to explain away a mistake. Contrary to the expectation aroused by the title, his "lower" South is not so much a relative social rank as a geographical classification. He shows how the more southern or Gulf states, through the cultivation of cotton, gradually superseded Virginia in the leadership of the South. He finds in Yancy, McDuffie, Soule, and Toombs the successors of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe; but leaders whose prosperity made them arrogant and whose fear lest they be deprived of the source of their wealth made them resort to threats. The writer does not hesitate to show the faults of this oligarchy, nor does he spare the northern "dough face" who bowed down to them to curry political favor. This one thought-that the South did not change its opinion concerning the desirability of slaveholding between the time of Thomas Jefferson and that of Jefferson Davis, but that the leadership shifted and brought new views-this is alone worth the volume. The four additional essays are of minor merit. A careful study of the resources of the Confederacy is the most valuable and a sophomoric eulogy on Hobson of the least merit.

EDWIN E. SPARKS.

NOTES AND ABSTRACTS.

The Influence of Social Habits on the Spirit of Initiative.-The idea that the spirit of initiative is dying out in France is widespread. Although it may have been somewhat exaggerated, there are justifiable grounds for the belief. We shall consider the causes at work in the nineteenth century which have opposed the spirit of initiative. No one can doubt that the kind of life, the occupation, the means of employing the time, and the customs which control the establishment and development of the family have a strong influence over personal effort. It will, therefore, not be useless to attempt to determine the relations existing between the social habits and the spirit of initiative. The subject will be discussed under two divisions: (1) the family; (2) the method of gaining a livelihood or the occupation.

1. The family. The family is the principal factor in the formation of social habits. In the family the child receives the most permanent and efficient motives of life. The conception of the parents as to the kind of life the child should lead and the ends it should attain has a decisive influence in favoring or suppressing the spirit of initiative. If there existed the custom that the young people in entering upon marriage would be compelled to depend upon their own resources for their living, it would act as an incentive to independent activity and initiative. But the young Frenchman is confronted by no such problems. Custom and law assure to him a part of the family fortune. This he anticipates on the day of his marriage, not only in the form of the dowry, but also in that of an annuity. It would never occur to a French family to reduce a young man to those pecuniary resources which he can supply for himself. Such customs, far from stimulating a young man to take up an occupation where he may be able to make for himself a bright future, lead him to pursue for several years those studies which allow much leisure, and finally he takes up some very mediocre position. From early childhood the children see the efforts which their parents make to remove for them every necessity of personal effort and to make their pathway entirely smooth. It is the ambition of most parents that their children may have an occupation in which the cares and responsibilities of life may be avoided to the largest possible extent, such as employment under the government, in the army, and in administration, the whole tendency being to kill every desire for personal effort. Many of the sons of rich business-men and of the aristocracy are utterly incapable of filling a useful position, and squander in vulgar pleasures the fortunes of their parents, acquired by work and intelligence. If a young man should escape these influences and desire to make a place for himself in a foreign country, he meets with the resistance of the love of his parents, especially that of his mother. The force of the bonds attaching parents to children in France is very great, and we are not attacking this tie; but the perversion of it that kills the initiative of the young man is disastrous. Many very capable young men are induced to remain in Paris on a meager salary, when they know that they could earn many times as much in America or Africa, simply because their parents fear they will not be cared for so well there as at home. It is this egoistic affection of the parents which causes many young men to vegetate in mediocrity, kills all initiative and independence, and deprives our commerce and industry and our colonies of the better elements in development and prosperity.

The same influence which directs the sons toward government careers leads the parents to desire a government officer for a son-in-law. There is a feeling against the young men in commercial and industrial occupations, and young women are not willing to leave the large cities of France or accept a marriage that involves any cares or responsibilities. The habits in regard to both choice of an occupation and to marriage are opposed to the spirit of initiative.

In addition to these obstacles to initiative may be mentioned those of the marriage relation in France. It no longer furnishes the strong motive that it naturally

should in industry and general progress. The marriage relation has lost much of its dignity and high value, and in the increasing sterility of marriages is found one of the greatest causes of stagnation in commerce and industry.

2. The method of gaining a livelihood or the occupation.- With the exception of government officials and soldiers, there are very few Frenchmen in the French colonies. The French do not profit from their colonies, because their people are too closely attached to the mother-country. Their lack of adventure and of a desire for colonial undertakings is due to the nature of their patriotism. The natural resources, of the country, its fine climate, the varied fertility of the soil, and the pleasant social relations are some of the causes which hold them to the motherland and make them consider emigration as a sad event in life, while it is emigration which is chiefly sought by the Anglo-Saxon and seems to be the normal and happy consequence of his whole existence.

This attachment of the French to their native soil should be noted, for it is one of the important causes of their lack of national expansion. It has its good side, and is an element of strength, but its influence has been exaggerated. One of the causes of this attachment is the wide diffusion of the means for comfortable existence at home. Saving is a national virtue, few marriages are contracted without the dowry, younger sons are not discriminated against in inheritance, as in England, the families are not large, as in Germany, and wealth is distributed among all classes. In addition to the help received by inheritance, which in general is not large, attention should be given to the national habit of saving as another means of keeping the people at home. It soon brings them sufficient capital to enable them to be contented with a small income and to lead the idle life of the independent. It is not necessary to combat their habit of saving, but that which is deplorable is their exaggerated love of a life exempt from hard work and close application. This excessive desire for repose and the lack of ambition are very reprehensible social habits, and are due in large measure to their education, to legislation, and also to the economic conditions in France in the last century. In this respect the difference between the French and the English is very great. The English push effort and enterprise almost to excess and seek the occupations in which gain is large. The Frenchman, without much ambition, an enemy of effort, contenting himself with little, of modest tastes, defended against need by a small number of desires and by a small fortune resulting from inheritance and saving, will choose a career in which pecuniary profits are small, but which offers quietude, security, and especially the allurement of a retiring pension. The occupations most sought in fulfilment of such tastes are those of an employee of the public offices. A large number of the bourgeoisie, attracted by the prospect of an assured salary and a retiring pension, enter the service of the state and find a satisfaction of their tendencies there, the number of public offices having been greatly increased during the nineteenth century. Moreover, the industrial evolution of the last century, characterized by invention, by prodigious development of railroads, and by great organization of business under the form of limited joint-stock companies, has extended still farther the taste and search on the part of the bourgeoisie for places as employees and officials. These bureaucratic positions and the employments with a fixed salary and a limited responsibility, sought by the majority of the nation, because of habits and tendencies contrary to the spirit of initiative, are themselves destructive of this spirit and of personal effort. Unfortunately the habit of indecision and carelessness contracted in these occupations becomes the predominant note of life. If this lack of initiative were confined to the employment it would not be so bad, but in the personal interest and in the part which individuals play in public affairs this lack of initiative is manifested. The influence of the mode of employment creates by habit a second nature, it develops or atrophies the natural qualities, and it is certain that one of the principal obstacles to the spirit of all initiative in France, after the system of education, is found in the manner in which most of the French are occupied.-CHARLES HARDY, "De l'influence des habitudes sociales sur l'esprit d'initiative," in La réforme sociale, November, 1902. E. M.

The Concept of Society.-The word "society " implies the idea of a complex unity, of an ensemble of beings united by a band and by a tie of which they are con

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