Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/432

418 NEW BOOKS. published about four years ago. That book was principally confined to an exposition of the methods of sociological investigation which were dominant on the other side of the Rhine. But it showed that M. Bougie had given deep and serious attention to his subject, and was quite capable of conducting sociological investigations on his own account. In the first part of the present volume he defines the idea of equality, he shows the reality of this idea, and then proceeds to give an anthropo- logical, ideological and sociological explanation of it. M. Bougie goes on to ask : Why does the idea of equality, such as he conceives it, appear only in western civilisation at first in the decadent Greco-Roman world and secondly in our own day ? His answer is based on two grounds psychological deduction and historical induction and it is to the effect that the social structure of western civilisation is peculiarly adapted to the success of the idea of equality. This idea is in part the result and in part the cause of the present constitution of modern western society. How far the idea of equality is the result and how far it is the cause of present social conditions and tendencies M. Bougie does not undertake to determine. But he shows very clearly that equality is not a mere theory begotten in the brain of philosophers and that it is sufficient to refute Rousseau, let us say, in order to exterminate the equalitarian senti- ment. This sentiment is not a theory originally matured in the minds of a few and implanted by reason, contagion, and imitation in the minds of the many. It is something much deeper than that. It is the outcome of the whole formation of modern society. Hence the idea of equality cannot be destroyed by assailing the arguments of its literary exponents. It can only be destroyed by undermining the whole social structure out of which it has arisen. If M. Bougie's view of the origin and basis of the sentiment of equality is right if equality is a product of the structure of society the attacks upon this idea, which have been so fashionable in recent years, must be regarded as extremely shallow and futile. The operative power of this idea will not be affected by laughing Rousseau and his companions out of court. It will only be affected by revolutionising the social structure on which this idea is based. M. Bougie's book both as regards its sociological method and its contents is well worth reading. Savants Penseum et Ai-l'ixti ;< : biologic et pathologic comparees. Par THEODORE WECHNIAKOFF. Public- par les soins de Raphael Petrucci. Paris: Felix Alcan (Bibliotk&que dc philosophic contcmjioraine), 1899. Pp. ix, 221. This little volume of concise ' notes,' prepared for readers of French by M. Petrucci, forms a contribution or, at least, a supplement to the author's central work, Typu'uxjic anthropologique des arts et des scii'm-i-.i. and needs to be read in connexion with the latter. In an interesting preface the editor gives the story of the appearance of this greater work and its adjuncts. They have been compiled in the leisure hours of a long judicial and political career in Russia, and their publication covers a period of about forty years. They form collectively an attempt to analyse both the intellectual product and the intellectual producer, as mutually reacting. And in this particular volume we have, in mere outline, an attempt to classify sundry types of intellect as expressed in certain modes of production, and as suffering in certain specified ways, physical and mental, from the effects of those modes of production. These certain ways are exemplified by some one or two illustrious cases : Darwin, Da Vinci, Comte, and so on. Or rather, the illustrious cases may be said to have given the occasion for forming so many classes, or nuclei for