268 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
rare few brands plucked from the burning who are elected to a graduate career.
But the volume is more than a textbook in the pedagogical sense. It is an interpretation of a system of thought which comparatively few people have had the enterprise to master in its original form. It ought to influence many readers to correct their mistake of omitting to find out what Ward has been teaching for a quarter-century. Even those who have studied Ward's books from the beginning will find ample reason for acknowledging the service which Professor Dealey has rendered both as editor and commentator.
Between adoption of the elective system, and rejection of the old-fashioned " mental and moral philosophy," which until recently served at all events to give a certain coherence to the college course, the colleges have gone farther than most of them are aware toward forfeiting one of their chief claims to respect. They are putting stu- dents off with a list of uncorrelated courses instead of giving them a unified view of life. The stronger the college, the greater the proba- bility that the proposition is literally true. If the average student of the larger colleges has at graduation a definite conception of his relation to society, it is very seldom traceable to the direct influence of the college. The opposite was once the case, and doubtless will be again. A college course that leaves the knowledge imparted in a state of uncorrelated chaos is lamentably defective. The only think- able substitute, in the near future, for the speculative philosophy which used to shape the general world-view taught in American col- leges must be some version of sociology. Whether the merits of the sociologists in particular, or the logic of events in general, will most directly fulfil this prophecy, we need not predict. In either case, such books as this will play an important part in preparing the way for a needed reform in college programs.
ALBION W. SMALL.
Jugendfiirsorge und Strafrecht in den Vereinigten Staatcn ron Amerika: Ein Beitrag zur Erziehungspolitik unserer Zeit. Von J. M. BAEMREITHER. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1905. Pp. Ixviii -f 305.
The author is already well known in the English-speaking world and has taken pains to study the problems of the social care of youth- ful citizens in all civilized states. The introduction is devoted to a
