Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/288

This page needs to be proofread.

272 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

thropy in France, one who today represents in the national legislature the most progressive modern measures in respect to public relief.

C. R. HENDERSON.

Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals. By FREDERICK MORGAN DAVENPORT. New York : The Macmillan Co. Pp. x -f- 323.

After a sketch of the mental traits of primitive man, a brief study of the psychological traits of a " crowd," and a presentation of the suggestive elements in the ghost dances of the American Indian and the religious revivals of the American negro, the author devotes the larger part of his treatise to a detailed description of the great reli- gious revivals of England and the United States. His collection of materials in this field is highly interesting, and a valuable supplement to Stoll's Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Volkerpsychologie.

While not unsympathetic with religious revivals, Professor Davenport points out that areas of greatest religious excitability in the South are also areas of most frequent lynchings, and that the prevalence of rational over emotional mental processes is finally fatal to religious revivals, lynching, and political oratory. " The influence upon the world of growing men in our time is to be more and more the indefinable and the unobtrusive influence of personal character."

W. I. THOMAS.

The Place of Industries in Elementary Education. By KATHA- RINE ELIZABETH DOPP. Chicago : University of Chicago Press. Third edition, 1905. Pp. 270.

Dr. Dopp had the fortunate conception of presenting for teachers a most important element in education the manual element in the light of modern psychological, race-psychological, and peda- gogical results, and the third edition remains, perhaps, the most sug- gestive single work which can be placed in the hands of teachers. It is, indeed, of more importance just now that teachers should be in possession of this volume than that improved textbooks should be in the hands of the pupils. The third edition is improved by the addition of numerous illustrations, and an important chapter on the ways of procuring a material equipment, and the ways of using it so as to enhance the value of colonial history.

W. I. THOMAS.