Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/432

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4l8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOpY

as a factor. "Human nature, it appears, is very much the same in those we reckon sinners as in ourselves. Good and evil are always intimately bound up together ; no sort of men are chiefly given over to conscious badness; and to abuse men or groups in the large is unjust and generally futile" (p. 15).

It is not easy to sum up in a paragraph the purpose and value of a book like Social Organization. It is not primarily a textbook, although it will prove valuable as collateral reading in courses on social theory. It lacks on the one hand the technical arrangement and apparatus for the work of the classroom, and on the other the "source" material now so much in demand to supplement library facilities. Nor can the volume be regarded as research in social - psychology or psychological sociology. This statement should per- haps be qualified to this extent. As an illuminating organization of material generally familiar it does constitute a contribution. The chief service of the book will be to present to reflective readers who are likely to be repelled by technical sociology a clear and con- vincing interpretation of modern life in terms of the new psychology, personal and social. In his two volumes Human Nature and the Social Order and Social Organization Professor Cooley has given to the public the best statement of the newer social philosophy that has yet been written. For this service he deserves the gratitude not only of intelligent lay readers but of professional psychologists and sociologists as well.

George E. Vincent

The Ethics of Progress, or the Theory and the Practice by

Which Civilization Proceeds. By Charles F. Dole. New

York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1909. Pp. 398. $1.50.

Dr. Dole is among our most enlightened and enlightening

preachers of righteousness. It would be hard to find anything in

his writings which is not, "for substance of doctrine," wholesome.

The present book is not only no exception, but it is an evident

illustration of the rule. Everything in it, beginning with Part

III, would do good in the hands of men of the college age or

older, in or out of college, who were intelligent enough to read it,

Nevertheless I have somewhat against the reasoning in Parts I

and II.