REVIEWS 1 3 1
tune, it is said, that the two money metals are commodity "universally necessary in every day-industry," yet " nothing could well be more inade- quate than to dismiss this singular tool of exchange as a mere commodity or a mere metal." "This metal is not desired to use as we use other metals ; the spending of money is not the consumption of it, but merely the transfer of its possession." " It might even be disputed if it expresses the essential idea of payment at all, seeing that it is a thing none of us would or could use for our living, but is simply a third body interposed for the time in place of other bodies." The conclusion of the essay enti- tled "Must Prices Fall ?" is that while it is a necessity of our present monetary system that prices fall, it is not a necessary consequence of improvements in manufacturing processes or methods.
Professor Smart has given much food for thought in these modestly entitled " studies," and has done something toward the good work that is now going bravely on of redeeming the so-called "dismal science" by socializing it. JOHN J. HALSEY.
Les Sciences Sociales en Allemagtie: Les MModes Actuelles. By C. BOUGLE. Paris: Alcan, 1896. Pp. 172. 50 cents.
IN this little volume M. Bougie* has succeeded in giving a very satisfactory discussion of the tendencies to be observed in recent Ger- man studies of sociology. He gives us an essay each on Lazarus and Folk-Psychology ; on Simmel and the Science of Morals ; on Wagner and Political Economy ; and on von Ihering and the Philosophy of Law. With clear sight he goes to the heart of the work of each of these writers, giving first an analysis of its theory and then a critical discussion of its methodological standpoint.
An introductory essay discusses the four types of social science which the author thinks he can detect in Germany during this century : the speculative, the historical, the naturalistic and the psychological. The authors mentioned above all represent the last-mentioned type of work, though in varying ways. Ten pages are devoted to a brief but very interesting attempt to connect the development of these types of study, on the one hand, with foreign intellectual influences; on the other, with social conditions in Germany itself.
The conclusion undertakes a com|unson of German with French sociologists on the following lines: Fust, the relation of sociology and psychology ; second, the relation of sociology and the concrete
