1 52 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
simonious members of ihe better classes would monopolize advantages intended for the poor. Cooperative building associations have rendered individual and social
too great expense to borrowers : difficulty in securing suitable business management ; loss in case of death of borrower before
nts are completed. A better plan was originated in Belgium in 1889, and is BOW being tried in France and Germany as well. Loans are made from the govern- ment to intermediate responsible parties, who form a corporation and
pay in 10 per cent of the capital stock. The workingman to whom a loan is made must pay down 10 per cent, of the cost of the property he desires to purchase. The compa :n one-third of the unpaid value of the property and the savings-
banks loan to him through the company the balance upon a first mortgage. The borrower chooses a period of time in w'hich to pay his obligations, and insures his
in the insurance department of the bank, in order to reimburse the bank in case of death during the period of liquidation and to secure his family in possession of the propc: .e premium of about 6 per cent, for risk and expenses, is added the
annual interest on the sum due at 4 per cent. The borrower then simply pays this for both property and insurance. E. R. L. GOULD, in Yale Review, May 1896,
The Conception of Morality in Jurisprudence. Jurisprudence has retro- graded because it is founded on a false view of life and an inadequate conception of morality. Socially and politically the supreme authority rests upon morality, and only as its decrees coincide with the moral sentiments of the community are they posse e. What ought to be and what is cannot be separated. A com-
prehensive science of what is law contains in itself a theory of what ought to be law. Law is the livinir product of an organic society.
Whatever rights the individual conscience may possess, it can never be superior
. so the jurist has a reasonable though mistaken horror of the "ought to
.tific jurisprudence now rests upon the assumption that law is the command
of an unlin. ^ ign power. A contract contra bonos mores is void only when it
s a rule of law, not because it tends to produce wrong. The view of obedience
as an end inadequate. Life is more than conformity to law; it is organic
growth. Moral life is a continuous evolution, the principles of which are constant,
<t itself to be found in any mechanical arrangement ; it cannot be
summed up in a series of imperatives; it is spiritual and consists in a growth
towards an ideal. Obedience to law is a means to an end, which is the realization of
the true nature of man.
The jurist treats law as static. Law is broader than a mass of rules ; it is the highest organic form of the moral life. The content and significance of statutes are supplied through judicial interpretation by the social self-consciousness of the lie true science of law must endeavor to determine the exact nature of law and of the forces which have produced it, the forces which are tending to its pres- ervation, and the forces which are constantly modifying it. The law is the neces- sary product of social life, and as such is inseparable from morality. The unity of life is absolute. Society has no existence apart from individuals and no individual l>eyond the organization of society and the reach of law. (T. W. TAYLOR in Philosophical Review, January 1896. Boston : Ginn & Co.)
Mutual Aid Amongst Modern Men. The mutual aid tendency is deeply interwoven in all the past evolution of the human race. Economical and social insti- tutions, in so far as they are the creation of the masses, new ethical systems, and new religi' !i originated from this same tendency. The ethical progress of the
race i a of this principle. This principle has developed through
the savage tribe, the village community, the mediaeval guilds, the mediaeval republics. These gave way before the all-absorbing authority of the state which favored the w minded individualism. The destruction of mutual aid insti- tutions has been goimr on for four hundred years, yet hundreds of millions continue to live under such institutions. The communal village did not disappear of its own
