588 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
technical modification in economics requires a modification in the legal order is regarded by Staummler as an erroneous conclusion. On the contrary, technical invention and improvements can get a definite character and be applied in economics only in accordance with the legal order which anticipates it. Conse- quently not "material" economics but "ideal" law is, so to speak, the Ding an sick of social life.
The social materialist finds a "social conflict" wherever law and economics come into opposition. In Staummler's view "a social conflict is in existence when the social phenomena that occur in a human community oppose the final purpose of the law under which the community lives" (p. 411). This final purpose is "the community of free-willing men," by which term is to be understood men "willing general purposes."
Staummler's style is so diffuse and obscure that it is extremely difficult to shell out the real kernel of his doctrine. This much, however, is clear, that Staummler wants to found a monistic system of historical philosophy along the lines of idealism. The ethical ideal is the fundamental force which produces the development of human history, and toward the highest possible realization of which history tends. Nothing but warmed-over metaphysics ! In the criticism, however, which Staummler aims at historical materialism he has almost invariably been correct. He says very truly that the historical materialist "in strict logical consistency must deny the existence of social life in its essential peculiarity" (p. 453). If social life is entirely under mechanical laws it is both impossible and unnecessary for social scientists to create for themselves a peculiar domain. 1
DR. O. THON. BERLIN, GERMANY.
1 Translated by ALBION W. SMALL.
(To be continued.)
