210 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
College de France, the Universite de Paris, and the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, a free course in sociology is usually offered in one of the schools of Paris. Last year this course was given by Dr. Rene Worms, editor of the Revue Internationale de Soci- ologie.
More important than these scattered courses of sociological instruction are the lectures given in the School of Anthropology. Since its foundation by Broca in 1875 courses have been organ- ized in not only increased numbers, but in such diversity that the sociological student will find much that strongly appeals to him in the instruction offered by the occupants of the eleven perma- nent chairs thus far established. These chairs, in charge of such well-known authorities as Letourneau, Manouvrier, and Lefevre, were founded for the following subjects :
Anthropologie pathologique, anthropogenic et embryolo gie, ethnologic, anthropologie biologique, linguistique et eth- nographic, sociologie (histoire des civilisations), anthropolo- gie zoologique, anthropologie physiologique, ethnographic comparee, anthropologie prehistorique, anthropologie geogra- phique.
In spite, however, of the unquestionable utility of all these opportunities there undoubtedly was still room left for a remark- able and original undertaking which first was proposed less than two years ago, and which now may be said to have proved itself a glorious success. I refer to the College libre des Sciences Sociales. Its fundamental idea is exceedingly simple, and has been thus far realized to a remarkably large degree, though many were the critics who at the outset saw fit to call it daring and dangerous, if not impossible and absurd.
The process of thought which led to the foundation of the new school was, in short, the following :
Never before the triumph of the modern democratic idea, and the simultaneous spread of the modern system of economic production commonly designated as capitalistic, was there such a diversity of opinion about the direction in which social devel- opment is tending, or should be turned, There is a difference.
