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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

higher over the lower, of the whole over the partial, makes the essence of the good" (p. 44). It will also grieve those advanced thinkers who have outgrown the "organic concept" to find that it is the constant vehicle of Professor Schmoller's thought. "The study of social organs and institutions has the same relation to knowledge of the social body that the study of anatomy has to knowledge of the physical body" (p. 64). The interdependence of legal, cultural, ethical, and economic phases of the social process, as the reality out of which the economic abstraction is derived, is also taken for granted so constantly that the doctrine of this author seems to have a vitality usually wanting in economic treatises. He seems to be analyzing the actual world, not merely a series of processes dissected out of the real world.

The most virile economic thinking in the United States for the last twenty years has probably been more generally affected by Wagner than by his colleague, Schmoller. Probably Professor Ely has done more than any single man to pass along the influence of the former. In turning the leaves of this book the surmise is suggested that President Hadleymay have been more impressed by the latter. At all events there is much in Dr. Hadley's method and in his perspective that might well have been suggested by Schmoller.

Professor Schmoller is among the most human of German economists. The man is not submerged in the specialist. His writings, like his presence, convey the impression that his interest in "problems" is incidental to his interest in men. The present book is as vital as a lawyer's appeal for his client. One may open it almost at random, and the thought will be found to flow close to the stream of modern men's interests. Much of the material of the volume is already in the notebooks of many Americans. The elaborated and printed lectures will help to extend every dimension of our social conceptions.

A. W. S.

Political Parties in the United States from 1846 to 1861. By Jesse Macy, LL.D., Professor of Political Science in Iowa College. "The Citizen's Library." The Macmillan Co., 1900. Pp. viii+333. $1.25.

Professor Macy has the penetrating quality of wisdom which Americans have beatified in Abraham Lincoln. If he parleys with trifles it is to play with them as a relaxation from serious pursuits. When he is attending to business, nonessentials are brushed aside