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108 CRITICAL NOTICES : times (and he holds that it is with the best known societies, and not with primitive savages, that the sociologist should deal), M. Coste compares (a) their absolute populations ; (b) the numbers in each nation which live in large towns ; (c) the proportion of those living in large towns to the total population. The various tables give very different results. A final table is compiled by combining (a) and (c) the comparative numbers being multiplied together. (There is, by the way, an error in the calculation of the figures for Great Britain on p. 174.) Table a alone would put Eussia at the head of nations, but a combination with table c puts Great Britain at the head. These statistical results M. Coste finds confirmed by a comparison of Great Britain, France and Germany (or rather Prussia) in respect of government, economic production, religion, etc. In every social respect Great Britain comes out first (in purely intellectual matters M. Coste would not rank us so high ; but then he has excluded them from sociology). His conclusions are flattering to our patriotism. It is, therefore, in no spirit of national jealousy that one wishes some Socrates would arise in France to put troublesome questions to her fluent sociological writers with their complacent antitheses and calm trust in the category of quantity as supreme. Statistics are "objective," certainly; but they only apply to a limited range of matters. And do not their interpretation and the correlation of them with facts that cannot be easily measured depend much on the "subjective" judgment of the individual? What is the standard for "unification" or for good government other than mere increase of population ? Is the concentration of population in large towns altogether a mark of progress ? Even M. Coste seems to have his doubts (p. 175). The concluding chapters apply the art of sociology to the interpretation of history, to a criticism of the present social con- dition of France (a very unbiassed chapter) and to a cautious forecast of future changes and a discussion of the way in which society can be modified by conscious human effort. All these discussions are interesting and suggestive, though the value of them is perhaps due less to the " objective sociometry " which M. Coste rates so highly, than to his own " subjective " insight as a critic of complex social and political phenomena. D. G. EITCHIE. La Nouvelle Monadolocjie. By CH. EENOUVIEE and L. PEAT. Paris : Armand Colin, 1899. Pp. 546. To those who continue to regard philosophic speculation as an activity of man's rational nature, no phenomenon is more puzzling to explain than the persistence with which the majority of philo- sophers continue to offer as the ultimate truth of metaphysics a solution of the problem of life which breaks down ab initio, and