Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/430

416 NEW BOOKS. questions in France that so large a number of works should have been published by the International Library in so short a time. M. Lourbet commences the stxidy of his problem by a review and criticism of the researches that have been made in the domain of experimental psychology. As a result of this review and criticism he arrives at the conclusion that the mental evolution of woman lias not yet been completed. Hence arises in his opinion the problem of sex. M. Lourbet then goes on to examine the opinions of such men as Prof. Lombroso, Prof. Fouillee, M. Faguet, Mr. Herbert Spencer, etc., as to the mental and social status of women. He compares the mental capacities of men and women. He considers whether and in what direction maternity and its burdens tend to diminish high intellectual activity. He deals with what love between the sexes has been in the past and what it ought to be in the future. As a result of his inquiries, M. Lourbet arrives at tile following conclusions : In the early stages of civilisation physical supremacy favoured mental development, and the reason why women have hitherto been less inventive and less brilliant than men in the in- tellectual sphere is to be attributed to their physical inferiority. But civilisation has now reached a stage when physical force has been de- throned by mental force. This fact introduces a new element into the problem and prevents us from being able to assert that as woman has been inferior to man in the past she must necessarily be inferior to him in the future. Most of the judgments passed by men on women are the products of instinct rather than of reason, and contemporary science has been unable to establish the fact that women are stricken with an incurable mental inferiority. What is wanted at present is to abstain from assertions respecting the equality or the inequality of the sexes, but to proceed to give women liberty. Liberty is the only way in which a woman can develop the capacities within her. It is the mother of originality, of variety of progress ; the only safeguard of moral and intellectual autonomy. The solution of the sex problem is to give woman liberty to be herself, hi which, of necessity, is included the fullest economic liberty. Liberty would not lead to an obliteration of sex characteristics : these will always exist. Men and women will never be equal because they will never be entirely the same. But inequality will not mean predominance, it will mean variety, it will merely mean that there are diversities of gifts, and that these diverse qualities are all needed to give completeness and symmetry to the social organism. A fine, if at times a somewhat dithyrambic spirit, prevades M. Lourbet's book. His conclusions rest upon intuitions and hypotheses and not exclusively on established facts. It cannot be said that he has added much new material to the discussion of his subject. But he has dealt with existing material in a sincere and lucid manner. Jjt,s Paysans et la question paysanne en France drum If tlfrnii'i- quart du XVIII. sii>clf. Par N. KAREIEW, Professeur d'histoire a 1'Uni- versite de Saint- Petersbourg. Paris : Giard et Briere, 1899. Pp. 634. This is an excellent book, translated from the Russian, but it is more directly concerned with economics than with social science in the strict sense of the term. It is a careful and exhaustive study of the condition of the French peasantry in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The work is divided into seven parts which treat respectively of the relations of the nobles and the peasants, the townsmen and the peasants, the state and the peasants, the general situation of the peasantry before the revolution, the peasant question in its various aspects, the attempts