October i8, 19] 



NATURE 



125 



tcrnal manifestations, and then but formally. But 

 "community is the common life of beings who 

 are guided essentially from within."- It is "the 

 world the spirit has made for itself." 



One of the most important factors in the de- 

 clopment of community is the right of free 

 association. An association is " an organised 

 lorm of social life within community." Com- 

 munity is greater than any or all of the associa- 

 tions to which it may give birth. Sociology is 

 the science of community. Sf>ecific social sciences, 

 such as economics and politics, are concerned 

 with associational forms of life. Dr. Maclver 

 urges that social science must free itself from the 

 quantitative methods and formulae proper to 

 physical and biological science. For such methods 

 cannot be applied to purposes, to thought, to 

 personality, or to institutions — "ideal construc- 

 tions without quantitative length or breadth " — 

 the stuff of social science. 



In his analysis of community the author insists 

 that " society is nothing more than individuals 

 associated and organised," and that "the quality 

 of a society is the quality of its members." 

 Society is but the individual in human relation- 

 ship. It is not characterised by the unity which 

 distinguishes the individual organism. An 

 organism is a closed system, but " community is 

 a matter of degree, with no set bounds." The 

 unity given in community is spiritual and not 

 i organic. 



Dr. Maclver incidentally criticises the definition 

 of mind as "an organised system of mental or 

 purposive forces " — given by Mr. W. M'Dougall 

 in his little book on Psychology — as "totally 

 inadequate," on the ground that it is a 

 confusion of the construction with the nature of 

 the forces that construct. The "collective mind," 

 with which Mr. M'Dougall credits "every highly 

 organised human society," is a gratuitous hypo- 

 thesis. Minds in association may act differently 

 [from each in isolation ; but even so, in associa- 

 tion it is the individual mind that acts. Com- 

 ■munity cannot be greater either than the sum or 

 the resultant of its "parts," for such " parts "- 

 have never existed separately as parts. Stress 

 lis laid on the value of personality in community ; 

 'in the service of personality alone are laws and 

 [institutions justified." 



A serviceable discussion on the relation of will 

 [and interest — " the two polar factors of all human 

 [activity " — helps the reader to understand their 

 lace in the creation of community. Society is 

 lind in relationship. Interest and will are the 

 elective and subjective aspects of a vital unity. 

 l*'The interests of men . . . are the source of all 

 (social activity, and. the changes in their interests 

 [are the source of all social evolution." Com- 

 junity is simply wills in relation. 

 Within the limits of a briel notice justice can- 

 lot be done to the completeness of the author's 

 malysis of interests, associational and institu- 

 tional life, and the meaning of the State. But we 

 lay express our gratitude for so able and sug- 

 gestive a plea for the value and importance of in- 

 NO. 2503, VOL. 100] 



dividual human personality in the life of com- 

 munity, a plea more deeply significant against the 

 background of present-day happenings. 



W. L. S. 



" immortal " and 

 revival of Socrates' 



OUR BOOKSHELF. 



General Types of Superior Men: A Philosophico- 

 psychological Study of Genius, Talent, and 

 Philistinism in their Bearings upon Human 

 Society and its Struggle for a Better Social 

 Order. By Osias L. Schwarz. Pp. 435. 

 (Boston, Niass. : R. G. Badger, n.d.) Price 

 2.50 dollars net. 

 This study of " Sujjerior Men" is hailed in a 

 preface by Jack London 

 "epoch-makingj" "truly a 

 fight against the shams and sophists who ever 

 bend themselves to the dethronement of ethics 

 and the instalment of the worship of Mammon." 

 It is also introduced by Max Nordau as " teeming 

 with ideas, but still more seething with feelings." 

 "It is Isaiah holding forth on the structure of 

 modern society and on the barrenness and wicked- 

 ness of the souls of contemporary civilised men." 

 Whatever the book teems or seethes with, it 

 is not with clear ideas. " Heredity means per- 

 sistence and transmittal of old environmental 

 influences, i.e. of the organism's reactions thereto, 

 as long as the provocative environmental causes 

 remain the same or vary very slightly, i.e. in 

 details only." " Any character or trait consists 

 of three parts : One is inherited ; one is apparently 

 due to variation, but is mostly due to the actual- 

 isation, liberation, or emergence in the child of an 

 inherited latent parental trait, or vice versa; it 

 may be due to the latentification or repression of a 

 parental actual trait ; the third part is really due 

 to variation, i.e. to acquisition made under new 

 circumstances." 



The bcok is full of this sort of muddiness, and 

 yet there is often, we willingly recognise, a strik- 

 ing suggestiveness, as in the comparative curves 

 of development of average man, artist, man of 

 science, and philosopher. The chief merit of the 

 book is in its passionate insistence on the 

 I imperativeness of making the most of really 

 1 superior men — the geniuses in the pursuit of the 

 I true, the beautiful, and the good. According to 

 the author, the unpardonable sin is the Philistine's 

 I depreciation of what he knows to be genuine, or 

 the pseudo-superior man's attempt to palm off 

 i a pinchbeck substitute for good gold. 



Our Analvtical Chemistry and its Future. Bv 



Dr. W.F. Hillebrand. Pp. 36. (New York': 



Columbia Univ. Press ; London : Humphrey 



Milford, 1917.) Price 15. 6d. net. 



This Chandler lecture for 1916, though purposely 



restricted to the conditions existing in the United 



States, is largely applicable, mutatis mutandis, to 



the position of analytical chemistry in this country 



also. In the early days of chemistry, when there 



was nee/d for accumulated observations on the 



