700 



SCIENCE. 



[X. S. Vol. XV. No. 383. 



the magnificence and grandeur of our 

 country. We are told, for example, that 

 Texas is larger than the whole of Europe, 

 not including Russia, yet if Texas were 

 concentrated to a square rood it would not 

 contain as much art, science or music as 

 may be found in many of the hundred 

 smaller towns of Germany. We are told 

 that the two Dakotas are as large as Greece. 

 This comparison is as ludicrous as to say 

 that Daniel Lambert was six times as large 

 a man as Raphael. A bound volume of 

 the Bloody Gulch News might exceed in 

 weight and size the first folio of Shakes- 

 peare, a crematory for garbage might have 

 a chimney exceeding in height Bunker Hill 

 Monument. These are the kinds of figures 

 we are told oiir boys and girls should know. 

 Our people need to be taught the true 

 value of comparison. They will be none 

 the less patriotic, but they -will be the more 

 eager to establish and sustain with gen- 

 erous hand those kinds of institutions 

 which make Europe so attractive to every 

 intelligent American. Precisely how this 

 work is to be accomplished I do not know, 

 but it would seem that scientific societies, 

 by the appointment of committees, should 

 embody the principles of science so that 

 the young mind may gradually grow to a 

 comprehension of the right way of living 

 and thinking. There is a scientific way 

 of dealing with crime and vagabondage ; 

 there is a scientific way of administering 

 charities, there may be a way of showing 

 the survival in the human mind of be- 

 lief in omens and dreams; and the child 

 should be taught to appreciate the condi- 

 tion of a man, otherwise intelligent, in 

 whose brain there survive a few molecules 

 that lead liim to believe in hallucinations. 

 Even at the present time we see surviving 

 in a few brains the ancient and almost uni- 

 versal belief that the world is flat. 



This work should be international. We 

 have so many international agreements. 



such as signals at sea, longitude and lati- 

 tude and an international postal union; 

 let us have international text-books to 

 make the twentieth century leave its 

 fetiches, its idiocies, its enslavements to 

 the vagaries belonging to the imagination, 

 and realize, in the words of Huxley, that 

 'Science is teaching the world that the 

 ultimate court of appeal is observation and 

 experiment and not authority, she is teach- 

 ing it to estimate the value of evidence, 

 she is creating a firm and living faith in 

 the existence of immutable moral and phys- 

 ical laws, perfect obedience to which is the 

 highest possible aim of an intelligent 

 being.' Edward S. Morse. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 

 Inductive Sociology, a Syllabus of MethodSj 

 Analyses and Classifications, and Provision- 

 ally Formulated Laws. By Franklin Henry 

 GiDDiNGS, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor in Colum- 

 bia University. New York, The Macmillan 

 Go. Pp. xviii+302. 



A new book by Professor Giddings is an 

 event of first-rate importance among the soci- 

 ologists. The present volume is notable not 

 merely because anything produced by its au- 

 thor is bound to attract attention. It is in 

 many respects the maturest and most impor- 

 tant of his publications. One fact among 

 others will be better appreciated within the 

 craft than among other specialists. Professor 

 Giddings has very pronounced peculiarities of 

 •view with respect to both material and method 

 of sociology. In the present volume those 

 peculiarities stand out more distinctly than 

 ever. Their reception by the sociologists is 

 likely to be much more tolerant, and even 

 sympathetic, than could have been the case 

 ten years ago. This indicates not so much 

 that Professor Giddings' views will be ac- 

 cepted, as that differences which seemed essen- 

 tial ten years ago have come to be regarded 

 as variations of points of view, and of empha- 

 sis; while other differences concern matters of 

 method which are not mutually exclusive, but 

 which are largely questions of very complex 

 relativity. Sociologists will find very much to 



