26 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 392. 



the essays are rigid, and perhaps a trifle 

 fierce, toward the deluded believers in the 

 occult; these will hardly feel that they are 

 being gently shown the error of their way. 

 And yet Professor Jastrow's opposition is of 

 an entirely different order from the mere 

 pooh-poohing and scientific cold shoulders to 

 which the borderlanders have been so often 

 treated and of which they bitterly complain. 

 Their views are here dealt with by one who 

 has taken the trouble to study the matters in 

 questi6n, who is equipped with technical 

 training in psychology, and who pronounces 

 judgment with discrimination, admitting 

 many of the facts adduced, but pointing out 

 to what different consequences they lead from 

 what the occultists suppose. 



In attributing occultism to the impulse to 

 interpret experience personally — to see a di- 

 rect significance in whatever occurs — the 

 author is doubtless correct in the main. It 

 would perhaps have been still more correct, 

 however, to say that the trouble lies in seek- 

 ing a shori'Cut personal interpretation, in 

 seeking an exclusive and private significance 

 in phenomena, and not in a personal inter- 

 pretation per se. For many a scientist tena- 

 ciously holds to natural law and at the same 

 time, without throwing logic overboard, inter- 

 prets the system of nature personally. But 

 he does it in a large way and by harmonizing 

 mechanism with personal will, rather than by 

 seeing them antagonistic. Professor Jastrow, 

 while not explicitly saying so, too often seems 

 to imply that natural causation and personal 

 significance are incompatible, and that the oc- 

 cultist has seized the wrong term of the pair. 

 The occultist is really in the bonds of the 

 same error that pervades much of our science 

 — namely, that the mechanical view of nature 

 excludes any spiritual significance from it; 

 and while some scientists hold to one side and 

 give up the other, the occultist does the same, 

 with merely an exchange of terms. One- 

 sided science thus is one of the inducements 

 to a one-sided occultism, and the cure is to be 

 found in a larger view that will do justice 

 both to our scientific conviction that things 

 are orderly and systematic, as well as to the 



equally deep and respectable conviction that 

 this order and system is pervaded with per- 

 sonal purpose and personal significance. 



George M. Stratton. 

 University op California. 



Altersklassen und M'dnnerhunde, Eine Dar- 

 stellung der Grtuidformen der Gesellschaft. 

 Von Heinrich Schurtz. Mit einer Ver- 

 breitungskart. Berlin. 1902. 8vo. Pp. 458. 

 This massive volume is devoted to the thesis 

 that the true beginning of those artificialities 

 of human life that we call society is not to be 

 sought in the family, the sexual union, the 

 Mutterrecht, which is an exaltation of natur- 

 ism; but in purely voluntary aggregations of 

 males, called men's associations, and the clas- 

 sification of these by age, forming the society- 

 of the ancients. The author confesses that 

 his attention was first called to the subject 

 by the wide distribution and different forms 

 of bachelors' quarters among the less cultured 

 peoples of the earth. So many necessary acts- 

 of life require cooperation that artificial social 

 structures of more and more complicated char- 

 acter grow out of the very nature of the case. 

 War, so far from being an exception to the 

 rule, pro'ves it, since its struggles occasion 

 more perfect and solid unions. It is well 

 known and has often been commented on that, 

 in America, while children were generally 

 named for the mother, there was going on in 

 many tribes a transition to father-right. A 

 curious modern phase of this assertion of 

 man's rights is a role played by the profession 

 of interpreters, who are men of almost unlim- 

 ited sway in the tribes having business in 

 Washington City. 



Doctor Schurtz in his introductory chapter 

 prepares the way for the detailed study by 

 explaining the natural and artificial analysis- 

 of society — that dependent on sex life and that 

 based on purely interested and cultural 

 grounds. The classification by age, whether 

 allied or not with the question of blood kinship, 

 is the earliest form of artificial grouping. This 

 with its curb on the life of promiscuity is 

 worked out in the second chapter. The author 

 goes into the fullest detail with the description 

 of the men's houses in all parts of the world. 



