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 SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY— A REVIEW

By ACHILLE LORIA

(Translated from the Italian by Robert Stein)

For some time there has been rising and assuming considera- ble proportions, a school of sociology that attempts to confront current doctrines (which in its opinion are baseless) with new and altogether different doctrines founded on the firm basis of biologic and anthropologic science. This new school, or new science if you will, has been called by its creators Anthropo-sociology, or Social Anthropology, and it is already promulgated by numerous champions, among whom Lapouge in France and Ammon in Ger- many occupy positions of special prominence. In reality the ob- jects set forth by these writers are far from being as original and unheard-of as they seem to believe, since it would not be difficult to demonstrate that they were in large measure anticipated by the theorists of the so-called Social Darwinism. Still, it cannot be denied that the teachings of the new school have been set forth by the writers mentioned in a sufficiently forcible form to impress the half-learned and even the learned, and to enlist believers in the new dogma. Now, in view of the inroads of this school and its growing influence, it seems timely hereto subject its main doc- trines to a brief examination ; and this object will be attained by reviewing Otto Amnion's work, Die Gesellschaftsordnungundihn natiirlichen Grundlagen (The Social Order and its Natural Founda- tions), which has already been honored by a second edition, and has created a stir in the intellectual circles of Germany.

Sociology, says Ammon, must be based on anthropology, since man is the cell of the social organism, and one can have no

knowledge of an organism except through a careful analysis of

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