Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/347

296 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899 with good reason, that no economist would venture to write on biology with such ignorance of biologic laws as Ammon showed of economic laws when venturing to theorize on sociology. I will add that the ignorance is aggravated in this case by the shallowness and partisanship of the only book from which the author has gathered his meager and disconnected notions of social economy.

If from this hasty sketch a synthetic conclusion can be derived, it may thus be summarized: The book we have examined may be regarded as a caricature and a reductio ad absurdum of the biologic method in sociology, and of the attempts made to find in it the justification of the present capitalistic ownership. Hitherto, in demonstrating the essential fallacy of the so-called Darwinian theory of property, economic arguments had to be invoked, which show that property arises, develops, and disappears through causes altogether independent of the sagacity or incapacity of the owners, through the immanent and fatal process of the relations of production and population. But Amnion's book, with its errors, its paradoxes, and the absurdity of the practical conclusions to which it leads, constitutes a direct proof, drawn from anthropologic and biologic studies themselves, of the fallacy of a scientific tendency which pretends to turn social science into an appendage of anthropology. Desiring to see this attempt abandoned as speedily as possible, we earnestly recommend to all sociologists an attentive and patient examination of the volume which we have criticized in these pages.