Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/148

 132 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

There is an issue between Professor Ross and myself about my classification of human interests (p. 165). One's self-satisfaction can certainly not be inflated by failure to convince so acute a thinker, yet in a case about which one feels somewhat secure, the failure may be accounted for as due to faulty expression, rather than to essential error. Professor Ross's reason for rejecting the classifi- cation seems to me like refusal to group the states of our Union as "eastern and western," on the ground that some of them are Democratic and others Republican.

Our queries have by no means referred to the most important questions raised by the book. These could hardly be treated fairly without entering upon more extended discussion than our present limits permit. From the very fact that the author is on the skirmish line of method and theory, his positions are exposed, but not neces- sarily weak. As we intimated above, he is gaining ground as surely as any scholar in our field. The present volume can hardly fail to serve, for some time to come, as one of the most effective path- breakers in sociological inquiry.

ALBION W. SMALL.

L'Annec sociologique. Publiee sous la direction d'^MiLE DURK- HEIM. Huitieme annee (1903-4). Paris: Alcan. Pp. 663.

This annual occupies an important place in our literature, and it has from the beginning performed a useful service. We have to confess, however, that we have never been quite able to calculate its personal equation. Its judgments about sociological work do not place themselves in easily definable relations with those of any other group of scholars in the same field. The point of view occupied by the contributors gives an outlook that can hardly seem clear to any- body else.

For instance, the first of the two Memoires originaux in the present number is by M. H. Bourgin, and is entitled " Essai sur une forme d'industrie: 1'industrie de la boucherie a Paris au XIX 6 siecle." The writer says of his own work that its positive results are of three kinds : first, a certain number of facts ; second, certain causal explanations; third, certain hypothetical indications (p. 112). We will not deny that the results exhibited in the monograph may have each of those values in a degree that justifies the amount of skilled labor evidently expended in the study. From all that appears