Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/283

 REVIEWS 267

is confirmed. Although he must always rank as a prince of the apostles of psychic influence in society, Dr. Ward does not succeed, in spite of himself, in giving to his rendering of society an unmis- takably human tone. He carries from his work in physical science a certain abstractness of statement which is partly inseparable from all generalization, but which has the effect of holding the interpretation farther aloof from actual life than is desirable or necessary. In reducing social factors to the least common denominator, " force," Ward does not retain such control of the denominator that it always suggests, when it should, the qualities of psychic force. Beginning with " synergy " and ending with " social appropriation," I have a feeling that the medium of expressing the thought retains a foreign element that needlessly veils the thought. The language itself sug- gests to my mind images of conjunctions of impersonal forces, rather than flesh-and-blood men working together. Everybody who values Ward's work in sociology, as I certainly do, ought to be aware that it needs to be personalized far beyond the letter of its formulas, before its essential truth can be made impressive. It is one thing to get our theory of life firmly grounded upon the basis of cosmic forces ; it is quite another thing to reduce our theory of life to an algebra of cosmic forces among which live individuals do not appear. If there must be an exclusion of one extreme or the other, we should be nearer the truth in expressing our sociology in terms of people than in terms of forces. Neither extreme need be adopted, but in following Ward there should always be an addition of human terms to the equations.

Speaking with the bias of a teacher who has a method of his own, I cannot agree with the judgment of the authors in distribut- ing the material of the book. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that a fair digest of Dr. Ward's system calls for a plan of treat- ment which does not seem to me to provide for the wisest allotment of the time of students. We are in the middle of the book (p. 169), before we reach the topic " The Social Order." Assuming that the book is to be used with college seniors, I should say that every day spent on preliminaries, before introducing them to the social order, is relatively a day lost. Few colleges have so far relaxed their step- motherly attitude toward sociology as to afford room at best for more than a glimpse at it in undergraduate courses. This glimpse ought to go as near to the heart of the matter as possible. Prying into the metaphysics of the plan of salvation may well be reserved for the