Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/591

 REVIEWS 575

the continuance of the social separation between the races in the South, and would recommend those to read it who think there is no ground for maintaining 1 a social and moral quarantine against the negro even where he exists in large numbers ; but as an argument for the unimprovability of the negro race, the ultimate futility of negro education, and the early or remote extinction of the negro ele- ment in our population, it is weak, built upon fallacious reasoning, and unsound scientific theories.

CHARLES A. ELL WOOD.

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI.

A History of Political Theories: From Luther to Montesquieu. By WILLIAM ARCHIBALD DUNNING. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1905. Pp. xii + 459-

Students of political philosophy, and that larger and growing body of students who are now attracted by that broad field of social science described by the title of sociology, must have no small interest in so excellent a piece of work in the history of social philosophy as that which is the subject of this review. The admirable series of studies in the history of political theory begun by Professor Dunning in his first volume, Political Theories Ancient and Medieval, which appeared in 1902, is now followed by this second volume, which brings the history of political theories from Luther to Montesquieu.

It has been noticed long since, and perhaps by no one with more appreciation than by Bosanquet in his Philosophical Theory of the State, that there have been only two productive periods in politica/ philosophy: the period of the Greek city-state, the period of Plato and Aristotle with echoes from Polybius and Cicero ; and the modern period of awakened national self-consciousness. Luther marks an important epoch of time, a magnificent panorama of events by which we conveniently separate the modern world from the mediaeval. Bodin rather than Luther must be 'taken as the inaugurator of the second productive period in political philosophy, if judged by the place assigned to him as the first of the great modern masters in political theory. This second volume is more compact than the first, From Luther to Montesquieu we traverse about two centuries, from the Sophists to Machiavelli approximately twenty centuries.

The volume opens with a chapter on the Reformation, in which the political theories of the four great Protestants, Luther, Melanc- thon, Zwingli, and Calvin, are noticed, followed by an examination