Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/864

848 and bring all essential considerations to the help of judgment, and reveal the concrete methods of action for realizing the social ends in largest measure, are already in position to give a lawyer a better equipment for that profession which above all others should be devoted to the right ordering of human conduct. Without this study of sociology and economics we may have acute interpreters of legal phraseology, shrewd money-getters, advisers of corporations; but we cannot have the best type of leaders of social progress. The legal profession has already rendered service which we gladly recognize and honor; but, on the other hand, many of its best-trained men, lacking the vision for the principle that "new occasions teach new duties," obstruct the way with barricades of dead precedents. Some very disheartening illustrations are given in this book. C. R. HENDERSON. Egoism: A Study in the Social Premises of Religion. By LOUIS WALLIS. The University of Chicago Press. Pp. xiv+121. $1.

The author of this little book is not a clergyman, and he has never held an academic position. The title is not likely to attract the attention of those who should be most interested in the contents. The argument plunges at once into dubious regions, and it does not guard itself by much provision for conciliating the type of readers to whom it is addressed. It counts on getting a hearing as a result of shock.

In spite of these disadvantages, the book is well worth consideration, both by sociologists and by every one who has either historical or religious interest in the Old Testament. On the one hand, it is an essay in the use of the Old Testament as a sociological "case-book"; on the other hand, it is an attempt to account for the religion of Israel psycho-genetically rather than miraculously. This being the case, it throws down the gauntlet at once both to traditional interpreters and to the innovating higher critics. To the former it says, "You do not explain at all;" to the latter, "You do not explain enough."

The argument deserves respectful attention both from biblical scholars and from sociologists. The author has needlessly handicapped himself by stating his position in terms which saddle upon him the load of confusion between "egoism" in its psychological and its