Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/633

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 619

Liberty. Happiness is not positive, but negative, consisting, not in an ever increasing number of pleasures, but in avoiding pain in the development of the facul- ties. In giving to his forces the direction of least resistance man allows his efforts to attain the maximum of productivity. This natural tendency explains the energy with which the love of liberty is manifested. The free development of the individual is the essential condition of his normal constitution and the expansion of his activity in respect to individual and race conservation, for it permits the individual to make use of his faculties and to adapt himself to external conditions. The necessities of social life demand that individual activity be submitted to certain rules, that the liberty of one may not infringe on that of others. Even authority established for this purpose is from the absolute point of view an evil, for it renders possible by the abuse of force the subduing of individual to individual, and even the absorbing of individuality in slavery. But it is an evil indispensable because of its services to society. The con- clusion must be that regulation by authority of the conduct of individuals should exist only in cases of absolute necessity, recognized as such by science and the elite spirits of the time. Science teaches that the infringements of authority on the liberty of individuals ought in reason to be inverse to the degree of civilization of the time the empire of men over themselves and nature. Thus this domain of authority has diminished in the course of history from primitive societies to modern American democracy. The principal difficulty encountered in trying to determine practically the functions of the state at a given moment consists in understanding the condition of culture of the people, and in fixing the degree of public guardianship indispensable for the time. This depends entirely on the average culture, intellectual and moral, of individuals. Two conclusions reached : first, that the government should be confided to those who, by their scientific and moral culture give the greatest guarantee of wis- dom ; second, that in what concerns complicated social phenomena the more rare and limited the intervention of authority, the smaller will be the chance of error, for its limitation gives free play to the laws of nature. LADISLAS DoMANSKi,/0wra/<fcx conomistfs, November 1896. Fr.

Those "Without God" and the Social Question. The economic and social problems are more or less direct consequences of the religious problem. The great and deplorable social uneasiness has for its fundamental cause life without God. Those "without God" are numerous. I. Contemporary. Atheism presents the fol- lowing general characteristics: (i) Actual atheism is essentially variable and multi- form, being founded on a negative principle. (2) Contemporary atheism presents itself as scientific. Its popularity rests on the exclusive confidence accorded to the experimental method and to the results of the positive sciences. It thus tends to materialism. (3) Atheism becomes always more social in its manifestations. It is not merely an individual and theoretical doctrine, but above all a life. It is the social dissolvent, logically ending in anarchy. (4) Atheism is a religion. II. The blame for the increasing invasion of atheism rests upon: (i) Ecclesiasticism. The resistance of the Roman church to the progress of liberty, science, and democracy has caused the series of revolutions from protestantism to contemporary social atheism. With the fall of infallible authority has been connected the fall of religion itself. (2) The directing classes who have failed in their great task, the moral education of the people. (3) The Christian life of our epoch, our actual Christianity. Individually Christians, we are socially atheist>. III. The true demonstration of the gospel is in men, in example. To those "without God" it is necessary to oppose men of God, the Man-God, the spirit of God. All that is spiritual is social. Social Christianity \>e opposed to social atheism. ELIE GOUNELLE, Revue du Christiattismt Social, November 1896. Kr.

The Relations of Biology, Psychology, and Sociology. The Science of Society has for its chief datum the Science of Miml. ".\!<.n^ with mental evolution in m. ii. there goes higher social evolution." In order to follow out evolution under the higher forms which society presents, the special psychology of man, the social unit, must be understood, as " it is manifest that the ability of men to cooperate in