Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/893

 REVIEWS 877

But for this wasteful and injurious consumption the land could support a much larger population. Much is made of this "fatal law of imi- tation," as if a man with ten dollars a week were compelled to buy broadcloth and wines because his employer enjoys them. The budgets of workingmen, collected by Engel, Gould, and the Le Play people, are cited in proof of this terrible law which is declared to be a decree of fate in stronger terms than Malthus ever applied to his law.

Levasseur's analysis is employed (p. 143) to illustrate the flexibility of the average density of population which can be supported at various stages of civilization. In the period of barbarism this average is very low, at most only two or three to the square kilometer. In the pastoral state the rate remains low, as in Turkestan 0.5 2.7 to the square kilo- meter. In an agricultural community 40 ; in an industrial commu- nity 1 60 ; in a commercial nation there is no limit. As only a few races have reached this last stage the earth seems far from full. Previsions of a future rate of population depend on too many unforeseen elements to be of any value.

Births vary between 20 and 50 to the thousand of inhabitants, and the oscillations between these points are not due to mere biological causes but to an economical and social law which varies with the civili- zation and the economic system. Then follows (p. 147) a discussion of these causes which deserves attention. They are classified under these categories : psychical and moral, religion, morality and aesthetic influences; social causes, political organization, social classes; eco- nomic causes, chiefly the mode of dividing wealth. Many points in the discussion of pessimism, the French literature of lubricity, and of the degenerates generally remind one of Max Nordau. Pessimism itself is explained by the psychological influence of an industrial system which leaves the workingman no hope of rising by individual effort.

The excessive birth rate of India is ascribed to "political" oppres- sion ; by which is meant the hopeless wall of caste. Nothing is said of the religious beliefs connected with ancestor -worship as a cause of early marriages in India, although this is noticed in relation to the C'hi- nese family. From the preceding discussion and induction a "law of capillarity" is formulated. A high birth rate is possible only when the phenomenon of social capillarity does not exist or exists in a feeble degree. Countries which have an absolute governim-m. and which elim- inate or restrict this phenomenon, have, other things being equal, a birth rate much higher than countries under a democratic rule.