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 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS.

Very instructive notices of the family care of certain classes of the harmless insane are given by Dr. J. A. Peeters, medical director of the Colony of Gheel, Bel- gium, in two papers: "La situation actuelle de la Colonie de Gheel" (1895), and "L'assistance et le classement des alien^s dans d'autres pays" {1898).

The Unit of Investigation in Sociology. — Apart from difficulties due to inade- quate and inaccurate terminology, sociology suffers most at the present time from lack of unity in its subject-matter. Sociologists could much better risk the dangers of dis- sensions among themselves by coming closer together and dealing with the same sub- ject-matter than they can afford the consequences of the present isolated efforts in building up corners of a far-too-greatly-generalized science. The adoption of the cell in biology and of the sensation in psychology as the definitely recognized unit of consideration has resulted in more systematic and better coordinated knowledge in those sciences. Is it possible to find in the data of sociology any constantly recur- ring factor in the socializing process which is fundamental to the concept of society in all stages of development, and which therefore can be regarded as a unit of investiga- tion, consideration, and reference for all truly sociological data ? I propose to examine briefly one such unit, which I will call the iocial imperative^ and to contrast it from the point of view of its utility in sociological research with three other concepts, which are commonly used in the same way: viz., (l) the family; (2) the social man ; (3) the social type. The social imperative is the modifying influence which makes the individual act differently in the presence of his fellow-man from the way in which he would prob- ably act under the same circumstances if he were alone. It is the sum of the animate influences which modify individual action in the direction of social ends, though these influences in complex societies may be crystallized for the most part in institutions, customs, and laws. It is, in brief, the social " ought." Many sociologists have adopted the family as the unit of consideration in studying society. But this is an essentially mechanical concept. The concept of the social man is too vague to adopt as the unit of investigation, as the qualities which under all conditions and all forms of society would characterize the truly social individual cannot be determined. The social type as a unit of investigation may be objected to on similar grounds. In con- trast with these three concepts the social imperative is a concept that brings us at once to the vital point in the examination of any group of social phenomena. To view the facts of social life as they relate to some social imperative, to measure the reactions of individuals both quantitatively and qualitatively in past and present history, and to study the nature of social imperatives through their analysis and classification, should be a chief aim of sociology. — Samuel McCune Lindsay, Annals of the Ameri- can Academy, September, 1898.

The Socialistic Party of France in 1898. — The year :898 marks an important step in the history of international socialism. In this year important elections were held in France, Belgium, and Germany. It is the aim of the socialistic party in all these countries to fight for modern political liberty denied and abandoned by the bourgeois party, which is reconciled with the reactionary party in the common hatred of socialism. While the socialistic parties of Germany and Belgium are compact blocks, that of France is split up into numerous organizations which not long ago were fighting among themselves. Besides these organizations are many propagandists of socialistic ideas, and a crowd of discontents and sentimentalists, often confounding agitation with fruitful action and demagogy with democracy, who are called socialists, but are not such. Here are included the former followers of General Boulanger.

This regretable confusion and the division of the party had a sad influence on the

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