Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/574

 558 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

for instance ? There is in the achievements of European colonization a great field for students of history and of existing social conditions — a field which we in this country have as yet hardly touched.

Harky Pratt Judson.

Les Idi<es ^galitaires. 6tude sociologique. Par C. Bougle, Maitre de conferences a la Faculte des lettres de I'Universite de Montpellier. Paris: Felix Mean. Pp.249. Fr- 375-

The most striking thing about this monograph is the evidence which it affords that the sociological seed sown by Simmel is beginning to bear fruit. The author frankly credits to Durkheim and Simmel the chief impulses of his work. The monograph is a notable contribu- tion to sociological analysis, but the point of view and the method are not those of Simmel, though it is ditificult to point out in a word why they are not. The title is not one that Simmel would have chosen for a study of the "form " of "equality." As M. Bougie distinctly indicates in his introduction, societary facts and our valuations of them belong in separate categories. Simmel's demand for a science of social forms is not a demand for criticism of our ideas about social forms. Sooner or later each calls for the other, but they are not identical. Bougie has not performed the initial work of demonstrating the form of equality in Simmel's sense. He has not answered the question : What are the marks by which we recognize the form of "equality" in human association ? Instead of that he discusses in the first three chapters : ( i ) the definition of ideas about equality ; (2) the reality of ideas about equality ; and (3) anthropological, ideological, and sociological explanations of the ideas. In the second part of the monograph he inquires into the relation between the existence of these ideas and the populousness, quality, complexity, and integration of the associations in which they occur. All this is valuable, and it will help many students to approach the antecedent problem, but it does not go back to the point of departure indicated by Simmel.

It is worthy of notice that M. Bougie recognizes the force of argu- ments making for both a broad and a limited content for the name "sociology." He proposes to use the term lato sensu for a synthesis of the particular social sciences, and stricto sensu for " the science of the forms of association " (Simmel), which will itself be one of the particular