Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/143

 REVIEWS 131

theory of the author, that formed the objective point of the Christian system of ethics. Nowhere is it clearer that the author confuses the universal, the ethical, and the future. The Christian religion certainly does not distinctively hold that the existence which transcends the individual is necessarily in the future ; it is rather the perfect nature of God, in which the insufficiency of man finds its complement. On p. 385 the author says : "Our economic progress represents the steps in a slowly ascending development, in which the winning systems are those within which the economic process is tending to reach the highest intensity as the result of the gradual subordination of the par- ticular to the universal." It is this subordination of the particular to the universal that the author nowhere clearly distinguishes from the subordination of the existing to the future.

In the first stage of social evolution, according to the author, nations demonstrate their right to survival by military prowess, and it is only in those nations which at present have demonstrated their power " that there can be developed that principle of social efficiency which in the second epoch of social evolution must ultimately subordinate organized society itself to its own future." The author does not, how- ever, show why it is to be expected that the nations which represent the highest potentialities in civilization may soon be able to do without the power of defending their ideals. While western civilization is still confronted with countless millions who are inspired by alien and hostile ideals, it is difficult to see, upon the basis provided by the author, how his theory that the ascendency of the present will before long cease can be true. Moreover, the sharp division introduced by the author between ancient and modern civilization in no way accounts for the actual pro- cess of social development, and entirely overlooks the fact of a gradu- ally widening social consciousness, embracing successively the family, the clan, the tribe, the city, the nation, and perhaps destined finally to embrace the world.

When the author applies his theory to individual institutions, the result is no more luminous than is the general theory itself. His treat- ment of slavery is characteristic of his a priori methods. In the gradual disappearance of slavery in the ancient world, economic causes are declared to have been merely secondary. The deeper principles of civilization which express themselves in manumissions pro remedia animae constitute the real motive power. No serious writer has ever dared to deal with a subject of so great complexity in such an off-hand manner. Ancestral worship is declared a distinctive element of the