Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/595

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 575

through small successes and small progress ; it is made up of small partial adapta- tions, by no means co-ordinated at their origin, of small expedients always imperfect and provisional. This law is entirely instinctive, and though the solutions it pro- poses are designed for the immediate difficulty, these ends soon become means in solving the next problem.

2. The law of activity directed toward the maximum social utility. The effects of this law are first the increasing mediatization, and, second, the increasing deper- sonalization of social values. Things formerly sought as means have come to be sought as ends, e. g., riches, comfort, power. Along with this mediatization comes the depersonalization of social values, the loss of the imprint of the individual who created them ; e. g., property, labor, art, literature.

3. The law of activity, directed toward the maximum of individual life and beauty. Industry and art are in some measure now turning toward this perfecting of the individual. This tendency, though not easily defined, is none the less actual, and probably all the more likely to prevail because it is subtle.

Evolution thus works out the social ends. They do not come to consciousness until they are realized, or at least are in process of being realized. And the social teleology is nothing more than the sum-total of a multitude of small actions. Social teleology, in so far as it is scientifically observable, seems to admit of neither a single end nor an unchanging standard. There is no absolute social good any more than there is any absolute social value. The hypothesis of an absolute moral value in societies that confers upon them a sort of sacred right to exist is an invention of those scholastic teleologists who try to justify everything by some social principle. There is no one social teleology, there are social teleologies. In fact, in the history of mankind that which has been called good and bad are changeable contents ever being broken down and ever forming anew. The good and the bad imply each other. The role of the instincts called bad, of those of cruelty, of barbarism, and even of torture, is incontestable in the moral education of mankind. In vain do some posit universal harmony as the end of society, while others give this place to perpetual opposition. The contest between the partisans of division and opposition, on the one hand, and of adaptation and harmony, on the other, is a question without meaning. The truth is that the one set of terms implies the other. It is better to recognize that there is a circle, and, since we are in the squirrel's cage, continue to turn the wheel. G. PALANTE, " Etudes sociologiques ; La te'le'ologie sociale et son me"canisme," in Revue philosophique, August, 1902.

T. J. R.

The Professional Criminal in England. If we wish to diminish the pro- fessional criminal class, two definite steps must be taken. First of all we must nar- row the recruiting ground of this class by preventing juveniles between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one from swelling the ranks of the professional criminal. This can to a large extent be accomplished by giving greater elasticity to existing laws relating to the treatment of juvenile offenders. The industrialization of corrective discipline should not cease, as it now does, at the age of sixteen ; it should be extended, if necessary, to the period of civil maturity. This method of treatment, if conducted on popular lines by competent and sympathetic officials, would cut off the supply of professional criminals by converting a large percentage of delinquent juveniles, who would otherwise become professional criminals, into industrious and law-abiding citi- zens. In the next place we must prevent the prison from being, what it has been in the past, a nursery of habitual crime. This can be done only by the complete indus- trialization of prison treatment, and by bringing the reforming and rehabilitating forces of industry to bear on the individual prisoner. But the prisoner will not become industrious without the strongest possible incentive. That incentive is the desire for liberty. This desire should be gratified and this incentive developed by offering a reward for consistent and habitual industry in the shape of conditional libera- tion on a much more extended scale than now exists. The industrialization of prison treatment and the extension of conditional liberation would counteract and perhaps nullify the deadening and degrading atmosphere of prison life. It is this atmosphere which turns the occasional criminal into the professional and confirms the professional criminal in his sinister career. I do not say that when these two steps have been