Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/743

 REVIEWS 719

toward his denial of such inheritance. This congenital element is, of course, accepted by Weismann, and, indeed, without it evolution would obviously be impossible for him. So at least in the material world ; but in the mental sphere is a third means at disposal, to which our author has repeatedly turned, namely, the dependence of traits, and even the trait of changing traits ("sensitiveness to environment"), upon the social order. The mental entity that is subject of these traits is cited in several passages as equally the cause and end of evolution, and as a person. Thus, in the Introduction : "But a still more important factor in the determination of social and psychic evolution, generally unrecognized by sociologists, is the nature and function of personality." Chap. 3 holds that the criterion of progress is personality; chap. 29 is devoted to showing how the primitive, mainly segregative, man was tamed by formation of rigid ideas and customs into a unified nation, at which stage farther progress depends on fracture of "the cake of custom" by an individualism that shall yet include communalism, which is precisely personality. Chap. 36, again, would show that the determinative trait of the Orient is this communalism ; but of the Occident, this individualism, namely, personality. Finally, chap. 37 closes the work with attribution of all progress to personality :

Personality, expressing and realizing itself in communal and individual life, in objective and subjective forms, is at once the cause and the goal of progress. Social and psychic evolution are, therefore, in the last analysis, personal processes. (P. 446.)

My objection to such a conception is that it leaves the notion of personality wholly static, and thus abandons its inner development, which I conceive it to have precisely as every living entity has a con- genital variation. This development of the person, though probably only to a slight degree modified by inheritance of acquired traits, has an inner variation which is needed to originate those traits unaccount- able for by physical environment. On the contrary, the origin of these traits is attributed by our author to the "personalized psychic nature," under determination of conditions "which differ for different lands, peoples, ages, and political relations, producing diverse social orders for each separated group" (p. 439). But these several conditions reduce to "lands" only; for "peoples" is only a synonym for "psychic nature;" "ages" or time can do nothing by themselves; and "political relations" are the social order, not "produce" it. Now, an always undifferentiated person in interaction with little various material environments seems to me inadequate to explain the immense varieties of racial and national culture.