Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/751

 REVIEWS 727

Lenfance coupable. Par HENRI JOLY. Paris: Victor Lecoffre, 1904. Pp. 222.

THE president of the Social Economy Association and of the General Society of Prisons in France has had unusual opportunities for studying the life of wayward youth. In this volume he gives many illustrations of the ways by which children and youth are lured down- ward to vice, crime, and suicide. Heredity counts for little with M. Joly. The strife of church with statesmen is visible in these pages, and the author pleads for ecclesiastical institutions against the "monoply of the state," on the ground that the religious teachers secure better results in their reform schools than are found in the establishments managed by officials.

Numerous stories of individual cases serve to set before us the inner significance of statistical tables. The most general summary of causes of depravity is the following :

Absence of education ; frivolity ; false sentimentality mingled with vicious sensuality ; affections embittered by jealousy or by an irritated feeling in an irregular situation ; impossibility of respecting the parents as they should be respected ; confusion and strife in an unbalanced domestic environment, or a still more undesirable habituation to evil example ; premature and excessive freedom; abandonment or lack of supervision, opening a way for all the suggestions and risks of feeble natures, at once ignorant of good and too acute in respect to all the rowdyism which takes the place of labor and orderly ways; memories of conversations, reading, and images both silly and deprav- ing; and, crowning all, the beginnings of inebriety these are the facts most prominent in the causation of both crime and suicide among youth.

C. R. H.

Morale sociale: Lemons professdes au College libre des Sciences societies. Par MM. G. BELOT, MARCEL BERNES, BRUNSCHVIGG, F. BUISSON, DAURIAC, DELBIT, CH. GIDE, M. KOVALEVSKY, MALAPERT, R. P. MAUMUS, DE ROBERTY, G. SOREL, LE PAS- TEUR WAGNER. Preface d'F^MiLE BONTROUX. Paris : Felix Alcan, 1899. Pp. 319.

THE preface of this volume indicates the point of view of the lec- turers : modern writers differ on many points, but agree in saying that the human soul has worth and dignity; that toleration and free- dom give value to discussion; that duty and virtue must ever be exalted to supreme place ; that rights must be interpreted democratic- ally and not aristocratically. These are commonplaces, and morality