Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/589

 NEW BOOKS 575 Finally, the organisation of the family leads to that of the State and "that of the town. Man works out his own conditions, and these con- ditions react upon him ; e.g. he builds towns, but the towns shape his life and determine his social problems. S. C. HADDON. La Citta Terrena. GIUSEPPE CIMBALI. Roma-Torino : Casa Editrice Nazionale, 1906. Pp. 388. Judging by the author's own dating, 1880-1905, this book comes to the world mellowed, not to say ennobled, by the constructive lucubrations of a quarter of a century. There is in the contents no sign of its having been kept back for any late utterance of sociological science. It breathes the atmosphere of a seventeenth century library, into which a few books on Darwinism have strayed. An archaic flavour pervades the work, from the titles of the twenty-seven chapters to the absence of modern quotations and footnotes. The five classic Utopian cities, or states, of literature are cited, but not for purposes of analysis, or of comparison with a new claimant to imaginative or prophetical dis- tinction in the ' Terrestrial City '. And all other works of this class are lumped together as ' fantastic constructions,' with the bidding that, at this time of day, there should be no more dallying of the intellect with ihese peches de jeunesse. The aim of the book is more akin to that of the Leviathan and the De Give, professing to show the social unit as he actually is. We are, with a more serious conviction and therewithal a greater serenity than we as yet evince,- to recognise the savagery lying skin-deep in every one of us. The work is not more genetically ex- pository than it is constructively anticipative. It is frankly descriptive, with explanations based on limitations accepted as unchangeable laws. ' He never will because he cannot.' Man is a good fellow to fellow- man only if nothing to seize lies between the twain of them. There usually is something, hence we are bound to be usually fighting not all with all, as in Hobbes's dictum, but within the microcosms of our special interests and environment. Beyond these we can afford to be splendidly catholic in our goodwill. The advance of civilisation intensifies both the tigerish and the fraternal capacity. Man has stooped to be subject in order not to be a slave, and if we may apply Renan's epigram to help this inadequate abstract Vetat ne pent qu'une seule chose, organiser I'ego'isme. The knowledge of what we are tends to make us pardon -what we are, and is a better incentive to action than visions of what we might or may be. ' The world is well as it is,' and if it treats you badly, you should not whine or swear, like the 'animale piagnucoloso e pro- fanatore per eccellenza ' that you are, but get power (pp. 47, 354). The greatest Utopias of all, the heavens of the creeds, they, too, are dreams. But they have practical anodynic efficacy, in that, unlike the altruistic joy of the Pisgah contemplation of secular Utopianism, they appeal to personal destiny and personal interests. They may be suffered, for man is weak. But ' the philosophers of Dream are more pestilential than ignorance itself ' (p. 355). These harsh sayings are, however, can- celled at the eleventh hour by the admission that Utopia-making is also a source of benefit and of hope, and is in any case a sempiternal con- comitant to intellectual life. More than that, it may point the way to better adjustments for ' history is not the whole of possible reality '. It is to be regretted that the author did not enlarge on this ' Dream ' aspect of his real and actual man, and trace the working of evolution in the different expressions of the Utopist instinct, notably that most recent