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 ADOLPHE COSTE, Les Principes d'une Socioloyie Objective. 107 very great modifications or " attenuations ". " The law," he says, "does not seem applicable either to the whole range of social activities or to all peoples " (p. 87). It applies only to intellectual development, "or, to be more precise, to the evolution of belief" (la croi/ance). For Comte's terms " Theology, Metaphysics, Posi- tive Science," M. Coste substitutes " Biomorphism, Sociomor- phism, Kationalism " ; and he connects the law with the three kinds of Organic science. Biomorphism consists in animating all objects. It is the rule of instinct, the stage at which human societies are close to animal societies. Sociomorphism (a bar- barous word, but authorised by the precedent of " Sociology " of. p. 89, note) consists in introducing into nature customs and tradition. The government of the world is now pictured on the analogy of the government of the city, of the federation or the Empire. This is the epoch of hierarchical polytheism, of " archi- theism " (i.e., the recognition of one chief god, sovereign over others), of monotheism, and also "of that metaphysic which dis- guises His divinity under the names of The Absolute, The Infinite, The One Substance, The Unknowable". " Eationalism, finally, consists in seeing in nature the objective reason of which our consciousness is the subjective form ; it is the final identification of being and knowing (to follow the Hegelian formula), the rela- tivism of Comte, the universal determinism of Claude Bernard." " Instinct, Tradition, Law, such would be the actual translation of the formula of Auguste Comte " (p. 90) a free translation, it must be admitted. The foregoing abbreviated extracts will show how far M. Coste has deviated from the rigid positivist doctrine. Moreover, he recognises that though society as a whole may pass from one stage of belief to another, and from one type of social institutions to another, the older stages continue to survive (pp. 144-149) ; and he sees no advantage in hastily attempting to reach the final stage. He considers " demi-rationalism," such as is represented in the liberal Protestantism of England and America, much better adapted to the existing condition of knowledge and more favourable to social solidarity than the pseudo-rationalism which confronts Catholicism in France (p. 214). On the more purely sociological matters (apart from questions of method), which occupy a large part of the volume, little can be said here. M. Coste finds " the force which serves as the efficient cause of progress " (he appears to assume that there must be one such force) in " the inevitable increase and progres- sive concentration of population " (p. 103). By this, however, he does not mean that the society with the densest population is always the most highly advanced. " Social progress depends upon the increase of population subjected to a common discipline (p. 123). "It is unification that matters much more than numerical increase " (p. 154). In working out his formula, M. Coste resorts to facts which can be quantitatively and "objectively" estimated. Applying "rational sociometry " to the leading states of modern