Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/36

xxvi dominant issue" of that period, imperialism. To these groups is added a single essay on American colleges, dating from 1884 and constituting in the main an attack on the then preferred position of the classical studies, but including much that is of a more than local or temporary value. The better to preserve their character, certain of these essays have been left in their original lecture-form. The date given at the head of each essay will indicate its setting and thus clear up local references that occur.

All of Sumner's sociological writings exhibit the strong, sane mind which many have followed admiringly in the economic and political field, traversing the broadest and most comprehensive phases of social life. But the dominating idea in the thought of his latter years was that of the "folkways" or "mores," and the rest of his later writings should all be read in the light of his last book. The Status of Women and Witchcraft are really abbreviated chapters, originally intended for Folkways, as the preface to that volume indicates. The whole of the unfinished magnum opus, on the Science of Society, was to be re-written upon the basic idea of the mores; for Sumner regarded these as the germ and matrix of all societal institutions. Anyone who knew Sumner personally, or through his writings, will realize that his fundamentals of societal life would be simple and profound, non-metaphysical, and based upon the quintessence of common sense. The Folkways is a repository of shrewd observation and epigrammatic statement, based upon broad scholarship, clear vision, and ripe wisdom. It can be read by the scholar with the scholar's profit; by the layman with the result of enrichment of thought and life; and by any former student of Sumner, whoever he may be, with all that others may get, and, in addition, with the impressions which attend the raising of a host of memories—such memories as throng to the mind when it recalls the quickening influence of the loved and honored.