Thorstein Veblen Review author to: 'Pure Sociology: A Treatise concerning the Origin and Spontaneous Development of Sociology'. By LESTER F. WARD. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1903. 8vo, pp. xii + 606. The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 11, No. 4. (Sept., 1903), p. 655-656. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Of the value of this great treatise for the general science of sociology it is not the place of an economic journal to speak. Nor may one who is not himself a lifelong specialist in the science presume to pass an opinion of praise or dispute on the culminating work of a man to whom the science owes so extraordinary a debt as to Dr. Ward. But even a lay reader may see and say this much, that Pure Sociology is a captivating volume by reason of lucid and forcible presentation as well as by its great range and command of information and its engaging style. It is a work of theory, presents a system wrought out symmetrically and in detail, with the maturity and poise of half-a-century's unremitting work and with the fire of unfailing youth. Dr. Ward succeeds in what others have attempted. He has brought the aims and method of modern science effectively into sociological inquiry. This method is the genetic one, which deals with the forces and sequence of development and seeks to understand the outcome by finding out how and why it has come about. The aim is to organize social phenomena into a theoretical structure in causal terms. The resulting system is too comprehensive, with too many ramifications, to admit of anything like an abstract or a general survey being presented in a brief space. What is of direct interest to economic students is found, chiefly, in chap. xiii, on "Autogenetic Forces," chaps. xvi and xvii, on "The Directive Agent" and "Biologic Origin of the Objective Faculties," and in chaps. xix, and xx, on "The Conquest of Nature" and "The Socialization of Achievement." It is only scattered sections and paragraphs, of these chapters that are of direct interest to economic theory, the main line of the argument, of course, bearing throughout on general sociological theory of which Dr. Ward's economic views are only a ramification. The chapter on the autogenetic forces deals with the human agent in the process of production, and very suggestively discusses the place and medical of intelligence in industry. Broad and general as this discussion is, it contrasts in an illuminating way with the itemized and mechanical schematism that commonly does duty as a psychology of industry in the received doctrines, or even in such a special treatise as Tarde's Psychologie économique. In chap. xvii, the sections on "Indirection" offer a bold analysis of the motives and methods of business traffic, of which the dominant note is given in the [656] proposition (p. 487) that "deception may almost be called the foundation of business." For economic purposes Dr. Ward's views on the "Socialization of Achievement" (chap. xx) converge to the outcome that the trend of cultural growth sets indefeasibly toward collectivism, toward which he finds, on an analysis of the available data, that the most advanced of the industrial peoples have made the most substantial approaches. V.