NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 415
the offender even with a view to the good of society. VI. Punishment, in the form of reprisal, is not ethically justifiable, because man is denied the privilege of exist- ence, the possibility of moral regeneration an inherent right and is made a pas- sive instrument for the safety of others. But moral law, moreover, demands an effective reaction against crime and defines this reaction as a legitimate field of active charity, which restrains the manifestation of bad volition, not only in the interest of society, but also of the offender. Thus punishment is complex in nature, yet entirely subject to the moral principle of charity, embracing both injured and offender. VII. The positive problem of punishment is not the infliction of physical pain, but correc- tion. A public trusteeship of offenders, composed of competent men, is the only idea of punishment permitted by ethical principle. A penal system founded on this prin- ciple would be more efficient, as well as more equitable and humane, than the existing system. WLADIMIR SOLOVIEFF, Revue Internationale de Sociologie, Juillet, 1897.
Christian Socialism. Democratic movements have hitherto been anti-reli- gious. Christian Socialism aims at an order based on natural rights and on divinely revealed rights. It ignores historic rights. But historic rights fix the bonds'of society, and their continuity is necessary to its life. They may be transformed. In Christian societies they change with conditions, but the change is progress only when historic continuity is kept. Present evils are social as well as individual. God has made man social. Society is the means necessary to perfect him. The better the instrument, the greater the improvement, the more rapid man's ascent. The social state is not of human invention, neither are its forms. Then there remains nothing to invent, but only to adapt to conditions the essential laws of society and the laws peculiar to the historic formation of a society. The programme of Christian Socialism puts the reli- gious question aside by claiming for the church only the rights of any private associa- tion. This is probably not due to a principle, but in order not to be isolated from the general democratic movement. The historic school says that neither in theory nor practice can we ignore that society is historically Christian, and that the Revolution was the dechristianization of society. The programme, of course, calls for religious liberty, but can the state live without a public guardian of its faith, and without fixed relations with this authority ? By "religious liberty" is generally meant a neutrality tolerant of all religions and of all forms of irreligion, the state without God, or at least without the God of Christians. In other points we accept the programme, universal suffrage, administrative decentralization, the referendum, etc. The apostles of democ- racy treat the higher classes as enemies and seem to fancy that the Fourth Estate ought to be the whole of society. Society has always been, and will always be, an organization of classes. With the re-establishment of Christianity, classes will l>e diversified by their functions, but not therefore subordinated. Le Play summed up this coordination of the elements of society in the formula, "Theocracy in souls, democracy in the community, aristocracy in the province, monarchy in the family and the state." These elements are constantly present, but with varying acceptation in each nation and each age. The political problem lies in determining their form and interdependence for the present hour. MARQUIS DE LA-TouR-DU-PiN CHAMBLY, L Association Catholique, Aout 1897.
The Psychological Bases of Sociology. I. Social phenomena lend them- selves to a double method the scientific .in>l the Ideological. This duality is appar- ently contradictory, the inflexible law of causality U-m^ incompatible \\itli" COB
f the human will toward what ou^ht to be. Tlu m..i.i! >ule of social life appears as the consequence of historic causes, and prolongs in an interminable series antecedent phenomena which rentier absolutely necessary the appearance of certain facts. The social ideal Ottfafl future ceases to be strictly ideal and Incomes the neces- sary resultant of historic development. The solution of this methodological
n has been sought in a violation of the evolutionary method by a division of phenomena into two categories those which are subject to determinism, and those which are n<>(. Such division, however, is merely arbitrary. It is likewise only an evasion t<> maintain that conscious effort, thoogfa it cannot change, may accelerate
