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down the view that a philosophy of history is impossible. The second sketches the author's own view, viz., that we must take the horde as the germ of human society, with promiscuity and belief in spirits as its prominent traits. From this as a beginning the course of development is through the "first organization," the tribe (Stamm), arranged in "group-families," contemporary with animism; second, the tribe arranged in gcntes, contemporary with naturalistic polytheism. Then law-giving, from which came social classes, and from natural religion legal religion. The decline of class structure came along with heterogeneous conceptions of the world. Mediaeval social stratification was broken up by absolutism, yet a great revival fol- lowed in the sixteenth century, due to the ethical idealism of Prot- estant religion and the culture of "humanism." In the present century " liberalism " has prevailed, side by side with an inductive, analytical habit. The outcome is present need of revising ethical judgments to get a basis for a better social order.
Readers would look for the second volume with more interest if the sketch contained in this third division thus outlined had been omitted. It promises something more like a topical index than a philosophy, and it provokes the suspicion that its expansion will turn out to be very weak dilettantism.
ALBION W. SMALL.
The History of Man kind. By FRIEDRICH RATZEL. Translated from the German by A. J. Butler. Vol. II. New York and London: Macmillan & Co., 1897. Pp- 5^2, 8vo.
THIS second volume continues the work, which will probably be completed in three volumes. It is a description of the world's popu- lations 'from the ethnographic standpoint. The parts of the work contained in Vol. II are: Book II D. "The Americans ;" E. "The Arctic Races of the Old World;" Book III "The Light Stocks of South and Central Africa;" Book IV "The Negro Races;" A. "The South and East Africans." Necessarily the treatment is of the most condensed sort. To cover the whole field of ethnography in three vplumes is no easy task. The work is naturally one of reference rather than of easy reading. The two most extended and important discussions in the volume are those dealing with the Americans and with negro peoples of south and east Africa. It is possible to err in
