explanation of phenomena, and takes on the character of appeal and admonition, urged on grounds of expediency, of morality, of good taste, of hygiene, of political ends, and even of religion. All this, of course, is what we are used to in the common run of writers of the historical school; but those students whose interest centers in the science rather than in the ways and means of maintaining the received cultural forms of German society have long fancied they had ground to hope for something more to the purpose when Professor Schmoller came to put forth his great systematic work. Brilliant and no doubt valuable in its way and for its end, this digression into homiletics and reformatory advice means that the argument is running into the sands just at the stage where the science can least afford it. It is precisely at this point, where men of less years and breadth and weight would find it difficult to hold tenaciously to the course of cause and effect through the maze of jarring interests and sentiments that make up the contemporary situation,--it is precisely at this point that a genetic theory of economic life most needs the guidance of the firm, trained, dispassionate hand of the master. And at this point his guidance all but fails us. What has just been said applies generally to Professor Schmoller's treatment of contemporary economic development, and it should be added that it applies at nearly all points with more or less of qualification. But the qualifications required are not large enough to belie the general characterisation just offered. It would be asking too large an indulgence to follow the point up in this place through all the discussions of the volume that fairly come under this criticism. The most that may be done is to point for illustration to the handling which two or three of the social-economic "organs" receive. So, for instance, Book II. opens with an account of the family and its place and function in the structure of economic society. The discussion proceeds along the beaten paths of ethnographic research, with repeated and well-directed recourse to the psychological knowledge that Professor Schmoller always has well in hand. Coming down into recent times, the discussion still proceeds to show how the large economic changes of late mediaeval and early modern times acted to break down the patriarchal regime of the earlier culture; but at the same time there comes into sight (pp. 245-249) a bias in favor of the recent as against the earlier form of the household. The author is no longer content to show the exigencies which set the earlier patriarchal household aside in favor of the modified patriarchal household of more recent times. He also offers reasons why the later, modified form is intrinsically the more desirable; reasons, it should perhaps be said, which may be well taken, but which are beside the point so far as regards a scientific explanation of the changes under discussion.