says:

"The speaker's greatest power has its source in his authority to appoint committees.” Where the author confines himself to an exposition of contemporary practice, as in the chapter on "the making of a law," the result is disappointing. It is no exaggeration to say that, to understand that chapter, one would first have to know how a law is made. At times there is an obscurity and incoherence of expression, a lack of sequence in the thought, which seems to proceed from too careful an attention to style.

But, whatever may be said in criticism, the book must be regarded as a highly useful contribution. If it fails to elucidate the difficult points in procedure, it does give a great deal of interesting information, both historical and contemporary, which has been brought together by painstaking research. In the matter of contested elections, for instance, Dr. Alexander shows that while in the beginning the House strove to assume a more or less judicial attitude, before the end of the eighteenth century, in view of the growing antagonism between Federalists and anti-Federalists, the majority had begun to consult its own advantage almost exclusively. "The decision of election cases," as Thomas B. Reed said, "invariably increases the party which organizes the House and appoints the committee on elections. Probably there is not an instance on record where the minority benefited." Down to 1907, in fact, the House had decided 382 contests, all but three of them in favor of the dominant party. One result has been the multiplication of contests-there are 12 or 15 after each election-and a corresponding waste of time. One-ninth of the first session of the fifty-first Congress was consumed in this way; and yet the outcome is almost invariably the same, a triumph of partisan interests. Dr. Alexander, concurring in the views of Speaker Reed, favors the adoption of the English practice, the reference of all election contests to the federal courts.

He manifests, in regard to controversial matters, a spirit which is at once critical and constructive. Combining the habits of a student with the experience of an active politician, he is neither limited by a narrow partisanship nor led away by attractive theories; and this capacity to form a balanced judgment is of particular value in measuring, for instance, the conflicting forces which will determine the future position of the speaker or the outcome of proposed reforms in regard to appropriations.

E. M. SAIT.

The Instinct of Workmanship. BY THORSTEIN VEBLEN. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1914.-ix, 355 pp.

Teleology is Veblen's specialty. Let any other scientist produce a generalization, however abstract, Veblen will extract a teleological element, an ulterior motive from it. He is like a skilled pathologist, competent to prove that all the world is suffering from his pet disease, however rare it may have seemed before. Such a pathologist usually ends by taking the disease himself, if it is communicable; and even if it is not, he is likely to reproduce the symptoms. So it has befallen Veblen. If in The Instinct of Workmanship he is not smitten with teleology, he does at any rate marvellously counterfeit the symptoms. What shall we say to the argument that the conception of God as a Creator, instead of a Most High King, is the product of handicraft experience? That handicraft experience is reponsible for the popularity, the existence even, of the principle of cause and effect? That the law of conservation of energy is derived from the practice of double entry book-keeping? One can only shake his head and mutter: "Too bad, too bad." It must be a case of teleology past recovery that produces symptoms so ominous as these.

What Veblen is bent on proving is that western civilization is plunging headlong toward the pit. The leading European races-at least the dolicho-blond race-are to be conceived of as late products of mutation. They are what they have always been, if we may apply forthwith to the evolution of man the tentative conclusions of DeVries on evolution among evening primroses. Thus there was no period when the dolicho-blond had to get on without domesticated animals, tools, and some form of social order. He was created-by mutation-into the possession of these good things. It follows by some not very obvious logic that the neolithic environment into which he was created was the one to which he would be best adapted. He must therefore be very ill adapted to the modern pecuniary, urban, machine-technology environment. His situation is essentially identical with that of the American in the Philippines or the Englishman in India, assaulted at once by excess of heat and of light, by tropical diseases and tropical customs. The conclusion would appear to be that either we must revert to the neolithic scheme of technology or we must evolve a new mutant type fitted to the conditions of the epoch of the machine. There is no hope even in adaptation through selection from among us. Veblen does not, however, draw this conclusion. He expects us to rest satisfied with his proof that we are marked for destruction.

Where in this process does the instinct of workmanship come in? This is somewhat difficult to say. Indeed, it is not the easiest thing in the world to determine exactly what Veblen means by the instinct of workmanship; still less easy is it to make sure for oneself whether there is any such instinct. We are told to take this instinct" to signify a concurrence of several instinctive aptitudes each of which might or might not prove simple or irreducible when subjected to psychological or physiological analysis" (page 27).

Its functional content is serviceability for the ends of life, whatever these ends may be. . . . So that this instinct may in some sense be said to be auxiliary to all the rest, to be concerned with the ways and means of life, rather than with any one given ulterior end [page 31].

This instinct is sometimes in abeyance, but, given a fair degree of mental ease, it springs forth to our service. Unfortunately we are always permitting it to become contaminated with other instincts, to the impairment of its efficiency. It ought to be free to face the materials it manipulates as brute fact. But in the periods of savagery and barbarism man perversely imputed anthropomorphic character to brute fact-a tendency everywhere injurious, but less serious in the domain of plant and animal breeding than in handicraft. This is the reason, according to Veblen, why neolithic man made so much greater progress in agriculture and stock-breeding than in the mechanic arts. The dolicho-blond mutant has always been relatively free from mysticism: this is why the people of western Europe have made greater mechanical progress than any other stock of men.

In the handicraft era of early modern times the instinct of workmanship gradually disentangled itself from anthropomorphic and mystical bias and built up its technology on a matter-of-fact basis. This, one infers, was the dolicho-blond's golden age. But his technology got away from him. It generated more and more complicated mechanisms, ownership of which was beyond the reach of the simple craftsman. Thus the advent of the capitalist entrepreneur became inevitable. Technology remained with the worker, but its usufruct and control passed into the hands of the capitalist. But the capitalist cares nothing for human serviceability. His concern is with money-making alone, and money is to be made out of disaster as well as out of service to humanity.

How does it stand now with the instinct of workmanship? It is obviously hanging in the air. The workman still has it, but whether he can use it lies in the discretion of the money kings. The instinct is

ineradicable, to be sure, but deprived of its opportunity for natural functioning, it falls into abeyance. Other instincts, such as those leading to competitive expenditure and conspicuous waste, become dominant even among the workers. In the circumstances, how shall we survive? Fortunately, conviction is not necessary to the enjoyment of Veblen. One may follow him through the trackless jungles of his anthropology, epistemology and universal history without necessarily getting lost. After all, there is something in all this. You cannot read this book without becoming aware of hosts of problems on which you would gladly have more light. And it goes without saying, you cannot read the book without conceiving an admiration for the sheer intellectual power of the author. Your admiration extends even to his style, baffling and shifty as it is. You gasp at his facility in handling polysyllabic and recondite words, as at the feats of a sword-swallower. And you pray that his style may not spread as an infection among the social philosophers to

come.

ALVIN S. JOHNSON.

LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY. Civilization and Climate. By ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1915-xii, 333 pp.

From the days of Aristotle to those of Montesquieu and Buckle there have been men who believed that climate, if not the most important factor in determining the status of civilization, is at least one of the most important factors. Apart from expressing certain obvious relations between climate and civilization, these beliefs, for the most part, have merely attained the position of interesting hypotheses. The new science of geography, however, is making an earnest attempt to test both old and new hypotheses of this nature. In this attempt the author of Civilization and Climate, Mr. Ellsworth Huntington, has taken a prominent part. For two years he was a member of the Pumpelly expedition sent to Turkestan in 1903 by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Later he joined the Yale Expedition to Palestine. Still later he conducted special investigations in the drier portions of North and Central America. In his earlier books, The Pulse of Asia, Palestine and Its Transformation and The Climatic Factor, Mr. Huntington has set forth many important theories derived from these investigations. Possibly the most important theory is what he terms the "pulsatory hypothesis." This hypothesis is that, although in general the past was moister than the present, changes in the amount of humidity have taken place irregularly in great waves. A shifting of the earth's climatic zones

alternately towards and away from the equator-a view recently advocated by the German geologist Penck-is also included in the hypothesis. To these climatic changes are traceable, Mr. Huntington has maintained, the important shiftings in the location of civilization and pulsations in its development. For civilization, according to his theory, has always reached its fullest development in regions where climate has produced the maximum favorable effect upon human energy, and such regions have naturally shifted with the pulsation of climate.

The present volume deals with the same general theme. Its special purpose, however, differs from the earlier volumes in that here the attempt is not primarily to prove variability in climate but rather to demonstrate by inductive methods the correlation of the distribution of civilization today with the distribution of different types of climate. The earlier volumes merely cited strong presumptive evidence on this particular point; the present attempts proof. The first step in the process of proof is to determine by inductive methods just what constitutes the "best" or most stimulating climate. The second step is to discover the various degrees of energy to be expected in individuals living under such an optimum climate and under other specified types. The third is to construct a "map of climatic energy" showing the degrees of human energy to be expected from the effects of the known climatic conditions of the various regions of the earth. The fourth is to make a graded list of the various extant peoples of the world ranked according to their degree of civilization. The fifth is to compare a "map of civilization," based upon this list, with the "map of climatic energy." The similarity of the two maps is striking. If one couples with this fact the generalization that an equally high correlation between civilization and one or more non-climatic factors cannot be expected, the demonstration that climate is the essential factor in the production of civilization appears to be complete. Mr. Huntington, however, does not draw this conclusion without qualification. He is careful to admit explicitly that other factors play an important part in determining the status of civilization. The maps, in his opinion, indicate only that climate is as essential as any other factor.

The foregoing statements give an entirely inadequate notion of the wealth of detailed information and theories included in the book. Nevertheless they make plain the fact that in Civilization and Climate a highly significant attempt has been made to apply quantitative rather than qualitative methods to a difficult problem in the field of social causation. It is thus apparent that although in certain particulars the statistical procedure employed may be open to serious criticism, no one