New-York tribune., 1908-07-04

communities are due largely to escape from the
When. the spirit of custom rules every nnova,
ton seeks to commend itself by feigning age and
hoary dogma or institution strives TO furnish up
All losing sides dread discussion and try to
Agftator and compromisor are both servants Of
progress. yet each hates the other -
The agitator and the comRromsor mis- 7. are hardly
of single party, the other is spokesman of all
parties
At all this the honest conservative shifts. with
the comment that it Is nothing but parcel OF
comnonplaces solennly reworded as great
scientific discoveries To this Professor Ross
will gladly assent, fancy, and doubtless re-
peat the observation that the new cannot be
discredited by making It out to be the old, any
more than evolution can be dismissed with
the cry that it is "a rehash of Lucretius." The
accurate systernizing of platitudes about human
nature and society is useful work. 1t EN-
larges our knowledge Of the individual by ascer-
tanning how much of his mental content and
choice is derived from his social surroundings
The realization of how pitiful is the
contribution we have made to what we are, how
few of our ideas our own, how rarely we nave
thought out belief for ourselves. first
mortffes then arouses us to break out Of our
prison of custom and conventionality.
Professor Ross carries his reader through the
fascinating problems
crowd. the mob fashion, conventionality, custom
and social progress. If one-half of his pages
are filed with long citations familiar TO most
readers of sociology, the repetition Is always
timely and pointed. No occasion for holding up
the mirror to Americans is lost; the anecdotes
about our fads religious and financial manlas
society sillinesses, deep rooted irratonalities,
etc, drive home the authors contentious most
effectively just because everybody mas hearo
them hundred times and knows tnem 10 De
true. Nor is the convincing power OF this huge
bulk of evidence shaken by occasional mlslnter-
pretations. In explaining the function OF leisure
classes Professor Ross appears to fail now and
then through mere unfamiliarity with the real
thing: for instance. he revives Grant Alien
angry sneer at the English Society OF Authors
which allows its annual dinner TO be presided
over. mot by Thomas Hardy or William Morris,
not by Robert Louis Stevenson or Andrew Lang
but-by a casual lord who has written a book
let dshed up by hook crook from the squares
of Belgravia" This and like opinions about
other aristocracies suggest that Professor Ross
shares the blindness of many other democrats
who do not realize how great blessing
it is for a society of busy men, Reniuses, and
poor folks to have leisure class which Is WILL
ing and able to discharge the purely formal ex-
pensive and indispensable functions OF toast
mastership, entertainment and the like. On this
topic he might proftably have listened to Geors
Simmel or some other socologist familiar with
the inner workings and needs Of highly or
ganized fairly stable society. The most serious
fault of his book would have been largely avoid
ed in that case. Happily, though the formal
functions of leisure classes are not the things
about which American students most need 10
learn. We can readily forgive Professor Ross
shortcomings in this matter because he has laid
hare the more vital social traits, good and oad
of the human mind and in manner calculated
TO awaken thought.