Review

Author(s): Read Bain

Review by: Read Bain
Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Aug., 1937), pp. 544-545
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2084778
Accessed: 16-12-2015 10:18 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Sage Publications, Inc. and American Sociological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to American Sociological Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 140.127.23.2 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 10:18:11 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
544 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
the same relation to readily observable overt social behavior as the atomic
structure of matter stands in relation to the more obvious behavior of the
physical universe. The formulation of the laws governing the "inner
essence" of the latter has increased enormously man's powers of adaptation
to this universe. Sociologists, too, have always striven to formulate the
"inner essence" of society. The volume under review makes powerful sug-
gestions as to the direction in which a solution probably lies and the tech-
nique by which it may be approached. As such it must be regarded as one
of the more important of contemporary contributions to sociological litera-
ture.
GEORGE A. LUNDBERG
Bennington College

The Nature of Human Nature and Other Essays in Social Psychology. By

ELLSWORTH FARIS. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, I937.
Pp. xii+370o $3.50.
The book consists of an introduction and thirty-one collected essays
arranged under the captions: I. Group and Person, eight; II. Conduct and
Attitudes, seven; III. Sociology and Education, six; IV. Sociology and
Ethnology, five; and V. The Sociology of Racial Conflict, five. (It is un-
fortunate that the date and place of original publication are not given as
well as the changes from the original text.)
The introduction proposes a set of postulates which I presume would
loom large in that systematic social psychology which many people have
long been hoping Professor Faris will sometime write. These postulates
assume the reality, priority, inertia, and naturalness of culture; acting
precedes thinking; reason and imagination are phases of behavior which
attempt to remove the impediments to action; human beings are the only
animals which have selves; personality is relative to groups; personality
consists of tendencies to modes of action-in short, is an organization of
attitudes. The remaining postulates deal with education, cultural dif-
ferences, changes, conflicts and values. The postulates are presented as
suggestive rather than exhaustive, i.e., as guides and challenges to further
investigation. Perhaps the concluding sentence of this essay is a fair state-
ment of Professor Faris's philosophy of life: "The business of man is to seek
good ends; intelligence is the instrument for making the quests effective;
and science is the effort to perfect the instrument and to make it adequate."
Space prevents reference to specific essays; only a few general impressions
of the book can be given; in a sense, however, this involves a cursory esti-
mate of Faris's work, since the book is a careful selection of his published
essays over a considerable period of time. It is quite possible that the best
is yet to come.
Faris' mind is essentially eclectic, dialectic, and frequently polemic. He
writes with exceptional clarity and vigor and is a master of the neatly
turned phrase which has taken the wind out of many a puffed sail. His

This content downloaded from 140.127.23.2 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 10:18:11 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 BOOK REVIEWS 545
review of Pareto will long remain a model of this type of writing. He has
put the heat on more half-baked ideas than perhaps any other man among
living sociologists, but he is never the mere carping critic nor quibbler over
terms. Those capable of learning can profit a great deal from controversies
with Faris, and thousands of students have learned much from his incisive
analyses of the writings of other men.
The works of Sumner, Cooley, Mead, Dewey and Thomas seem most
congenial to his mind, while MacDougall, Watson, Freud, and possibly
Levy-Bruhl have aroused the greatest negative reactions. Faris has never
been an "apostle" of any man, nor does he fail to give such credit as he
thinks is due to the men whom he criticizes most vigorously. Your true
eclectic cannot either be or make an apostle. Faris may have some apostolic
students abroad in the land, but I am sure this gives him more sorrow than
pleasure.
While he is a very keen dialectician, Faris has no use for dogmatic dia-
lectics. He has highly developed the art of "disagreeing agreeably"; he hits
hard but has the saving grace of humor, a fundamental kindliness and
generosity, and that tentative mindedness which is characteristic of the
true scholar and gentleman.
He has given the instinctivists, the uncritical psychoanalysts, the radical
behaviorists, the rampant mental testers and biological hereditarians, the
simplistic explainers of all schools, and the too ambitious social statisticians
many hard and well deserved blows. Personally, I think he has dealt too
lightly with the Gestaltists, Insighters, and Attitudinarians, although none
of them have escaped scot-free. This is especially true of the naive question-
naire attitude researchers who formulate frowsy questions, suggest answers,
neglect the situational multiple-factors, and end up by carrying out their
computations to the third decimal. He has also paid his disrespect to so-
called "insight," not based upon trained observation and careful attention
to the logical and scientific methods with which all competent students
must be familiar.
His greatest positive contributions, aside from having been for many
years a stimulating and creative teacher and an admirable editor of the
American /ournal of Sociology, are probably in the field of ethnological
social psychology, particularly, in giving us a better understanding of racial
(cultural) conflict. His knowledge of preliterate peoples, gained both from
wide reading and from personal experience and observation, he has applied
to important problems of education, discipline (penal and parental), race,
class and sectarian conflict as they are manifested in our own culture.
I had read most all the articles before, some of them several times, but
I re-read them all with unalloyed pleasure and additional profit. I welcome
this collection so that I can refer my students easily to some of these in-
teresting and illuminating essays. Faris is much better endowed than most
men with scholarship, originality, and critical-mindedness, while very few
equal him in his felicitous use of the English language.
READBAIN
Miami University

This content downloaded from 140.127.23.2 on Wed, 16 Dec 2015 10:18:11 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions