[In the following excerpt, the reviewer finds Adams's The Law of Civilization and Decay a flawed yet valuable work in determining historical patterns. ]

Reference was made in a notice of Kidd's Social Evolution in the third volume of this Review, to the probability that we should have many attempts in the next few years to construct a philosophy of history on the basis of our existing knowledge. The present attempt is by the historian of the Emancipation of Massachusetts. Any one who thinks it possible for the present age to produce a final philosophy of history, would derive much instruction by reading this book and Mr. Kidd's together.

The term "science" of history rather than "philosophy" must be applied to the attempt, if we speak strictly. It opens—to give the order of the author's thought rather than of his statement—with three fundamental assumptions. First, actions of every kind are manifestations of material energy, and are controlled by its laws. Second, human history, as one of the "outlets through which solar energy is dissipated," is governed by fixed laws. Third, among human actions, thoughts or "intellectual phenomena," are those which determine the course of history. Starting with these propositions assumed, the science of history is developed in this way. The first controlling intellectual conception is fear. This leads to religious, military, and artistic types of civilization, and, in richly endowed races, to an accumulation of energy in the form of capital. As this accumulation takes place, the race passes into the second stage, and greed succeeds fear as the determining idea. This leads to economic organization in which capital tends to become supreme, to the decay of the earlier types of civilization, to the waste of energy through competition, and, as this can no longer be reproduced under a capitalistic organization, to the disintegration of society, from which there can be no return except through an infusion of fresh barbarian blood, that is, through a renewal of the earlier types of civilization.

The author's treatment of Roman history may serve as an example. The Romans, when they first appear in history, are of a martial type just passing into an economic. As they had no adaptation either to commerce or to manufactures, but only to agriculture, greed with them took the form of usury. This produced a society divided into two classes, creditor and debtor. As society consolidated and centralized itself, the power of the former increased and the pressure upon the latter became heavier, until at last the reproduction of energy ceased, that is, less was produced than was dissipated. Then society, which reached its greatest centralization under the Caesars, disintegrated, the barbarian took possession of the world, and the middle ages began. In these a return took place to an imaginative and military type of civilization, similar to that from which the Romans had earlier emerged.

The doctrine is a thoroughgoing and ideally complete pessimism. We stand in our own age, upon the verge of another disintegration of society like that which befell Rome, from which the world can hope to emerge upon a new round of the same sort only by the infusion of barbarian blood from some source. But it does not appear from anything in the book that this fate can make the slightest difference to those whom it overtakes, or to the human race as a whole. The only movement for mankind is this ceaseless round, every stage of which is deplorably bad, and is constantly changing into another just as bad.

The fatal defect of the book is that it follows but a single thread through the course of history. It must be recognized, however, as a valuable contribution to the science of history. Especially noteworthy are the author's keenness of insight and freshness of interpretation. His power of combination is less evident, but the future worker in this field will have to reckon with Mr. Adams's reading of the economic movements of history.

In closing one cannot forbear to quote two passages, of which many might be selected throughout the book, to show its character as a "tract for the times." These are from the chapter on Rome:

"It appears to be a natural law that when social development has reached a certain stage, and capital has accumulated sufficiently, the class which has had the capacity to absorb it shall try to enhance the value of their property by legislation. This is done most easily by reducing the quantity of the currency, which is a legal tender for the payment of debts. A currency obviously gains in power as it shrinks in volume, and the usurers of Constantinople intuitively condensed to the utmost that of the empire. After the insolvency under Elagabalus, payments were exacted by gold in weight, and as it grew scarcer its value rose when measured in commodities."

"When wealth became force, the female might be as strong as the male; therefore she was emancipated. Through easy divorce she came to stand on an equality with the man in the marriage contract. She controlled her own property, because she could defend it; and as she had power, she exercised political privileges. . . . When force reached the stage where it expressed itself exclusively through money, the governing class ceased to be chosen because they were valiant or eloquent, artistic, learned, or devout, and were selected solely because they had the faculty of acquiring and keeping wealth."