unions to the law in England during the war was another illustration that the state will does not take precedence over all others. Nor have the Irish been behind, even those Irishmen who pride themselves so greatly upon their patriotism. The Ulster movement showed an Ulster will that would not bow to the authority of the central government.

A wider view reveals the same thing. The development of the federal principle in the modern world has been a practical growing away from the old monistic theory. The Americans led the way when they introduced it into their constitution at the end of the eighteenth century. Since then it has become popular and spread throughout the world. It has been adopted in Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Australia, and of recent years there has been some talk of using it as a basis for a reorganization of the government of Great Britain. Federalism, in its essence, is a recognition of a broad will and a group of narrow wills, and an attempt to reconcile and harmonize them by separating their spheres of activity, by splitting up authority, by dividing sovereignty. It is simply a legal and constitutional expression of the very theory more recently discovered. Moreover this principle has not been restricted to the field of political government. It is spreading everywhere from labour unions to women's councils; it is a great and growing principle.

Now what is the bearing of all this upon the international question? More than once in the past disaster has come upon men because their political theories or conceptions have not kept pace with the growth of their political problems. The ancient world was cramped by the concept of the city state, an excellent ideal when it arose, but wholly inapplicable to an expanding Greece or Rome. In the modern world, the British Empire itself affords more than one good illustration of this fatal disparity between idea and fact. In the eighteenth century, when the British Empire's geography had outgrown its constitution, an adjustment was imperiously demanded, but the men of that day could not break through the traditional conceptions which shackled them, and the world knows the result. The tragedy of Ireland in the past centred also around this theme of rigid ways of thinking. But to-day the outlook

is different. The greatest problem of the world is that of international relationships, and we could never solve it if the old dogma of the undivided sovereignty of the state continued to reign. With the passing of this, however, and the rise of the new doctrine of divided sovereignty, we will have an intellectual attitude which may lead to a solution of this Riddle of the Sphinx and the inauguration of a new era in the history of the world. For once our theory may catch up to our problems and find for us a way of escape from the nightmare of

war.

What conclusions can be drawn from an examination of all these tendencies at work to preserve or to kill war? In the first place, and perhaps most important of all, we must not expect to be floated by an inevitable progress into a haven of peace. If we drift we are as liable to run on the rocks as to get to port. We must face squarely the difficulties or they will wreck us, and we must study all the favourable winds and currents and make the best use of them. The main reefs are race, geography, mob psychology, and a static world; the others are but subsidiary. The chief currents and winds are the economic integration of the world, the humanitarian movement, and the development of warfare. The shipwreck or the salvation of our civilization will depend upon how we navigate with these given elements, and this is no easy task.

Of the four principal difficulties just mentioned, race and mob psychology are not quite so rigid as the other two, geography and a static world. We cannot treat the planet as a piece of clay to be remodelled perpetually according to the changing pattern traced by the flux of man; nor on the other hand can we arrest the growth of life and fix it for all time in the rigid mould of the world's physical features. There is a profound problem here, but it must not be regarded as baffling, or we are lost. In the more restricted field of national government men have been working out the antinomy of liberty and order, and this is only a larger riddle of the same kind. A final solution may not be attainable, yet something can be accomplished. The utmost use should be made of economic development. Should not tariff barriers, which sometimes emulate the great wall of China, be lowered to

reduce the conflict and to enlarge the community of material interests? Whatever may be said against Free Trade, is it not still, as Cobden preached, an angel of peace drawing men together? Should not our educational systems be overhauled and adjusted to meet the needs of this world problem? Should the child, at the most impressionable age, have his mind warped by narrow national prejudices? Should not greater stress be laid upon the larger humanitarian ideal, so that men will think and feel in broader terms? As the gregarious instinct is growing to-day with the herding of mankind together, together, should not the aim of education be to counter its evils and to develop stronger individuals who will not be fused in the fires of mob passion? Some would eliminate the subject of war from school histories, but are they wise? Should not attention be concentrated upon the evolution of warfare and its relation to the rest of life? Then the average man would see, as never before, the growing conflict between war and civilization. He would see that war, if it cannot or should not be killed entirely, must be put in a strong straight-jacket or it will hurl our ship over the last cataract into the abyss.

University of Alberta.

A. L. BURT.

THE PSYCHOLOGIST AND ECONOMICS

'L

INE fences' have occasioned warfare, more distinguished by vigour than by reasonableness, not only in the townships but also in academic circles. No two students of the social sciences are in agreement about the exact boundaries of their own preserves, and in the past much unfruitful strife has arisen. Fortunately, the problem is attracting less attention than a generation ago, when a large part of economic writing dealt with 'Scope and Method', now happily handed down to the little brother, the sociologist. The present generation of economists shows a youthful tendency to disregard established limits and stray into the interesting fringes of their subject. Not only do general treatises on economics deal with the psychological, ethical and political aspects of economic problems, but special topics have been extensively treated with scarcely an apology to the occupants of adjoining fields. The latter in turn have been busily engaged in removing their neighbours' land-marks and have invaded the economic field with all the armament of the recent progress in their respective sciences.

Nowhere has there been more of this sort of activity than on the frontier between economics and psychology, partly because the experience of recent years seems to have underscored the importance of the economic aspect of all social problems, and partly because the same period had witnessed many striking developments in psychology. Psychologists have claimed for the science great progress from the days of Mill to that of the most recent 'behaviourist', and they have been called upon to make good their claims by solving important psychological problems which confront the economist and industrial leader. Out of this experience has come a varied stream of literature on the psychological basis of economics, the psychology of industry, of labour, of advertising and what not, and though many of the books are of an ephemeral nature, some are significant contributions to both sciences and necessitate some reflection on the part of the economist.

In the 'new' psychology (or psychologies, for internecine strife is bitter) two aspects are of chief interest to the student of the social sciences, the psychology of the instincts, and behaviourism. The application of biological theory to the mind as well as to the body was responsible for the first development, the social significance of which has been most ably set forth in McDougall's Social Psychology, and Wallas's The Great Society. Human nature has its genesis, says the 'instinctive' psychologist, in certain inherited tendencies to act, feel or think in certain ways in response to certain stimuli. Such mental characteristics are subject to the same laws of heredity and selection as non-acquired physical characteristics and are accordingly selected by their survival-value in the existing environment, subject of course to the qualification that man may shape his environment to suit his inherited instinctive nature and so survive. Instincts are, of course, during the life time of the individual, profoundly modified or even inhibited by the rational and emotional evaluation of experience, and overlaid with habit, custom, social convention and 'complexes' and never find (fortunately) their unqualified primal expression. On this fact rests our civilization, for our instincts are uncivilized. They are not our own, but our primitive ancestors'. They are not ours, rather we are theirs. The brief period of human civilization has not been long enough to weed out by natural selection those instincts which have lost their value for survival in the modern world, and man without education and environment would be little different from the man of the Stone Age. In the mind of the infant, however, which James aptly and characteristically termed a 'buzzing blooming confusion', this slender inheritance of tendencies brings the first contact with the world out of which experience is to be accumulated and on that foundation is built up knowledge and personality. Any attempt to explain man's actions as purely rational is doomed to failure. Reason follows rather than precedes action. We are constantly rationalizing, giving reasons for our actions, but the springs of action are instincts as modified in personality. It is obvious then that assumptions that men do act on a purely rational basis will lead to grave mistakes of policy.