Every so often a publisher will issue a book whose title bears little obvious relation to its content. This is one of those cases. George Soule, an editor of the New Republic, is not concerned with the material strength of a nation in terms of geo-politics or raw materials. Nor is he dealing with moral or ethical factors. The book is rather a frank attempt to synthesize a new social theory from the tangled threads of the several social sciences as they exist today.

That part of the volume devoted to a criticism of the present order of social studies is well worth the attention of every person interested in them. The old myths--economic man, the political anidevastating logic. After proving the inapplicability of completely separate fields of inquiry, the author goes on to construct his own inclusive theory.

Frendian psychology is the catalyst. Soule is convinced that man's behavior can be understood only by first understanding his emotions, and that the key to emotional conduct is observation of physiological reactions. From this starting-point he goes on to consider Freud's analysis of the individual mind and to apply it to society as a whole. The accepted Freudian terms, id, ego, and superego, are used to describe the basic reasons for behavior in every social activity. In one of the chapters, revolutionary dialectic is explained by identifying Marx's thesis, antithesis, and synthesis with Frend's three terms.

This analysis, like most other inclusive theories, has serious defects. It is possible to ascribe mass behavior in society to individual factors only if that society is the sum of its individual members and nothing more. That thesis has been asserted many times, but it has not as yet gained general acceptance. There seems always to be "something else." Moving from one plane, that of the individual, to another, that of society, with the same theoretical methods is a risky transition at best, but the danger has not deterred Soule in his efforts.

As a logically consistent and conclusive synthesis, the work has not succeeded completely. But, by pointing out the fallacies of rigidly channelized study of society, it may serve as a manifesto to rouse the social sciences from their present state of disorder.