logical) sense, and is therefore "innate" and "congenital", but is not a unit character transmitted through the gene s. His position follows from the view (which he traces through in detail) that maleness is a later and more advanced ovolutionary stage than femaleno ss. This gets him into somo difficulties in explaining female homosexuality. After ignoring the problem at first, ho eventually comes to grips with it weakly by the statement that "congenital homosexuality, in the sense that this condition occurs in males, may be rare or unknown (in females). If it exists, and could be demonstrated, it would ne cessarily be considered as an over-development of evolutionary male characteristics engrafted in the basic female-infantile (that is, normal) pattern." We would guess that this view will be rather hard to sell to the scientific community.

The re is some scattered discussion of varieties of homosexuality, with an implication (far from clearly or consistently stated) that the exclusive homosexual's condition is not innate. Mercer shares Albert Ellis' view that this variety of homosexual, and only this one, is neurotic (the "true abnormal").

Mercer's discussion of theories of causation, despite the advance claims made for the book, is not complote. It is heavily weighted in the direction of dissecting such early writers as Havelock Ellis, Magnus Hirschfeld, Krafft-Ebing, oto. Of the moderns, he discusses George Henry critically, and of course Kinsey and Albert Ellis with full approval. There is only passing attention to Freud and the postFreudians, who are the real shapers of modern thought on homosexuality. He rejects the ir conclusions en masse, and here and there makes apt and effective criticism of particular points, but nowhere gives a full description or analysis of their position. The book is not a serious challenge, therefore, to prevailing views, except as it presents an alternate view for consideration.

The chapters dealing with the law and how it should be reformed (when they get down to business, get down to business, after much fantastic and rhetorical nonsense) appeared to this reviewer as the best parts of the book. They follow in general the view, coming to be more and more widely held on the so que sti ons, that the criterion of crime should be demon-

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