SOURCE: A review of Anthropology and Modern Life, in The Yale Law Journal, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 5, March 1929, pp. 694-96.

In the following review of Anthropology and Modern Life, Slesinger commends Boas's scientific methods and applauds his major conclusions concerning the roots of human behavior.

Anthropology and psychoanalysis became popular in certain circles at about the same time, and for more or less the same reason. They both tended to discredit present day institutions and modes of thought by pointing to lowly origins in the infantile racial and individual past. It was fashionable a dozen years ago to be scornful of adult habits because their origins might be traced to a feeling of guilt, or an attachment to one's mother during the first four or five years of life. It was an equally popular pastime to suggest the ridiculousness of wearing a wedding ring, which was only an ancient...