BOOK REVIEW 73 fundamentally aggressive behaviour.5 This view cannot be wholly rejected and neither can it be fully accepted. Even if accepted partially at the level of individual behaviour, it fails to explain the problem of mass behaviour. The sociologists and the the Marxists, on the other hand, view man's behaviour in the context of social relations obtaining in a particular society. They accept that some peculiar characteristics of man's behaviour may be attributed to his genetic evolution, but his behaviour is otherwise largely guided by the social environment which he creates himself. In other words, to borrow Marx's language, man is an^ensemble his social relations."6 The Marxian assumption is that the change in the social conditions (abolition of alienation) will eliminate the aggressive social behaviour that stems from neurosis.7 The sociologists then rightly argue that the source of social conflict lies in the man-created environment (like weapon systems, ideologies and religions). It is the man who creates exploitative and hierarchical social structures while responding to his external environment. The problem of mass behaviour can be explained either in terms of large systemic processes or in terms of class conflict, particularly the conflict between the rulers and the ruled (between 'Centre and Periphery' if we like). This broad classification of Daherendorf8 and others, like Marx's, between the exploiters and the exploited has helped in directing social enquiry toward structural origins of social conflict. Symbolic Environment If we follow this argument then it becomes clear that man creates an environment in which aggression is in-built. The environment is made up not of the physical elements, but of symbolic inputs like language, mental images, attitudes and beliefs (individual as well as collective). Ideas originate in mind in response to external symbols and stimuli! and gradually man becomes wholly subjected to them. Rapoport,9 in the book under review, attempts to explain the problem of individual and mass behaviour in terms of interaction between man and his symbolic environment. That man has apparently mastered his physical environment but has become subservient to his own creation is the central point of this small book.l ° Take for instance, man's dependence upon culture which is a product of of his own imagination. Culture distinguishes man not only from animal life but also from the other man who does not belong to the same symbolic environment. So we find not just one symbolic environment but several, and man trying to subjugate the other man through the control of symbolic interactions. The identification of man with one particular environment or social organism like the state, and enrichment with more symbols (power for example) by destroying the other man (before the other may destroy him) or subjugating him (alienating him from his symbolic environment) creates a hierarchy of social systems which in the past have destroyed great empires and civilizations.