Books

...New York: Minton, Balch and Company...

...That is why, when he finds extenuations for his Spaniards, and depicts their harshnesses as, in part at least, the scattered and desperate acts of civilization at bay, we believe him...

...He found Pizarro sitting gloomily in his room 'with a great felt hat, by way of mourning, slouched over his eyes.' Drawing his sword De Soto knocked the hat off, and bitterly reproved his commander...

...New York: Boni and Liveright...

...He seems to have believed that they have been in continuing conspiracy and intrigue to subvert the ideas of the American Revolution...

...New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons...

...The retention of the lecture form into which some of the chapters had originally been cast seems rather artificial to one somewhat distracted by the stock expressions of the lecturer...

...Approving these ideas out of the past Professor Smith hits boldly at modern capitalism and modern socialism alike...

...edited by Kir by Page...

...The technique of the lectures contrasts too strongly with the more finished style of the chapters written as articles for magazine publication and with the careful phrasing of those written as speeches...

...THIS is a symposium in which twenty-four specialists participate under the editorship of Mr...

...On the contrary even bare biographical details have been omitted and have had to be supplied by the translator...

...any reader who thinks cannot fail to be arrested by it...

...He points out that those who decry the cruelty of the conquerors may well remember that "during the reign of Elizabeth, huge crowds went out in holiday mood to see innocent priests dragged on hurdles to Tyburn, hanged, cut down while still alive, disemboweled and quartered...

...Such a thesis is so well established that it will soon be taught, de rigeur, in our public schools...

...The argument is tenable, as with Simon N. Patten, that the new economic order need not arise as a counsel of despair, but may strike its roots in the, rich soil of social surplus...

...translated and adapted by George N. Shuster...

...In describing Wilson Mr...

...New York: Harcourtj Brace and Company...

...The human interest of the philosopher's story rather than the intellectual interest of the history of his thought would seem to be what is held in mind by the writers who have their eyes fixed mostly on popular appeal...

...Hollis argues...

...People in the fields are toiling heavily To bring forth all the springs they have remembered...

...Now Dr...

...As founded by Thomas Jefferson the American state was an agricultural state, Mr...

...Maynard's record...

...Andrew G. Haley...

...Mary Kolars...

...The translator has done an excellent piece of work...

...There is, too, not a little of sterling truth in his admonitions...

...He is never an imitation sixteenth-century commentator...

...Hollis were killing dead men...

...Professor Seligman's article on The Case for Capitalism demonstrates the first point, perhaps contrary to intent...

...There are real gems of political thought in the text of this book...

...Professor Smith's book is worth the time one spends on it...

...But we get the full tale of their barbarities, treacheries and avarice as well as of their valor, discipline and piety...

...HOLLIS is a better writer than he thinks he is, otherwise he would not detract from the excellence of The American Heresy by a forced flippancy...

...New York: The Devin-Adair Company...

...It is only occasionally that she breaks forth in a stirring lyric...

...Simplification may be very good...

...The character of De Soto —brave, genial, wilful, confident of destiny, and finally thwarted and despairing—comes to us justly, but it comes bit by bit instead of with that startling integration that would give it a dramatic domination of these pages...

...In spite of the flashing beauty in it, The Winter Alone is distinguished by its sombre strength...

...It is difficult to believe that so thorough-going a JefEersonian lived in our midst but a few years ago...

...Maynard deserves high and special praise...

...The second point does not sufficiently emerge in these discussions...

...He seems to have pictured conservative spooks and spies dodging in and out among the pages of American history...

...Here the author has a subject which is undoubtedly congenial, one for which he displays great sympathy and of which he shows much knowledge...

...he is never hysterical...

...He has not capitalized the human interest features at all...

...It is a book too human to despair...

...Sir, you have done a serious injustice...

...George N. Shuster has made of his history of philosophy under the name i68 THE COMMONWEAL June ii, 1930 of The Eternal Magnet makes this guidance available to the English reader...

...I saw a madman, As his sly regard used the whole world For his design...

...He should have been at the National Press Club the night of the last presidential election...

...4.00...

...Behn has the qualifications we should look for in such a guide, and the translation Mr...

...They represent rather an evolution of capitalism into a system of production for use instead of profit, and bear witness to the effectiveness of the demand for a more equitable distribution of wealth...

...who robbed a countryside but punished with death the soldiers who stole a few Indian blankets...

...This is shown especially in his lectures on Dorothy Wordsworth...

...4.00...

...Our economists have been principally emendators, or at most have followed their noses...

...The North could not tolerate this...

...He has supplied the necessary biographical details for the reader less familiar with the history of philosophy, and in the case of the more important philosophers he has indicated works of reference from which readers who have become interested by the study of this volume will be able to enlarge the knowledge there acquired...

...We have not been adventuresome in this direction before because we have been in the leadingstrings of physical prosperity...

...The result is a clear and easily readable text...

...Personal liberty (this does not refer to the Eighteenth Amendment) freedom of criticism, the right of resistance even to the point of armed rebellion—these sacred rights have been obscured by the prevalence of the nineteenth-century idea of the omnipotent state, by the increasing tendencies toward governmental and economic centralization, and by the growing power and influence of monopolistic enterprise in industry...

...With proper regard for his dialectic, so noticeable because of its general absence in present-day works, Mr...

...His thesis is: the Jeffersonian state, which came to birth in the War of Independence, perished in the Civil War...

...While seeking to preserve all that is good and June ii, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 167 serviceable in them, it should recognize the fact that they often fall far short of the ideal, and that the highest type of citizen is not one who conceives his duty to be to protect his country against change, but who is willing to make such personal sacrifices as may be required in order that its institutions may be brought to the highest possible degree of excellence...

...The author, novelist by profession, poet at heart, is experimenting in a new medium...

...His work tells the story of the old American ideals—their rise, their incorporation in the Declaration of Independence, their decline beginning with the writing and adoption of our present constitution...

...Yet it is to be noted that a wide popularity seems to demand a very considerable diluting of the strong wine of philosophic thought...

...But in the confusion of the present hour it is not the time to ask, "Where were we...

...The success that attended the appearance of the Art of Thinking, to say nothing of another book that purported to give the story of philosophy, makes it not unreasonable to hope that this work too will achieve the popularity it deserves...

...Early American Prints, by Carl W. Drepperd...

...Significant, too, in Dr...

...but they strangled him on suspicion of arousing the Peruvian trjbes, and then left the ingenuous record from which Mr...

...Among the great artists, above all among the poets, are to be found men gifted with metaphysical realization...

...Behn's treatment is the continuity he gives to it by his attempt to trace the course of truth through the variations of sysems and find the conclusions that will bear comparison with reality because they "are arrived at according to rule, and are correct, pertinent and true...

...He not merely outlines systems, but judges them according to this criterion, not thinking to find all truth in any one system, nor any system devoid of all truth...

...It is an old saying that socialism finds no recruits in the bread-line...

...He remains reassuringly modern, with all the modern lack of relish of mutilation and burning at the stake...

...he is able to bring his own pity and terror within the order of good writing...

...The reader is not being led to think he is learning something about philosophy while he is merely being entertained with interesting anecdotes...

...The temptation to exaggerate either the cruelty or the glory of the Conquistadores has been a constant accompaniment of research...

...Dewey's recent opus, perhaps he has not even heard of instrumentalism...

...He recognizes that speculation about the meaning and value of reality has not remained the exclusive property of the philosophers...

...The organization of his narrative sometimes does not—in spite of the constant pleasure his fine prose gives the reader—make the most of the mere drama of his facts...

...j.oo...

...One believes the volume will keep its place as a helpful, easily consulted guide...

...but also it may be very vicious when it leads to the belief that we can hit off a whole system with an epithet...

...When we undertake a difficult subject, it is only honest to recognize the difficulties...

...The old Utopias were born in gnawing stomachs...

...Blazing with anger he strode at once to the governor's quarters...

...Maynard takes this laconic summary: "Had De Soto returned that afternoon the sentence upon Atahualpa might not have been carried out...

...Eldorado Hunters De Soto and the Conquistadores, by Theodore Maynard...

...Gold has an instinct for prose...

...There is interest in philosophy outside of academic circles, but to one who has not studied philosophy formally, and even to some who have, the history of human thought seems one vast maze of contradictions through which the reader despairs of finding his way without a guide...

...Yet he is no more to be blamed for playing the part of nervous Nellie than our superpatriots who look under their beds every night for concealed Communists or who "know" all advocates of government ownership of anything from the town pump to the public utilities to be hirelings of Moscow...

...I think any one of them would contuse the eternal verities for an epigram...

...If one lacks time, the last six chapters may be read with profit...

...It is of striking importance...

...He need not fear he is dull, therefore this, for example, is scarcely forgivable : "Thomas Jefferson was a sandy-haired man, an architect, a market-gardener and the author of curious works—one, to refute the Comte de Buffon, on American animal life, and another, also on American animal life, called the Declaration of Independence...

...2.00...

...There is no gathering of armed men.' The body of Atahualpa was buried with every mark of respect, and with the ceremonial due his rank, in the church of Saint Francis, where a requiem Mass, due him as a Christian, was sung by Father Valverde, one of the signers of his death warrant...

...Thus the anomalies of men who combined "fatherly indulgence" to the converted and friendly Indians with ruthless ferocity to the hostile...

...He has successfully overcome the difficulty of what he expresses himself as fearing would be the clumsiness of the German idiom in translation...

...The second book beginning with Descartes takes us down to the contemporary crisis in philosophy...

...One of the best poems is Early Spring Day: "How thin and meagre joy Wasted by the long effort of the winter, By too much sleep...

...And "this philosophy itself, in so far as it is modern, can be evaluated more satisfactorily and clearly if the great world poems (which are a kind of metaphysics of the second order) are taken into consideration...

...But modern systems raise issues that are of present importance and must be dealt with in some detail, and many philosophers who are significant mostly for their errors must receive extended treatment because their errors have become fundamental in so much contemporary thought...

...It helps to a better and more complete understanding of the transition from the unity of mediaeval thought to the discord of modern thinking...

...Space does not permit of comment upon the individual chapters...

...1 HIS tale of would-be thrilling episodes, which have to do with an exiled Russian prince now a chauffeur, with a clever and scheming young woman from a Chicago department store, and with the luxurious car bought by them in the desire to "see life" and to make money, may while away one hour if one has hours to spare...

...But characteristic of Dr...

...In spite of his evident admiration, the writer dwells not so much on Dorothy Wordsworth, as on a consideration of her influence on her brother—a subject delightful enough in itself but which remains for the most part in the realms of speculation...

...We hope that such readers will be many, for the work here presented them in translation is distinctly worth while...

...You should in any case have waited for our return...

...1 HIS autobiography is one more page in the history of the Ghetto, the most abominable, beautiful and unchanging of all racial histories...

...who massacred whole communities at need, but shared their last rations with starving savages—become at least comprehensible...

...Thus, the story of Atahualpa the Inca is not incredible...

...Informality Studies in Literature, by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch...

...When I was instructed by these people, I had not beheld you, Owl— Not rightly...

...All histories of philosophy will necessarily go over the same ground and will consequently show much similarity in their handling of their subject...

...One leaves this review of sins, repentance and new evangels with two convictions: first, that competition and cooperation, as it was the distinguished service of Marx to point out, are not, in a time relation, antithetical...

...We cannot decentralize simply for the sake of decentralizing or in a vain effort to bring back the agricultural past...

...This division is adequate and does not slight any philosophic interest...

...The Peruvian expedition, in which De Soto played a minor part, gave him the reputation which led to his appointment by the emperor as governor of the Florida venture...

...Page...

...So charming is his manner that the distance from Longinus to The New Reading Public, with pauses en route for Shakespeare's comedies and the history of the English elegy, is not too great for him to traverse pleasantly...

...The state unit was destroyed as a result...

...His Calhoun is unusual, but the original was not quite so chauvinistic...

...but his facts are meticulously marshaled, and judged with a fairness beyond anyone's power to impugn...

...Hollis's propensity to sacrifice substance to words in order to turn an epigram, I have uttered the chief criticism of his brilliant commentary on the downfall of democracy in the United States...

...In the first place, like Mr...

...none the less, that which fuses the elements of this book—the colors, smells, loves, terrors, the actual hatred, the passion for reform—is something no less profound than human laughter...

...There is no whitewashing here...

...Essentially it is a history of the engraving and allied arts to the Civil War, with lucid comments on the processes involved and valuable lists for the guidance of the collector...

...The proof of his theory is drawn through their lives...

...Jews without Money has the cruelty of an older farce, at which we are too civilized to laugh any longer...

...America has not been fertile in deliberate proposals for social reorganization...

...The conservatives throughout our history have not been nearly so adroit and scheming as Professor Smith evidently believed them to have been...

...Animals are people to Evelyn Scott and with an admirable sarcasm she justifies their existence: "I saw a baby gazing at me, Appropriating me to its own blank understanding, And I thought it was whole...

...While she lets herself go emotionally, the expression of her emotion is intellectual...

...Jerome G. Kerwin...

...As a matter of fact, the accusation against Atahualpa is false...

...Hollis has made himself the prophet of this thesis as has no one else...

...In this section he says the American people are apathetic concerning elections...

...2.50...

...At other times the point of Sir Arthur's talk is very apparent by reason of rather constant and fairly frequent reiteration, but his ways of arriving at his goal are often circuitous, not to say tortuous...

...Indeed, in some passages, we are forced to wonder if he means anything, or if he is not, in his pleasant, leisurely way, simply resorting to talk...

...Broadus Mitchell...

...John E. Edgerton, are undertaken seriously, and not only entertain with much information, but swing the mind in a lively waltz of ideas...

...He has produced a distinguished piece of research, humanizing and giving its proper meaning and largeness to a part of the past too little understood...

...This is really in the spirit of Saint Augustine who tells us: "There is not any false doctrine that has not some truth mingled with it...

...The adventures of the men who chose to follow him, adventures which were brutal and amusing and heart-rending, are recorded rather on one level of scrupulous carefulness than with the selectiveness and enhancement of highly organized narration...

...Behn does not appear to have had in mind an audience as volatile as the translation will have to interest if it hopes to reach best-seller proportions...

...The reader's attention is agreeably engaged during the discussion of Coventry Patmore and of W. S. Gilbert, and his interest is stimulated by the enthusiastic toast offered to the memory of Sir Walter Scott...

...It is in this very virtue that the only possible question arises that can arise about the book's effectiveness...

...The Search for Truth The Eternal Magnet: A History of Philosophy, by Siegfried Behn...

...His portrait of Jefferson is very illuminating, and is made fascinating by theological pigmentation...

...Latter-day modifications upon capitalism— such as shorter hours, progressive income and inheritance taxes, and government control—are something different from mere corrections of a fundamental article of faith...

...3.50...

...But he shares this weakness in common with so many other young British authors...

...He was aghast at the news waiting for him...

...There is a livelier questioning of old sanctions, a readier purpose toward social change...

...This unevenness of tone jars the reader and makes him feel that the informality of the writer is sometimes overdone and is often attained by the sacrifice of more desirable qualities...

...It also helped him to acquire the technique of wilderness warfare which, on that venture, operated both for his destruction and his glory as a leader who never turned back...

...And with that destruction "power was largely shifted from its nominal holders and passed into that of wealth...

...It is in this department that Mr...

...Hollis sets forth his thesis, develops his proofs with astonishing clearness, and states his conclusion in three succinct pages...

...the former, by perceptible stages, begins to lose itself in the latter...

...But he sees also that "true philosophic thought always leads to the pinnacle of metaphysics," and that no satisfactory alternative can be found in "the guesses, the fictions and psychological theories which have come to substitute for philosophic truth...

...Briefer Mention Jews without Money, by Michael Gold...

...But there is always a question, of course, of how much artifice is allowable in the writing of history, and there can be no question at all of the cumulative value of Mr...

...3.50...

...New York: Longmans, Green and Company...

...But in reading the last of its empty, carelessly done, and, worst of all, quite humorless pages one gives a short sigh for a real thriller and a long, thoughtful, yes, sad sigh for the complete disappearance of Mr...

...Perhaps Mr...

...WERE Professor J. Allen Smith, now living he would be conservative enough to be called a radical...

...The remarkably clever poems on animals that resemble miniature essays, full of biting wit, will arouse a great degree of interest...

...Third Series...

...It is not fantastic to hope that America may exhibit the pleasant irony of the most successful capitalism furnishing robustness and buoyancy for the happiest program of social betterment...

...There is something pathetic about this cry against the centralizing forces of the day...

...The Jeffersonian State The American Heresy, by Christopher Hollis...

...Here are challenges and problems the solution of which give zest to living in this age...

...How are we to tame the forces set on foot by the modern industrial age...

...Ernest Poole's art...

...on the contrary, a groaning national table may conceivably strengthen the arm for good works...

...The first part of the volume is devoted to arguments, pro and con, on four rival world movements—capitalism, Fascism, communism, and socialism...

...This impression is heightened by the difficulty we have in discovering, at times, just what Sir Arthur means...

...Hollis has not read Mr...

...DREPPERD writes that his book has been designed as "a tool which you can use with profit either to whet the edge of your acquisitive instinct, groom your hobby, or identify your finds...

...The illustrative material is abundant and first rate...

...Neither the great body of conservatives nor the great body of liberals have planned anything so carefully and with so much intelligent foresight...

...Whether her thoughts be, strictly speaking, poems or poetical utterances, they resemble an autobiography, the spiritual diary of a mind that for our benefit turns itself inside out in searching and bitter reflection, and because it has the capacity to reflect genuinely upon life, is worth listening to...

...The South is the true American state as it alone could live the ideals of the constitution...

...how are we to increase intelligent popular control of the governmental and economic machines which control our destiny...

...What is here written marks a definite advance over Ely's work of a full generation ago...

...EVELYN SCOTT'S book is an incident in the spring flood of literature...

...Maynard has written so fully that his printed page has something of the value of a highly detailed map...

...Perhaps this volume establishes the fact that the long lane has its turning...

...How strange to read in this era of socialized control a champion of the philosophy of individualism, of the social contract, of the benefits of free and open competition, and of the political theory of the separation of powers and limited government...

...Where all is given importance, what is salient and colorful tends at times to be submerged...

...but there is no more suggestion of his defending "the Spanish technique" than there is of his approving the English practice...

...2.00...

...The form of the work may have much to do with the reader's conviction that, while the book is pleasant, it is not really incisive...

...the wretched, low decay of humanity is balanced by the vigor of humanity...

...Tariff and slave questions, if settled on constitutional principles, would have been decided in favor of the South...

...The Eternal Magnet is divided into two books, of which the first gives about equal space to Greek philosophy and to the history of Christian thought down to what is generally counted as the beginning of the modern era in philosophy...

...The second part deals with very specific ways of transforming the competitive system into a cooperative order— minimum wage and family allowances, social insurance, labor's program, consumers' cooperation, government control of industry and others...

...The industrial North was the real nullifler...

...Behn does not take a narrow view of philosophy...

...Sudden social change in Russia and Italy sprang from disastrous disorder and want...

...New York: The Macmttlan Company...

...In calling attention to Mr...

...He has compiled too great a commentary, has drawn too fine a picture, to need the devices of the smart-aleck vogue...

...Maynard has kept the strains of his tapestry so well disentangled that crimson, black and pure white run parallel courses, and in the end make a logical picture...

...His original interest in aesthetics will explain why, more than the general run of writers on the history of philosophy, he takes account of the contributions to thought of poets and artists like Dante and Calderon, Shakespeare and Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci and Bach, who, as he says, cannot be understood without recourse to pure philosophy...

...THERE has long been felt the need of a presentation of the whole of philosophy seen from the viewpoint of the Catholic mind, but so set free from the encumbrances of technicalities as to be acceptable to the lay reader...

...one such gem is the following: "Any conception of patriotism suited to the needs of a democratic society must avoid the error of making institutional arrangements ends in themselves...

...The American Heresy is brilliant, vivacious, readable—the result of evident hard work...

...Muzzey explains, "with . . . imagination in material things we combine a poverty of social ideas and a timidity of spirit that bid fair to make of us one of the most reactionary of all national groups in that period of bold social experimentation on which apparently the world must enter...

...This may, of course, detract somewhat from the popularity of the work, though it is in reality the best evidence of its sincerity...

...and secondly, that America's contribution to beneficent social advance may, after all, come through the instrumentality of, and not in spite of, conspicuous, material well-being...

...Right off, this sounds as though Mr...

...Certainly he is often superficial, as, for example, in his treatment of the history of the elegy...

...John F. McCormick...

...There is large human tolerance, and sometimes warm liking, for those strange adventurers, half plunderers, half missionaries, whom Spain sent to possess the new world...

...The Car of Croesus, by Ernest Poole...

...All of them, with the exception of a childish interjection by Mr...

...It does not, however, offer anything which might be termed art criticism...

...but he went further than he intended, and did not reach Caxamarca until a couple of days later...

...New York: The Century Company...

...IN THIS new series of Studies in Literature, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch chats informally about many topics...

...Behn's work is the chapter on Franciscan philosophy as a preparation for modern science...

...but rather, "Where are we...

...Mary Stack...

...Of that redoubtable march to the Mississippi in search of elusive gold, Mr...

...No doubt the intrinsic worth of the contribution to thought of the 300 years of the modern period would hardly entitle it to equal consideration with the 2,000 years preceding...

...Even in our day the Spanish temperament is not an open book to internationalists and analytical historians...

...But, though the reader remains enchanted with Sir Arthur's informality, he becomes somewhat annoyed by the slightness of the discussions and he begins to feel that a more substantial treatment of some of the topics would increase the value of the book, if it would not add to its attractiveness...

...So the Civil War was fought to force the new political philosophy of the North on the Jeffersonian South...

...In any event he employs the instrumentalist method, making The American Heresy the history of four men—Jefferson, Calhoun, Lincoln and Wilson...

...The book has the further advantage of an index, and illustrations from contemporary and seventeenth-century prints contained in the works of Ogilby, Montanus and others, with contemporary maps of the region covered by De Soto...

...The leaves look young The sound they make Recalls a sorrow that is old, A whisper as of tears Sweetened after a long time...

...Dewey, he utilizes characters and events to prove his points...

...It may be that because America has she may resolve to continue to have, and have more wisely...

...As Mr...

...But Mr...

...Throughout the work we read such statements as, "This notion of the Supreme Court as an impersonal organ of the constitution . . . was gradually and adroitly insinuated into the public mind by the conservatives who wished to make the constitution yield not to popular, but to ruling-class, sentiment...

...Spiritual Diary The Winter Alone, by Evelyn Scott...

...Its author is twenty-eight years old, an Oxford bachelor of arts, and one of the most promising of the younger coterie of English essayists...

...Toward Cooperation A New Economic Order...

...There are some brilliant passages in his sketch of Lincoln, but Abe is his weakest subject and he should have been his strongest...

...They cared enough for his dignity to treat him like a prince in captivity, and enough for his soul to baptize him before death...

...The new plutocracy has engendered a collapse of the capacity for political thought...

...Hollis shines brightest—Wilson, who has little part in his thesis...

...Laura Benet...

...The operations of that temperament in a past to which we have largely lost the key, and toward which very definite and powerful prepossessions exist, are as great a challenge to judgment as any set of facts in history...

...New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith...

...His picture of the East Side is distinguished by two or three beautiful characters, by the excitement, curiosity and understanding with which he approaches the fact of human being, and by the skilful organization of his background...

...The nationalists of a century ago, and Henry George were the exceptions that proved the rule...

...With all this in his favor, he yet contrives to disappoint the reader who comes to him to learn something of this "incomparable" woman...

...We are not to put an end to those inventions and devices which draw peoples within states more firmly together...

...THE sixteenth-century Spanish conquests in both North and South America presented to Prescott and to the minor historians who followed him grave difficulties, both in the amassing of evidence and in the interpretation of such facts as were indisputable...