A Sociologist Reflects on Life
AYRES, C. E.
A Sociologist Reflects on Life The Pursuit of Happiness: A Philosophy for Modern Living. By R. M. Maclver. Simon & Schuster. 182 pp. $3.00. Reviewed by C. E. Ayres Professor of economics, the...
...Reviewed by C. E. Ayres Professor of economics, the University of Texas The Pursuit of Happiness is an acutely personal essay, or collection of essays, on those aspects of life which are common to all mankind-the sort of book no one can pick up without wondering what manner of man the author is...
...But the idea did not originate with him...
...Indeed it is...
...But what of it...
...and I hope their number may be legion...
...Obviously, present knowledge is not the last word...
...This idea is itself an exemplification of the principle it formulates...
...But, as Robert Maolver would be the first to insist, whatever is personal is also societal...
...Though never before so fully and convincingly expounded, it was already making its way into the literature of the social studies, as in this case also I imagine Professor Maclver would be the first to declare- indeed, did in that very book...
...Not that he has suppressed the urge altogether during the half-century of his academic career...
...The first of his fifteen books (if my count is right) was Community -A Sociological Study, published while he was a professor at the University of Toronto, though written at Aberdeen before the war...
...In conformity to the spirit of this idea, Professor MacIver makes no claim to originality for any of the ideas he sets forth in The Pursuit of Happiness...
...For example, I would challenge the author's statement that what distinguishes a work of art from a scientific or technological achievement is the fact that a work of art "is the unique product of a single personality" which it "reflects and expresses" in a sense that is not true of anything else...
...Community is a remarkable book...
...In this meretricious welter, The Pursuit of Happiness shines like Portia's candle...
...Professor MacIver is well aware of this, of course...
...The fact remains that this is a book any one of us would have been proud to have written...
...What he says here "On Being Oneself," and on frustration, loss of privacy, pride of group, and on sex, death and religion, is substantially what we would expect a social philosopher of the mid-twentieth century to say...
...At the present time, we are beset on every side by moral "how books" telling us how to be happy though good or how to be sane in an insane world-most of which are as redolent of insincerity as mock-turtle soup...
...It is not the author's purpose to shock, or even to startle, his readers...
...If there is one quality which predominates over others in this personality, I should say that it is sincerity...
...and now that he has retired from the Lieber Professorship of Political Philosophy and Sociology at Columbia University, he has for the first time ventured to satisfy his "initial urge" by writing just for the fun of writing, on the matters that are closest to a man's heart rather than following the dictates of academic strategy, and for all who run to read rather than for the captive audience of scholarship...
...Its readers, too, will have a lot of fun -the most wholesome kind of fun...
...These he has now selected and edited for publication under this poignantly nostalgic title, giving them, I am sure, the full flavor of his mature personality...
...I imagine that Professor Maclver had a lot of fun writing it...
...I doubt if this is true of art any more than of science, and I would argue that there are other and more significant differences which the author fails to mention...
...that in all cases individual "personality" is a projection of the collectivity in which it appears, while the collectivity is of course a collectivity of persons...
...This was a full-length treatment, perhaps the most complete in existence, of an idea that is now recognized as a basic truth by virtually all social scientists, namely, that the concept (or meaning) "individual" and the concept (or meaning) "society" (or community) are obverse and reverse of each other...
...There are many points in these little essays at which any one of us might wish to argue with the author...
...As he now confesses, "Over many years I have set down, when the mood was on me, occasional reflections on the human scene...
...What he undertakes to do, and does with exemplary simplicity and transparent sincerity, is to lay before the general reader such reflections on the common aspirations, failures and achievements of mankind as present knowledge justifies...
...and so he has provided the reader of this book with a few scanty but significant notes about himself...
...The first aspiration, it seems, of his Hebridean adolescence was to become a writer...
...and in saying this I take full cognizance of Professor Maclver's own remark, in his little essay on "Sincerity and Art," that the artist is subject to one prime requirement, that he be sincere...
...This, as he goes on, "sounds simple, but it is extremely difficult...
...It was this book which first brought Robert Maclver to the attention of the world of scholarship...
Vol. 38 • November 1955 • No. 45
