in Einstein's relativity equations. In distress the reviewer,
a science student looking for ways of tackling the paradoxes
of his work, appealed to the head of the physics department
for assistance. But since the latter was a German with a poor
grasp of English, the Great Mind was able to destroy the
physicist and the theory of relativity simultaneously,
and
move on to more important questions like theories of animal
psychology in the sixteenth century. Because of their specu-
lativerange,
the latter problems naturally had more attrac-
tion for the Campus Terror than modern psychology, with
its narrow insistence upon experiment and empirical verifi-
cation of theory.
This seminar, with its intellectual stuffiness and its com-
plete unconcern with the questions vexing the natural and
social scientists at the same university, was a cross-section of
the best in American academic philosophy. In the hands of
its present practitioners,
it has become a kind of intellectual
ping-pong which provides diversion, in addition to bread and
butter, for its devotees. The majority of the profession faith-
fully carry out the rule recently laid down by that eminent
educator, Dean Charles Franklin Thwing:
"The professor
should avoid the discussion of things of popular or timely
interest which may bring not only himself and his depart-
ment, but the whole university,
into disrepute." This is
especially true of those thinkers who specialize in social
philosophy but will have nothing to do with the wrdid things
of the market place, or of those who dabble in ethics but
will not touch the immediate problems posed by a decaying
social order. They have no real sense of values; to them it is
as important to solve a minute problem in language as it is
to provide solutions for the fundamental problems of society.
They are very much like those unfortunates who never get
over the effects of a freshman course in logic. This is unin-
tentionally revealed by Professor Hook when he remarks, in
his contribution to the book: "I made a perfect nuisance of
myself by the indefatigable spirit with which I pointed out,
classified and Idd up to public light the fallacies in the per-
fe;;tly comprehell3ible speech of my friends."
We can cite the case of Professor Hook as an example
of what happens to a man who is completely seduced by th~
external charms of American academic philosophy. He is prac-
tic::lly the only contributor to the book who is fully aware
of how much" of bourgeois philosophy "has been an apalogia
for some vested social right." He has read and studied Marx,
Engels and Lenin. Yet he has turned his back on revolu-
tionary thought because of his .;~larrel with what he choases
to call a "political church," as "Well as because he seems to
enjoy the make-believe of professional philosophy.
In his desire to dissociate himself from the rc\"::!ut:onary
conclusions of dialectical materialism,
he has l1ed not only
from the name (he now calls his philosophy "ec;Jerimental
naturalism")
but has progressively shed most
G
f
the basic
principles of Marxism.
He has reached the point where he
must on every occasion try to prove the oPPQsite of what the
revolutionary movement says. This has led him to make ridi-
culous apologies, in a
Nation
review,
for Pareto--who
was characterized even at a recent meeting of American
philosophers as "yielding justifications of ruling class vio-
lence, extreme nationalism and bitter attacks up~n human-
itarian weakness." Professor Hook's isolation from the revo-
lutionary movement and his frantic desire to rationalize his
position have made him praise G. D. H. Cole for making
significant contributions to Marxism, although students like
MARCH,
1936
Strachey and Corey have clearly shown how Cole mlS111-
terprets Marxian doctrine.
Despite its title, this book says nothing about the living
philosophy of today which will yield the significant philo-
sophic solutions of tomorrow.
Scientists like Levy, Struik,
Bernal, Langevin have recently found in dialectical material-
ism the theoretical roots for that vast synt"hesis of knowledge
that looms ahead as the new Copernican revolution in
thought. Its principles are forcing their way into professional
circles: Marxists have participated in the symposiums of the
Aristotelian Socirty in England and at the international con-
gresses of philosophy. American thought, it is true, is more
backward in this respect than in England and France, but
a number of students here are beginning to make their way
to this unified philosophy of society and science. They are
not represented in this book, but they will playa large role
in writing the important American philosophy of today and
tomorrow.
DAVID RAMSEY
In the Mold of Poverty
FROM THE KINGDOM OF NECESSITY,
by Isidor
Schneider. Putnam.
$2.50.
Turning to his own early life for the material Of a social
novel, Isidor Schneider has found it in abundance. There are
two difficulties, however. Very similar experience has already
provided the material for a number of other autobiographical
novels, and the pattern of events described in
From the
Kingdom of Necessity
seems superficially to point a different
political moral from the one Schneider wishes to make. Born
weak and sickly into a poor Jewish family in a filthy Galician
village near the end of the last century, Isaac Hyman, the
hero, was burdened with nearly every disadvantage that
society could heap on his skinny shoulders. Brought to Amer-
ica with his family, he went through all the commonly de-
scribed immigrant
experiences-the
difficulties of getting
here, the disappointments,
the cheating, the overwork,
the
crowded bedrooms, strikes, unemployment,
unbearable job
after unbearable job, hunger,
dirt and disease. But these
difficulties were met with a tremendous capacity for physical
labor and endurance,
and Isaac, talented and eager, some-
how struggled through to a position of comfort, prestige and
security. America, it would seem, was still a land of some
opportunity,
economic barriers could still be surmounted if
one had energy and will, and in 1926 under Coolidge, when
the book ends, Isaac has just been married and seemed at the
beginning of a guccessful career.
The difficulties that this material presents are reflected
clearly in the frequent paragraphs of editorial comment that
somewhat superfluously adorn the tale. In part they are
truistic; essays written in not always distinguished prose to
explain what the incidents have insufficiently dramatized.
In
part they go to some pains to say that although the conclu-
sion of this volume would make the happy ending of a typical
bourgeois novel, Isaac was definitely not happy in his "escape
from poverty and drudgery; he was restless and dissati~fied;
his life lacked meaning. Later he "was to" experience and
"was to" know things that enabled him to understand this
period of his development. It is only in such passages and in
his attempts to broaden horizons that one feels a split in
Schneider's purpose and in the form of the novel.
But in the dominant impression of
From the Kingdom of
Necessity-and
it is a powerful one-the elements I have
