BOOKS
67
Dewey's philosophy. A detailed examination of his tremendous- contribu–
tion to logic and ethics has not been given. For this alone he must be
regarded as America's greatest philosopher. My object has been to reveal
what I regard as a serious lack in his thought as well as to question some
of Prof. Hook's statements about his approach to Marxist politics. This, I
hope, will not be taken as a denial of any of Dewey's contributions to
other fields, nor of the fact that Prof. Hook's volume is the most valuable
introduction to his philosophy we have.
M.G.
WHIT.E
TOO WILD A COW FOR OUR MATADOR
D. H. LAWRENCE
&
SUSAN HIS COW. By William
York
Tyndall.
Columbia University Press.
$2.75.
For a long time there has been wanting a book on D. H. Lawrence
which unlike most of those which have been published in English, tackled
in
a serious and thorough fashion the objective significance and importance
of the man for our day. What is wanted is not a pseudo-psychoanalytic
study, a Ia Middleton Murry, of how Lawrence got the way he was; this
sort of thing, when done by some one we can trust and respect has its place
and value, but neither place nor value can ever be more than secondary.
What is wanted is an analysis of the objective content of Lawrence's atti–
tudes and ideas and of their symptomatic significance; an elucidation of
the sense in which Lawrence's "philosophy" is a turgid precipitate of
powerful reagents which otherwise flow in solution in the current of
our day.
The reason for the need of such a study is obvious. For men like
Lawrence are extremely powerful amplifiers of forces which disturb us as
much as they disturb them, but which disturb us only in the form of a
diffused and
vagu~
irritation. But in order to tackle such a job certain
qualifications are indispensable. And I might as well state bluntly that
Mr.
Tyndall seems to lack them all. Mr. Tyndall is not altogether unaware
of what a critic could do with Lawrence; he does realize that Lawrence
reflects his day and therefore it would be of great value to understand
him.
And this is a decided advance over most Lawrence criticism. But only
a
sense of what is required and some research on Lawrence's profuse intel–
lectual borrowings is all we actually find in the book.
There are at least two reasons for Mr. Tyndall's failure, and one of
these was already noticed in one of the reviews of the book which I read,
namely his hatred of his subject. Lawrence seems to infuriate Mr. Tyndall
even more than he does most of us. The reviewer who pointed this out
argued,
if
I remember correctly, that this proves that it is impossible to
write good criticism out of hatred. But this simply isn't so--as Nietzsche
