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of the scientific statement. Indeed, in distinguishing the meaningful from
the unmeaning, we distinguish between the true and the false; for accord–
ing to Mr. Urban "the true and the meaningful finally tend to coincide."
Since Mr. Urban's views on authentication as the criterion of the
meaningful are safely obscured by vagueness and lack of exact statement,
it is not possible to evaluate them explicitly. It should he noted, however,
that his victory over naturalism and empiricism is a victory over straw
men. For the principle of empirical verifiability which he dismisses as
being intellectually stultifying is not the only alternative to his notion of
authentication. What critical naturalists and behaviorists insist upon is
that factual meaning accrues to such statements only for which ohserva·
tional evidence is relevant. Consequently,
if
a statement in a given context
can not he directly tested by observation, then with the help of acknowl–
edged rules of inference other statements must he derivable from it which
are capable of a direct experimental test. This is a simple and intelligible
criterion, frequently difficult to apply in practice, hut which requires us
in
principle to control all statements of the non-formal kind by empirical
evidence. Unlike Mr. Urban's principle of authentication, it does not per–
mit us to postulate anything we please. In particular, it does not permit
us to assert with him that there are "co-implicates of experience" shown
forth in the very process of communication, hut for which there is not
one cogent hit of empirical evidence--co-implicants such as the transcen–
dental mutuality of mind or the identity of value and reality. Finally, by
distinguishing between the meaningless and the false, this principle of
critical naturalism does not commit us to the cosmic arrogance and dis–
courtesy of having to judge everyone whom we deem to he mistaken to he
1imply speaking nonsense.
ERNEST NAGEL
YRENAIC SONG
HE COLLECTED POEMS OF A. E. HOUSMAN. Henry Holt.
$3.00.
The songs of Shakespeare, the Scottish border ballads, and the lyrics
Heine, were, by Housman's own account, the chief literary influences
his poetry. Even without this ackowledgment, one would recognize in
verse the hitter-sweet savor, the clear melody, that distinguish the
Buch
Lieder.
But given the hint, one may readily discover here too the
ingly effortless purity of line that makes memorable Shakespeare's
·ghtest lyrics, and also that mingling of the fateful and the familiar that
the special quality of balladry. Housman shared with the poets he
ired the trick of setting the wild and the homely together so as to
e each a foil for the other, and to communicate a piercing sense of the
s of things. Above all, he shared their gift of song, a lyricism as near
words can come to the magic of Mozart, a feeling for verbal texture so
