Books
THE MIND CREEPS BACK
DARWIN, MARX, WAGNER-CRITIQUE OF A HERITAGE. By
Jacques
Barzun. Little, Brown.
$2.75.
His purpose in this volume, Mr. Barzun tells us, is to give "a critical
account of mechanistic materialism in science, art, and social science"
from the days of its great apostles-Darwin, Marx, and Wagner-down to
ours. The dust-jacket informs us in a more striking way of Mr. Barzun's
comprehensive review of the three great
isms
that "threaten the individual
and
his solution to the problems of life." That the promises of the jacket
are not simply the over·enthusiastic outbursts of the publisher becomes
very clear as the author fights the reader's way through Darwin, Marx,
and
Wagner. All of them, he claims, separated man and his soul, all of
them believed that "things were the only reality-indestructible matter in
motion," and all of them helped people think that "feeling, beauty,. and
moral values were ... illusions for which the world of fact gave no war·
rant." This is the thesis of the book, but it is far from the only kind of
utterance that appears in it. Presumably in support of this thesis, Mr.
Barzun brings out material of all varieties: biographical data, facts con–
cerning the readers of the terrible trio, pronunciamentos in biology, ref–
erences to the development of economic theory, detailed esthetic analyses,
materials from the history of music, opinions on the method of science, its
significance for our lives, values, problems, etc., etc. Reviewing the book
becomes quite difficult under these circumstances. For this reason I shall
treat some of the many, far-flung statements separately.
The
Metaphysics
Nothing is more shocking than Mr. Barzun's utter lack of conscience
about using the phrase "mechanical materialism" precisely. We learn that
amechanical materialist is someone who separates man and his soul, some–
one who thinks that nothing exists but concrete material objects, someone
who doesn't think that beauty, feelings, and moral
~alues
exist, someone
who thinks that the world is cold and that man's will is powerless.
If
one
tries to get further than this one is at a loss, except, perhaps, for learning
that a mechanical materialist is someone who
reduces
all observable
phenomena to matter. That a writer working with criteria as vague as
these could ever be in a position to declare anyone a mechanical material–
ist is incredible. And yet Mr. Barzun damns three tremendous figures,
using his unclear definition and depending, not on detailed textual evi–
dence, but on impressions of how cold and alien the world felt after put–
ting down a book or leaving an opera by one of them.
Where the criteria used are a little less lyrical, Mr. Barzun's state–
ments cease to be unclear and become obviously false. For instance, where
do Darwin and Marx (I don't know about Wagner) deny the
existence
of
beauty, feelings, and moral values? And consider that supposedly accu–
rate phrase "reduction to matter.'' What Mr. Barzun means by it is hardly
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