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PARTISAN REVIEW
between use-value and exchange-value, and that it took the marginalists to
confirm Hamlet's statement that "there is nothing either good or had, hut
thinking makes it so." The complete confusion of ethical and economic
senses of the word "value'' is apparent.
The Moral
The growth of marginal utility economics, Mr. Barzun tells us in
hushed tones, was a sign that "Mind was creeping back into the world of
things." Expelled by Darwin and Marx, the mechanists,
it
began its
stealthy return trip in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and
arrived safely home by the time Mr. Barzun's last chapter appeared. For
there
mind
is enthroned, and given its proper due. And what support it
is supposed to find in contemporary science! Quantum theory, relativity
theory, Jamesian psychology, and psychoa'nalysis, all of them are simply
so much confirmation for Mr. Barzun's philosophical contentions. Here
is one of them: "Events are ... the result of our wishes and our brains,
acting in conflict or cooperation with the physical world" (p. 9). Here is
another: "The law of contradiction on which Hegel based his logic dogs
our mental steps so long as we confuse the conceptual with the actual, and
it is only recently that a logic of relations has sought to replace a logic of
identities in an effort to make reason less unreasonable" (p. 391 ) . It
would be dignifying these last statements to call them false, for to be false
statements must at 'least he meaningful. To present them as the assured
results of twentieth century science is to add insult to injury.
The History
The history of ideas is an important, fascinating, and far-reaching
subject. Workers in it must be capable of understanding ideas in many
fields and also able to correlate them with various cultural, non-intellec–
tual phenomena. It is with this in mind, I suppose, that Mr. Barzun spends
so much time on the personalities of Darwin, Marx, and Wagner, and
their disciples.
If
Mr. Barzun were interested only in recording facts
about these men, this might he understandable. But since the essay is
critical, and tries to cast doubt upon the truth or beauty of what they
created, it becomes important to ask whether the slander is at all relevant.
What significance, even if they were true, would the attacks on the per–
sonalities of Darwin, Marx, and Wagner, have? It is one thing to be told
that Darwin was not a thinker (p. 92), that Marx was prurient, and that
Wagner was an ingrate, hut given the information one pauses between
deprecatory remarks to ask what connection they have with the major
point of the book. And one asks this question under the guiding influence
of the author. For nothing, he keeps insisting, is so terrible as the genetic
fallacy.
There is one other theme that deserves examination. It involves the
reverse of the genetic fallacy, perhaps best called "the fallacy of conse–
quences." Pragmatists and instrumentalists have succeeded in convincing
many people that theories are to
he
tested by observing their consequences.
Unfortunately many of the converts understand by "consequences" the
