BOOKS
435
reactions of the people who read the book in which the theory is presented.
This fallacy is not the fallacy of origins, but is equally vicious. The for·
mula is simple. Prove a man has been read and quoted favorably by a
fascist, and he becomes a fascist. Prove that someone who read Darwin
urged the destruction of all social reforms, and refute the theory of natu·
ral selection. The tendency appears throughout Mr. Barzun's book, and is
one of the many things in it which are irrelevant to its thesis.
The Book
The book is not very good. Perhaps Mr. Barzun puts his own finger
on the reason, when
in
explanation of the alleged failure of Darwin,
Marx, and Wagner, he says: "The explanation is that none of our three
men were content to stay within his own specialty. Darwin made sallies
into psychology and social science; Marx was a philosopher, historian,
sociologist, and would-be scientist in economics; Wagner was an artist·
philosopher who took the Cosmos for his province'' (p. 10). But consider
Mr. Barzun, who makes more than sallies into philosophy, history, eco·
nomics, sociology, and art.
MORTON
G.
WHITE
LUXEMBURG'S LIFE
ROSA LUXEMBURG, HER LIFE AND WORK. By Paul
Frolich.
Victor
Gollancz Ltd. London.
336
pages.
7/6.
This biography hardly pretends to be more than an introduction to
Rosa Luxemburg and her ideas. It is just as well that it is so sober as to
be almost pedestrian. There is only the danger that some one to whom
this great woman is still but a name may fail to gain from it a sufficient
realization of her tremendous stature as a revolutionary leader and
thinker. For in the twenty years since her death the Russian Revolution
has, unavoidably, done much to obscure her true importance. This is the
first biography of her to be published in English. The facts are here, and,
equally important, Luxemburg's guiding ideas, all presented with a praise·
worthy objectivity and a care for the essentials.
A different atmosphere disengages itself from Rosa Luxemburg's life
than from those of Lenin and Trotsky. Her biography is easier to write.
It permits a greater emphasis upon the personal. (I doubt whether the
fact that she was a woman is completely responsible for this.) Lenin and
Trotsky were personalities indeed, but they censored the personal in them·
selves as much as they could. The impression they make-it is a false
one, but they are responsible for it-is of a certain lack of intensity in
their personal relations, of an unwillingness to grant their own sensibil–
ities due rights, and of a reluctance to attend to or appreciate the unique
and personal in those with whom they dealt. Rosa Luxemburg seems more
complete as a human being; we get
in
touch with her at more places. For
example-although she was an uncompromising political opponent of
Jean Jaures, she could allow herself to admire and enjoy his personality.
Such indulgence is unthinkable
in
a Lenin or a Trotsky.
