PARTISAN REVIEW
to take
issue with
them. More often than not, Mr. Wilson touches upon
controversial issues with the tone of the British gentleman who, as the
story goes, didn't like arguments; 6) a moderate satisfaction with Amer–
ica as compared with Europe in its present state, combined
with
a
scarcely hidden (but watchfully controlled) perplexity about the funda–
mental questions of today.
Perplexed satisfaction, or satisfied perplexity, is in fact one of the
most characteristic traits of Mr. Wilson as a traveling observer. Pecu–
liarly revealing in this respect, I feel, is the note on which he chooses
to end his book. Recounting the visit he paid in Edinburgh to his old
philosophy teacher, Professor Kemp Smith, the author tells us briefly
of a conversation he had with him: "I remarked that the immediate
future seemed to me extremely depressing, and he vigorously took me
up, declaring that he thought it looked hopeful. When I asked him how
he could possibly
think
this, he replied: 'People's complacency's shaken'
... when I said that I thought it was time to get rid of the word
God,
since we had 'no need of that hypothesis' ... he said, 'I don't know of
any better word.' ... For myself, I am extremely reluctant to call
anything whatever 'God,' for the word has too many connotations of
obsolete and miraculous mythologies. . . .''
One wonders about the meaning of such a rapid dismissal.
It is as if the author had been at the same time perturbed and re–
assured by the old scholar's sudden insistence on
God.
If
the word
God
had not "too many connotations of obsolete and miraculous mythologies,"
he would, so it seems, be willing to take the idea into consideration. On
the other hand, he has just
tried
to shrug off the whole question with
a retort which was not only Laplace's but also Monsieur Homais'.
Neither argument carries conviction, in either direction. In the interval,
the author has managed to suggest the existence, or at least the non–
inexistence, of a problem. But he himself makes a point of -clinging to
the approved
views
of scientific atheism. The perturbation was slight,
and so was the reassurance. The incident ends with Mr. Wilson's being
both right and wrong. Right, because
it
can certainly
be
argued that
the situation of man today
is
not made any clearer by bringing in the
question of God; wrong, because
it
is also certain that atheism is not
such an easy position to maintain. On the contrary, it is very difficult,
and valid only insofar as it is felt to be difficult.
It might seem petulant indeed to take up Mr. Wilson's casual
stand on the existence of God. But it cannot
be
mere coincidence
if
his book ends with
it.
The fact is that his wanderings through Europe
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