PARTISAN REVIEW
Such is Mr. Ames's zeal for this philosophic uniform in which he
has clothed Gide that he hardly attempts at all the critical task of
examining, placing, and. judging Gide's ability at ideas. The fact is that
this is much less than Mr. Ames imagines: Gide confesses in several
passages in the
Journal
to his diffidence in handling philosophic ideas,
and the ideas with which he deals effectively in his writings are within
a rather narrow range, concerned with the problem of personal moral–
ity, and then chiefly with one aspect of this. But, insists Mr. Ames,
Gide
is
a full-fledged philosopher ("not only a scientific worker but a
philosopher of science"-!), and as such "he would be hailed by Bacon,
Bayle, Diderot, Hegel, Guyau, Nietzsche, Bergson, James, Dewey and
Mead, if not by Marx." All of us who admire Gide will be pleased by
such an extraordinary acclaim, but we can't help wondering whether
Mr. Ames is not making at this point a rather excessive use of the vote
by proxy.
From the opening pages an image begins to form for the reader
which, undeclared and only implicit, nevertheless persists to the end:
the blackboard, desk, chairs, and the professorial voice at its patient
drudgery of explanation in a classroom which might be described by
some standard rubric of the American college catalogue as "Philo 2
(or 3?), Scientific Method," or "Philo 4 (or 5?), Philosophy of Science,"
or perhaps, a more advanced elective, "Philo 45 (or 63?), Literature
and the Philosophy of Science." In proportion as the reader still feels
the need of attending such courses he will feel the need of reading this
book, but the real point-and perhaps it is the chief point in revjewing
this book at all-may be just to raise the more general question: Why
do so many of our American critics insist on keeping us in the classroom?
William Barrett
SOME LIONS, SOME SHADOWS
LIONS AND SHADOWS.
By
Christopher Isherwood. New Directions.
$3.00.
When, in 1938,
Lions and Shadows
was first published in
England, Christopher Isherwood was only thirty-four years old. He had
not yet, it might have seemed, given the world a great enough, or sub–
stantial enough, body of work to have established a basis for deep interest
in his genesis as a writer, the subject of the book. Although he had
published fiction which indicated his capacities as a novelist
(The
504
