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to the world, but to devise a formula which might reconcile the seem–
ingly contradictory dimensions of existence and reason; and it is no
accident that he adopted a formula which goes back to Kant's enlight–
ened rationalism; "Existence only becomes clear through reason;
reason only has content through existence." In other words, existential–
ism without reason leads into the blind alleys of irrationalism.
It is unfortunate, I think, that Mr. Barrett did not bring out these
blind alleys of existentialism, or that he did not see existentialism
in this critical perspective of the Enlightenment. For existentialism is
not an unmixed blessing in the modem world; it is also a great danger
and often a terrible poison to men's minds. It is an advance in phil–
osophy only to the extent to which it has shown that intellectual
clarity, lucidity, and integrity can also be exercised and sh:tred in regions
of the human world hitherto unexplored or heretofore p.xcluded from
philosophical analysis. It is a step backward, I believe,
if
it
be
used to
celebrate the superior status of irrational man. I call this a step back–
ward because we don't need philosophy to bring this appeal home to
modem man.
Hans Meyerhoff
A FANTASTIC VOYAGE
HENDERSON THE RAIN KING.
By
Soul Bellow. Viking.
H.50.
"What made me take this trip to Africa?"--opening sentence
of Saul Bellow's new novel,
Henderson the Rain King.
Henderson is
fifty-five, worth three million dollars, the descendant of a Secretary of
State, the son of a man who was a "friend of William James and Henry
Adams." The blood of his ancestors has, in him, begun to run
thin
in so
far as public, practical or intellectual affairs are concerned. Henderson
could not be elected or appointed dog catcher; he has brains and a vast
trust fund of attitudes but he hasn't the quiet or the discipline for the
romantic, dedicated careers of his early idols, Sir Wilfred Grenfell and
Albert Schweitzer. He is, actually, a kind of well-born, well-heeled beat–
nik. He is fractured, but not miserable. His life is full of the dirt, con–
fusion and rowdiness possible to a man living in free squalor on a huge
income. Two marriages, brawls in village taverns near his pig farm, run–
ins with the local police, arguments at home: from these and all the
