466
WILLIAM YOUNGREN
of human curiosity and intelligence." How could anybody say this who
had read just one major Platonic dialogue with an open mind and a
desire to undentand?
It
would be unfair not to mention that in this book as in his others
Hayakawa unfailingly comes through as a candid, decent, engaging man
-particularly in the one essay I've neglected to mention, "The Great
Books Idolatry and O ther Delusions," which I find the best in the
collection. Yet even in that essay his good qualities are obscured by his
insistence on justifying them, and the social attitudes that issue from
them, in terms of Korzybski's theories. General semantics is supposed
to give us techniques for ending arguments and reaching agreements, but
even if it's more benign and relaxing than arguing, is it really very
interesting to agree that progress is inevitable or that yes, every modern
painter is good in his own way? Sometimes argument not agreement is
what we want, and anyway, really important agreements, like the ones
that led to a community project described in Hayakawa's last essay as
an example of "semantics in action," cannot be explained simply as
the result of "shared perceptions." Finally (to return to Chase's remark)
general semanticists can never convincingly show us which facts, no
PARTISAN REVIEW
is pleased to announce
that a new play by
ROBERT LOWELL
My Kinsman, Maior Molineux
will appear in our
next issue.
