486
PARTISAN REVIEW
into being.
Lamennais, who had been a charismatic figure in the Paris of the
1820s, began, with the backing of other liberal Catholics, the newspaper
L'Avenir
in the 1830s. The following aims emb lazoned the masthead:
decentralization of government, localism, freedom ofassociation, separation of
church and state, and independence of the judiciary. It is quite possible that
Tocqueville had a prepared mind when he and Beaumont went to America
in 1831 and was struck by the existence of these attributes of American
society. And whatever else we may think, these were hardly ideals that
resonated through the Enlightenment.
ROBERT NISBET
WITTGENSTEIN'S WORLDS
WITIGENSTEIN: A LIFE. VOLUME
I.
YOUNG LUDWIG, 1889-
1921. By Brian McGuinness. University of Cali rornia Press. $22.50.
Wittgenstein's career depended on Cambridge niversity and on
Bertrand Russell. Reviewing it, one cannot fail to be impressed with the ma–
ternal genius of Russell, drawing Wittgenstein along the path that led to his
life's work, and with the different succor provided by G. E. Moore or John
Maynard Keynes when Russell's personality grated. How much of this story
would there be to tell, I wonder, if English universities had been as "efficient"
then as they are being made today?
Here is how McGuinness begins the story:
The house of Wittgenstein with which we are concerned took its rise
at the end of the eighteenth century in the village of Laasphe in the
county of Wittgenstein not far from the castle of the princely family of
that name. In some year unknown, or perhaps in no definite year ,
Moses Meier, son of Meyer Moses of Laasphe and the prince's factor ,
adopted the name of the county as his surname.
Hermann Christian Wittgenstein had modest success in Leipzig, and the
family became established. His son Karl Wittgenstein had great success in
Vienna, and the family became prominent. Young Ludwig was the last of
Karl's eight children, all educated at home and imbued with the standards of
achievement embodied in their remarkable parents. As a young teenager he
was confronted with the suicide of two of his older brothers (one by
