JOAD WITHOUT END
GUIDE TO MODERN THOUGHT. By C. E. M. Joad. Faber and Faber. THE MASK AND THE FACE. By Kenneth Melvin. Methuen. ROFESSOR JOAD has revised his 15-year-old summary of modern philosophy, psychology, and the implications of scientific discovery. He is as_ agreeably lucid and as lively as ever. Though he is still an "unrepentant rationalist," he is fair to the data accumulated by psychical research, but omits the consideration of any form of the "numinous" which cannot be put into a straight-jacket of ascertainable facts. His modern thought does not include mysticism. -He gives credit. to Mr. Dunne’s dreams and, perhaps too conveniently, attributes much in the field of psychic phenomena to "the undoubted queerness of time." His- final section, "Psychology Invades Literature," seems to ‘have little value except to prove the versatility of Joad. But to such an industrious, graceful, and persistent summariser many things may be forgiven. Mr. Melvin, a New Zealand writer, also has industry and persistence, but little grace. His excessively athletic prose style. has the disadvantage that when his invention flags he is dumped straight into the nearly meaningless: (p. 45) "Like almost everything else in human personality, the social atti- tude should be indulged only in moderation." Some of his best effects are in any case muffed: business executives can be (p. 113) "as touchy.as a time-
bomb"; surely the important characteristic of a time-bomb is that it is not touchy, but bides its appointed hour. Mr. Melvin, of course, does not rely solely on his own exuberant invention. Indeed his book has most value considered as an anthology of aphorisms and quotations, most of which are acknowledged. Here is one which is not. On p..152 of C. E. M. Joad’s book reviewed: above we read: "There are gene combinations for bad temper and sadism just as there are for red hair and pink eyes, or in theory, there ought to be." Andon pp. 12-13 of The Mask and the Face we find: "And it seems that there are gene combinations for bad temper and sadism just as there are for carroty hair. and hammertoes." And who first said that solvency was a matter of temperament and not of in-
come?
D.O.W.
H.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 481, 10 September 1948, Page 20
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372JOAD WITHOUT END New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 481, 10 September 1948, Page 20
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