Arthur Koestler is a writer of great intelligence and strong convictions, who has for years been carrying on a single-handed fight against that modern mechanical mystery of ingenuity, the Totalitarian State. He fights alone because he is a writer of the Left, even of the extreme Left, who refuses to accept the myths and rationalizations of his party and is just as outspoken in his condemnation of the totalitarianism of the Left as he is of the totalitarianism of the Right. He fights alone, also because he feels acutely the spiritual tragedy of modern man and the need for spiritual reintegration, and yet rejects any positive religious solution of the problem. His diagnosis of the situation is expressed in the title of his book)—the polar opposition of the passive contemplation of the naked Indian ascetic and the ruthless activism of the Communist bureaucrat.

No doubt the opposition is psychologically justifiable in terms of the pure introvert and the pure extravert, but I do not feel that it really fits the modern situation, and particularly that aspect of the situation to which Koestler devotes so much of the present volume. For what he is mainly concerned with is not the opposition of action and contemplation, but rather the frustration of the modern intelligence in a world which it has done so much to create. The revolutionary intelligence created the Marxian ideology, which in turn produced the Communist State. But something has gone wrong in the process. The intellectuals believed and taught that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would be followed by the “withering away” of the State. In fact, however, what has happened has been the development of a State power more absolute than any absolutism of the past, and it has been the intelligentsia which has “withered away”.

There are obvious difficulties about reviewing a dictionary, especially when the dictionary approaches the status of an encyclopedia in the variety of the matters covered and the method of treating them. The most useful way in which can deal with the Dictionary of World, Literature is first to indicate the general scope of the book, then to consider the various forms which the discussion of literature may take and to” use examples from the book to point or illustrate my remarks.

The dictionary as a whole is not concerned with judgments on particular or collective works of literature, but with general ideas bearing on literature, literary forms and technique, ancient and modern criticism, schools and movements, and rhetorical terms. Thus Dante and Milton are not appraised as poets, but their poetical theory is resumed, and the forms they used are considered under such headings as Epic, Sonnet, Terza rimas, English verification. The amount of actual information given is large and wide-ranging, and the Editor may be praised for his general planning and his marshalling of contributors.

Of the various ways in which literature may be discussed the most important is the most general—the examination of the nature and purpose of literature in the light of metaphysics and morals. This may be called the philosophy of literature, and its value evidently depends on the truth of the higher principles it appeals to and the skill with which deductions are made. False principles to begin with, or inexperience in application, may render it nugatory or harmful. It is nowadays rare to find a writer on literature whose general philosophical training is adequate for the attempt, and Mr. Shipley has been fortunate in securing a leaven of such work for his dictionary.

Some weeks ago in two articles in The Tablet, entitled: “Education and Technique”, J. B. Sandeman, O.S.B., described the rejection by the 1944 Education Act of the idea of liberal education and asked what the Wisdom of Christ’s Church has to say and do at this time. He epitomised the historical facts thus: “In 1870 we abolished God, or at least reduced him to the rank of an idea . . . And now we are engaged in the abolition of man, for he too, in his turn, is to be sacrificed to something lower than himself, to the exigencies of technique”.

The State rejects liberal education because it only understands it as a pagan thing, as the practice of traditions, which, rising from the noble but pagan ideal, “mens sana in corpore sano”, have become corrupt and moribund, lacking the principle of life; it rejects a “classical education” because it knows no reason for its existence. When the Holy Spirit ceased to pour the water of life through Christ’s Church into our schools, when in fact, “God was abolished, or at least, reduced to the rank of an idea”, the virtue went out of our schools, the virtue went out of liberal education. When the study of the classics became an end in itself, instead of being part of the means and methods of training minds to logical and later to theological thought, in fact when man was abolished or at least “in his turn sacrificed to something lower than himself, to the exigencies of technique”, the idea of a classical education came into disrepute. But the Church lives still in Europe.

The present writer had already sent to the printer his reflections on Psychotherapy and Ethics) before the opportunity came to him of reading Dr. J. C. Flugel’s recent book on the same subject. Dr. Flugel’s approach is, naturally enough, very different from our own. He writes as a psychologist pure and simple, and with a minimum (at least in intention) of extra-psychological presuppositions. He is moreover a convinced and orthodox—though also a “progressive” and by no means uncritical—Freudian; but he is unusually open to interests and considerations outside his own professional province and writes with an ease and urbanity uncommon to his kind. Last but not least, he is gifted with a quality which, as has often been remarked, seems to be singularly rare (but, one might have thought, singularly necessary) among psychologists—a keen sense of humour.

The great value and importance of Dr. Flugel’s book lies in the fact that it presents us with a remarkably candid, thorough and comprehensive treatment, from a psychoanalyst’s own viewpoint, of the subject which has recently engaged our own attention. In certain important matters his conclusions strikingly anticipate and confirm our own. In particular we would draw attention to the frankness with which he dismisses the contention that psychotherapy, as a “pure science”, can confine its attention to the means of human conduct and disregard consideration of the ends and values which are the province of ethics (pp. 12 ff., 30 ff.) Indeed it is precisely because he believes that the analytical exploration of psychological means modifies our apprehension of these ends and values that he has written and published the book at all; in the belief, that is to say, that from psychoanalysis (notwithstanding its many candidly recognised insufficiencies) many lessons may be learned “concerning the general nature of human morality and the general lines of moral progress” (p. 240, cf. Preface).

Alice had often wished to see Wonderland and Looking-Glass Country again, but she had never had the opportunity of doing so. In fact she had no idea how she could set about it. “And, in that case,” she told herself, for she was fond of giving herself good advice, “you ought to give up thinking of it, since it is no use wishing to do something if you do not know how to do it.” In spite of this, however, the wish remained.

Then, one day, when she was going down to the tube railway, the usual gale of wind met her as she turned the corner. She did not think anything of it at first, as she had experienced it before, but it gradually became more and more violent. She could not struggle against it any longer and felt herself being blown backwards faster and faster, until she was blown right through the wall.