Adventures of Ideas

Adventures of Ideas. By Alfred North Whitehead. (Caen. bridge University Press. 12s. 6d.) PROFESSOR WHITEHEAD has chosen a good title for his book : not only that, but he has lived up to it. A large part of the

hook constitutes in effect a journey through Western civiliza,

tion. In a journey of this sort, it is the guide that counts ; it is the guide indeed who in a sense creates the scenery : and there can be few guides like Whitehead. History and philo-- sophy, poetry and mathematics, social trends and scientific discovery, economics and religion—he is at home in them all,- and the panorama he creates is as different from most views of history as are the plains of Belgium from the Alps.

The journey in his company is sometimes a little arduous : mountain paths and heights afford less easy going than pave- ments and country roads. But the mountaineer has his reward.

Those who are not professional philosophers (and I daresay many of those who arc) will find the first two sections of the book the most interesting and attractive. These give a rapid survey of the progress of social ideals and of intellectual systematization from the time of the ancient Greeks to the present, and of the effect of that progress upon the framework of civilization.

Professor Whitehead sees as clearly as the most orthodox Marxist the connexion between economies and thought, the moulding effect of physical conditions upon psychological development. But to him the connexion is not only a one- way connexion ; he can sec it from the other end too. This double viewpoint gives his presentation- an uncommon rich- ness, in which concrete physical fact and metaphysical speculation take their due places in the one advancing reality. From this angle lie traces the decay of human sacrifice and slavery, the • birth of social tolerance,' the growth of humanitarianism.

Perhaps the main point of this part of his book is the gradual emergence of persuasion as the great agency of change,

and of any progress which the world is destined to experience, over against the authority of force. And the main practical suggestion is that religion is suffering from a serious time-lag, and that it will continue to be handicapped in carrying out its important civilizing functions so long as it retains at its centre the idea of authoritarian and arbitrary power, and the figure

of a god drawn after the pattern of an absolute ruler. • The third section is entitled Philosophical, and is much more technical in its treatment. Here Whitehead (if I may continue my metaphor) abandons his mountain walks, and

takes to serious climbing with rope and ice-axe. It is not all who will be equipped to follow him. Suffice it to say that in this section he takes his philosophical system, already well known from his earlier books, and amplifies it in certain inte- resting ways.

The final section is entitled Civilization, but is again some- what severely philosophical in treatment, though Whitehead's general approach to the problems of Truth, Beauty and Peace (a novel figure in the caste of Philosophy) will be found of the greatest interest. He is one of the few thinkers who can do justice to the subconscious without pulling consciousness off its rightful pedestal. His remarks about the dimly appre- hended background of the mind, and its influence on thought and action, are of extraordinary value.

There are one or two criticisms to be made. Whitehead's knowledge of science is primarily of physical science : a bio- logical approach would have helped him in one or two im- portant respects. For instance, he vigorously attacks the classical doctrine that sense-perception is the basis of all experience, and insists that perception includes other factors not derivable from the senses, as the most obvious example of which he gives " our knowledge of our own immediate past."

I do not feel that he has given due weight to the enormous stream of sensory data derived from the interior of the body, from the internal as opposed to the external environment. Every change in degree of contraction of every muscle, in position of the head, in the distension of the blood-vessels and the various viscera, is registered in the brain ; while the secretion of the different ductless glands, and the general state of the blood -supplied 'to the brain modifies the way in which it is registered. Each act of sense-perception takes time, both peripherally and centrally, and this provides a physical basis for our knowledge of the immediate past.

Most of this mass of proprioceptive data is never clearly analysed in consciousness, but it is there, and it appears to account satisfactorily for the phenomena emphasized by Whitehead, which, of extreme importance for existence, are not to be accounted for in terms only of sharp sense-perception derived from external objects.

`A further biological point concerns Whitehead's teleology. He uses such phrases as " the creative urge of the universe, with its aim at intensity and variety," and really seems to see in the world a purpose apart from the purpose or purposes projected into it by human thought.

Darwinism appears to be a little out' of fashion nowadays. But it happens to be, within its wide limits, true ; and it will account for most of the teleology of the organic world, while the incurable human tendency of projecting man's own categories, such as purpose, into outside affairs, accounts for the rest. To neglect the Darwinian interpretation of teleology is like failing to take account of the physicists' interpretation of Laws of Nature over against the theologians'.

Adventures of Ideas is a remarkable book. It is another symptom of that humanistic revival which is bravely lifting its head in our times, and alone can save us from falling— into barbarism may be—between the two stools of uncritical science and uncritical religion. Much of it is brilliantly and engagingly written : it is to be recommended to all those who are not afraid of energetic exercise for their thought, and who enjoy the pursuit of ideas for its own sake.

JULIAN HUXLEY.