BOOKS and AUTHORS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 264, 3 August 1929, Page 28

BOOKS and AUTHORS

A Weekly Survey

By

“Liber”

BOOKS OF THE DAY A New Zealander’s New Philosophy. The Greek and Persian philosophies are based on the phenomena fire, air, water, and earth, Plato’s on the ideals of reason. Medieval philosophers use the “noumena” of intellect, love, soul, mind, character. The modern school uses mind, but without a definite description of its content. Hants's famous critique seems to submerge reason In the “apodictical certainties” of the understanding within the iron limits of which philisophy languishes in pessimism. Here, in a book called “The Riddle of Nature,” by Aubrey Gaulter (Whittaker and Co.) is presented a new philosophy drawn from nature which discards nomenclature and uses words in their natural sense to build up a world of intellect which is a perfect copy of the world of nature, and can be checked in its infinite detail. The two worlds, nature and intellect, include all we know, and the complete analogy between them explains either by reference to the other. This at every point. Yet now a strange difference makes itself evident, an elemental something without counterpart in nature threatens to overthrow the whole thesis, the toil of decades. Long meditation gradually isolates the stranger, till one day the mystery takes shape in its solution and a new discovery. So the “errors” in astronomy when solved bring new light. This enigma, permeating intellect, resolves itself into reason, the slow result of evolution, the reasoning ego which is analogous to the physical body it has “created.” Here, it is claimed, is more than a hint of creation, for the ego in relation to its intellectual world is a god, just as we must believe that the great God intimately permeates His infinitely greater universe. Thus is the philosophy of the All built up foursquare to the winds of criticism, for it contains the answer to every question that reason may with justice ask. We have nature’s definition of such words as soul, mind, thought, reason, in the analogy which enables reason to check intellect by nature and nature by intellect. The All is built up Into one mighty organic synthesis, in the unity of which each part is essential to the structure, no part overlaps, no part is missing, no vacancy exists where anything could be added, nor is there any conceivable thing to . add, while each part can be checked’ in its relative place. Great poets are. necessarily profound philosophers, and they unconsciously use, and are forced to use, these very analogies to express truth beautifully or beauty truthfully, and humanity signifies its approval by ■ Universally treasuring these real gems of genius which bear the hall-mark of deep insight. This philosophy is real, it grows, it provides a solid basis for religion. Under a God of reason, the first attribute of which is love, truth must be joyfuL Here, Indeed, we have philosophy of optimism drawn from the assurance which complete vision commands, “the final answer is always joyful,” for only incomplete things are crude or ugly. The work displays a wealth of detail and quotation native to the subject, yet this very wealth, like that of the ivied tower, conceals its pramount achievement, the architectonic plan of the universe, for it provides a natural basis for philosophy and a real foundation for truth in the organised unity of the All. As the great miracle of ; Greek reasoning sprang from a new untradition-haunted Greece, so we hope a newer and truer philosophy will , spring from this land of naturaf beauty, this Dominion, this new New Zealand. A Book for Fanners.

Lord Betisloe, of the Ministry of Agriculture, in his foreward to “Farming” by Edward C. Ash, M.R.A.C. (Methuen and Co.), writes commending the book to the favour of the general, and “not merely the agricultural, public, and especially to the well-edu-cated would-be farmer” as the work of a practical farmer of energy, enterprise, and keen observation. The book contains new theories on slock breeding and milk production, together with a general picture of farming and the rural problem. It is claimed to be altogether a unique work, based upon practical experience of soil and live stock development. Mr. Ash is refreshingly optimistic as to the prospects of the English farmer. Farming with a small capital (if the man has a leaning to continual physical work and long hours), is, he says, a hard yet happy one. On such a life a man grows muscles past believing and finds an indescribable feeling of being really physically fit and in perfect working order. It is something really very great. Mr. Ash analyses almost every branch of the farming industry, and, although primarily intended for Old Country readers, his book contains not a few very useful hints by which the colonial farmer may profit. The illustrations are numerous, well chosen and well reproduced. (165.)

pCzeeho-Slovakian War Memories. “My War Memories,” by Dr. Benes, Czecho-Slovakian Minister of Foreign Affairs since 191 S (Allen and Unwin), is a translation, by Paul Selver, of what is with President Masaryk’s “Making of a State” a complete history of the Czecho-Slovakian movement for independence. Dr. Benes describes his escape from Austria, and his subsequent course of activity in Paris, Rome, and London, where he succeeded in enlisting the sympathies of Allied statesmen, until at the opening of the Peace Conference, the Czecho-Slovaks had been recognised as an Allied nation. Dr. Benes, who was educated at Prague, and studied in Paris and Berlin, took an active part in the foundation of the present Czecho-Slovakian State, of which he is now the valued representative at the League of Nations. (27/6.) o

The Voyage of Captain Thomas James.

Among all the great explorations of the North-West Passage, none showed greater seamanship than that of Captain James, after whom the great Bight lof James Bay is named. The story of the perilous voyage of Captain Thomas James for the Discovery of the NorthWest Passage, is now retold in a handsome volume, written and edited by Commander R. B. Bodilly, R.N. (J. M. Dent and Sons). Captain James made his memorable voyage in a little vessel of only seventy tons, with a crew of twenty-two. The story of this fine adventure is told by Commander Bodilly, and largely in the words of the actual log kept by the great and simple-heart-ed captain of the expedition. Edited and explained by a competent ajid sympathetic naval officer, this primarily is a hock by a sailor for sailors, but shotiW appeal to all who love works of adventure.

SOME RECENT FICTION A Posthumous Sudermann. Hermann Sudermann, who died in 1928, had got away from the modern German spirit. His “Song of Songs,” of which I can remember reading an English translation just before the war, was altogether too erotic for most English tastes, and although his latest novel, “The Mad Professor” (John Lane), is, in a way, representative of a certain class of German pre-war thought, it is a decidedly boresome and tedious work. The hero, Professor Siebruth, holds a chair of philosophy in a provincial German town, who has opinions largely antagonistic to those of the junker, aristocratic element. But the story of his rather ugly amours makes to me very hard reading. There Is something very artificial about this class of Teuton fiction, which is difficult to accept as worth the trouble of translation. ( If most Teuton professors were of the*Siebruth type, no wonder that the men they educated proved a broken reed for Germany to depend upon in the War.

The Wandering Jew Motif. It is a good many years now since I first read that famous romance, “The Wandering Jew.” It had its extravagances, its wild improbabilities, but nevertheless it takes some beating—given a little time and patience—as a story of that wonderful character. Assuredly it is by far the superior, as an effort of a romance-laden imagination, to “My First Two Thousand Years, an Autobiography of the Wandering Jew” (Duckworth), by two American writers, G. S. Viereck, and P. Eldriag, a bulky tome of close upon 500 pages in which the Wandering Jew is very different from the hero of popular legend. Here he is shown more as a symbol ol Man than is a symbol of his own race. Linked to him through the ages are “the Princess Salome, the eternal mother,” and an “ape man,” Kotlkokura, Whilst, woven with the main narrative, not a few of the incidents of which, are, I may warn my readers, somewhat out of accordance with the canons of British literary taste—especially in the reproduction of Pope Alexander Borgia—include such famous or infamous—figures in history .as Pilate and his wife, Nero, Attila, Charlemagne, Gilles de Retz (the French Bluebeard), Rothschild, Spinoza, Einstein, Bernard Shaw, Lenin, Mussolini, and many others. Such subjects as history, religion, sex rejuvenation, and occultism, and reincarnation are discussed from new lights and the authors must be credited with great power's of imagination. But I confess to preferring Eugene Sue. (10s.)

King’s Bardon. We are first introduced to the “Black Rocales” in tire days of the Restoration, learning from an old diary that Jasper, Earl of Bardon, became enamoured of one Germain de Kerveguen, only to discover, after his marriage, that she had been the mistress of the Merry Monarch. We follow the fortunes of successive members of the family until 1880, when Mr. Bernard Roll’s novel “King’s Bardon” (Constable) really commences with the birth of the last of the Black Rocales, the Lady Margarette. She is from the start'll most out-of-the-way character. In her youth the sweetheart of Dick Ensor, she is betrothed at an early age to an elderly duke, next' becoming the runaway mistress and wife of ‘Ulysse Piernaggi, an opera singer, and later sinking into dissipation with some very worthless young men. Margarette maintains the sinister reputation of the Black Rocales until near the close of the story, when a reunion with the Bardons is followed by the reception of her daughter Germain, a white Rocaie, if there was ever one, at the ancestral home. This is a very well written novel, notable for the rapid succession of vividly coloured incidents. “Women Are Like That.”

The short stories collected under the title “Women Are Like That,” by Mrs. E. M. Delafield (Macmillan), vary greatly, alike as to subject and bankground. Mrs. Delafield possesses the gift of being ever graceful in her writing and interesting in her treatment of theme. Most of the heroines of her short stories seem to reach the romantic age at forty, or near abouts, one of the best of her stories, “Interlude in the Life of a Lady,” describing the sudden spasm of erotic passion which reaches the usually unromantic Mrs. LloydJump—South Kensington’s quiet gentility personified—during her summer holiday in Italy. In another story, “The Mistake,” there is a pathetic denouement to the married life of a literary man, who thinks he has found his real affinity, and in more than one of these brief episodes in the married life of ill-assorted couples there-is a strain of something akin to tragedy. In all Mrs. Delafield exhibits that sense of literary artistry which ever characterises her work. The Travellers’ Library.

Two recent additions to “The Travellers’ Library” (Jonathan Cape), are “Fishmonger’s Fiddle,” a collection of short complete stories by A. E. Coppard, whose work in such volumes as his “Clarinda Walks in Heaven.” “Adam and Eve and Pinch Me,” both in the same series, reminds a “Times” critic in its “definite colour and solid strength” of the finest efforts of the Dutch old masters. Another accession to the “Travellers’ Library” is a new edition of Liam O’Flatherty’s grim story of modern Dublin life, “The Informer.” In the figure of Gyppo, expoliceman and informer, who takes blood-money for betraying his friend comrade, Mr. O’Flatherty is credited with having created a character of Dostoievokian force. Mr. O’Flatherty can surely find some more agreeable topci than the manners and the customs of the Dublin underworld. Sundry Stories.

Edgar Jepson always writes a lively, readable story, and In collaboration with Hugh Clevely he has been more .than usually successful In his “Man With the Amber Eyes” (Herbert Jenkins), wherein a young man arriving “stoney-broke” in London finds himself the possessor of a good round sum of money left him by a seafaring uncle, who also sends him on a hunt for a vast fortune in pearls of which he had , been robbed on a South Sea island. ! How Peter Kennedy carries on his j quest, and at the same time outwits I the tricks of a gang of jewel robbers, sending two of them to gaol, restoring I his lost memory to the real Doctor i Eric Strange, and wins the affection., of tfle pretty Pamela, Is all, with sundry other sensational happenings, set forth in a very readable yarn.

From John Long “Seven for Something,” by Helen V. Saville, the gracefully and in places wittily told story of Sir David Saffron and relating the romance of the gay and pretty Luia Forster and her quiet though originally charming cousin Mary. An unexpected and tragic happening is divulged at the close of an engrossing story.— Charles Merrett’s “Hidden Lives” deals with the curious experiences which liefall the members of a small club of armchair detectives, one of whom is given six days to efface himself, forthwith disappears, the story of whose discovery ending in tragedy.

From Andrew Melrose, “It Takes a Man,” by Elizabeth McFadden. An American novel about the great fortune of Isaac "West and the strange will its maker left: also of the making good of his Diccon, and who helped him—to fortune and a good wife.

Froiq Skeflington and Co., “Son of the Typhoon,” by James Bennett. An original, highly dramatic story of New China and one of its leaders. In Ruth Brockingdon’s “Where the Heart Lies” (Chapman and Hall) there are three different types of lover, loving respectively with heart and brain, and with heart and brain combined,” and out of their love stories there grows a manifold romance, rich in human character, and in the vital stuff of life.

In “The Keys of England’ (George C. Harrop and Co.), Mr. A. Victor Cook sets forth the fine romance of Sussex seamen in the tenth century.

The author, who is a Sussex man, living in Chichester, tells of the time when “St. Simon the Righteous,” and that feckless monarch, Henry the Third,, had England’s destinies in the melting pot, and when Rye and her sister Cinque Ports held the seagates. A woman, to win freedom, wedded a “dying” man who did not die, but lived as the faithful lover of another. The unravelling of the tangle involves a well-told tale of adventure by sea and land, Mr. Cook again revealing himself as a sound historical writer of considerable ability.

The scene of Raymond Krisler’s “White Narcissus” (Jonathan Cape) is a country district in Canada, the author having a wistful poetic style, which conveys the very atmosphere of Canada . Mr. Krisler has written of an old man and woman living together, yet separated in spirit by the remembrance of a quarrel of many years standing. We read of the devotion of a daughter making life possible for these old people, of her thrustng off a lover time after time in order to act as a buffer for violent tempers. The novel deserves a place by the side of Mr. Philip Grove’s fine romance to which we have already alluded, “Our Daily Bread.” To Mr. John Murray’s now lengthy and always interesting “Wisdom of the East” series has been added “The Cloud Men of Yamato,” being an outline of mysticism in Japanese literature, by E. C. Gatenby, M.A.