A CERTAIN BLIND MAN

In this volume are to be found five penetrating essays on the American mood. The author's examination of the American mind leaves him disquieted, a reaction which he communicates to the reader in vivid and forthright speech. The author is the professor of philosophy and religion at Occidental College, an acknowledged disciple of John Dewey and Reinhold Niebuhr whom he extols as ""chief of the prophets of the Lord in our time."" Like Niebuhr he is extremely impatient with pacifism and isolationism which he believes to be symptons of ""the culture of complacency"" which has pervaded American life since World War I and which has delighted in ""pleasure, profits, comfort, peace, ease and isolation"". Some of the author's sharpest barbs, however, are aimed at the economist whom he describes as ""the approved peddler of panaceas and dispenser of opiates for the people"" in a business civilization. Like many other critics of our civilization the diagnosis is more convincing than the suggested cure. But it is made abundantly clear that the adoption of any national order that may be called Christian will involve in time of peace an even more wide-spread application of the spirit of self-sacrifice than we have shown so far even under the stress of war. This is a book for serious-minded people who are spiritually ready for ""hard doctrine"". However difficult it may be for readers to put into practice the principles set forth in these essays, they will not find it difficult to follow his reasoning, which cannot be said of all professors of philosophy.