Evening star., 1936-02-09

out, may lie in the fact that in Sweden
this planning has grown out of "a So
cial need that has been keenly felt
and insistently presented against q
broad background of social and eco
nomic education" and Is not some
thing that has been imposed arbitrarily
from above At any rate. 1t is
work that is well worth reading. One
can commend it heartily.
THE LAST PURITAN. BY George
Santayana New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons.
THIS work is the first in novel form
which that distinguished author,
George Santayana, has composed. 1t
has been widely heralded and would
seem to deserve certain specialized
attention.
To discuss it at all adequately, how
ever. it is necessary to go back to the
phrase novel form" That is the
authors own: he himself describes
the book as "a memoir in the form
of a novel" And the outline of the
novel form is certainly there, recog-
niZable in its exterior dimensions, as
it were. But the book is not a novel
It is an analysis of certain manners
Of thought, of certain philosophers of
living, done through the authors own
vision Of them rather than through
the examples of the characters whom
he has named and put, arbitrarily,
inside of his book. Consequently the
work is laborious reading. 1t is that,
even though it is done with all the
familiar beauty of Mr.. Santayana's
writing.
The manners of thought the phil
oSophies of living which the book dis
cuSSes are those which the author
identities with latter-day puritanism,
the word "puritanism" being inter-
preted in the somewhat surprisingly
narrow geographical sense of apper-
tanning to the American stock of New
England. The hero of the book, young
Oliver Alden, youth of fortunate
worldly circumstances, Is, as Mr.. San
tayana tells us, throwback to the
original tenets Of the puritanical idea;
he takes for the core of his living a
bitter, merciless pleasure in the hard
facts" AS his life unfolds, the ma
ture OF the facts convinces him that
they are not worth this absorption.
None the less, he cannot change him
SELF. He continues a realist, one of
those people who, in the words of
the author, are willing to pluck out
the eye that offends them, even If
1t be the eye for beauty, and to enter
halt and lame into the kingdom of
single e-mindedness."
The action, torturously slow, is in
substance first the forming of divers
pattern of thought in his childhood
nome, where he is surrounded by the
seventies and snobberies which we
have come to accept as typical of the
rich New Englander in recent decades:
then his awakening to the idea that
there are beauties and liberties beyond
those Of Beacon street; and last his
disillusion as to the superior desirable
lty OF those new beauties-or of any
others. As an inarticulate youngster.
we are told that he conceived of his
Gays routine as something to be en-
dured, although he qualified his atti-
tude OF endurance by adopting at every
turn what he anderson to be the cor
rect behavior. As man of some ex-
perience. he returns to this concept. In
sum, Mr.. Santayana seems to tell us
that divers integrity was so incor-
ruptlble that he was incapable of ac-
cepting the compromises which human
relationships impose and that IoneIi-
ness was his inevitable fate. It is not,
however, the loneliness of failure and
Illustration, but loneliness deliberately
chosen as being the better part.
The idea must commend itself to
any reader as having tremendous DO
tentialities. Mr.. Santayana's treat
ment Of it, however, must awaken
some disappointment. One cannot but
wonder why he has insisted so on To-
Enthusiastically. in the geographical
sense-the temperament Of his hero.
1t is not, certainly, q temperament
which is peculiar to any place or to
any faith or philosophy. And while
it may be attributed to a modern New
as legitimately as to any
one else, one cannot help but feel that
the potential universally Of the theme
suffers from the insistence on localiza-
ton which is encountered. here.
If the author had simply told his
hero's story, had simply told 1t, leav-
ing it In its New England setting. but
not insisting on that as the cause and