Book Reviews : The Prodigal Century. By HENRY PRATT FAIRCHILD. (New York: Philosophical Library, Inc. 1950. Pp. xvii, 258. $3.75.)
| Author | Frank Grace |
| Published date | 01 September 1951 |
| Date | 01 September 1951 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/106591295100400317 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
499
similarly
inclined
Plato
To-Day
seems
an
ephemeral
effort),
Dr.
Popper
ought
to
have
resisted
the
temptation
to
project
without
restraint
the
is-
sues
of
the
present
day
upon
a
past
society
as
dissimilar
from
ours
as
Plato’s
Greece
or
Hegel’s
Germany.
Dr.
Popper’s
attempt
to
rewrite
the
intellectual
tradition
of
the
West
in
terms
of
a
Catalaunian
battle
between freedom
and
tribalism
leads
him
into
the
same
prophetic
fallacy
which
he
combats
so
valiantly
in
others.
What
is it
but
another
version
of
the
hated
thing,
historicism,
to
assert
that
mankind
is
manifestly
moving
from
the
&dquo;closed&dquo;
toward
the
&dquo;open&dquo;
society?
Had
Dr.
Popper
confined
himself
to
discovering
an
un-
dulatory
motion,
his
position
would
be
much
less
open
to
the
accusation
that
his
main
thesis
is
simply
another
example
of
too
much
reliance
on
a
&dquo;self-evident
truth.&dquo;
The
preface
to
the
American
edition
seems
to
in-
dicate
that
Dr.
Popper
has
become
somewhat
less
confident:
&dquo;Most
of
my
positive
suggestions
and
above
all
the
strong
feeling
of
optimism
which
pervades
the
whole
book
struck
me
as
more
and
more
naive,
as
the
years
after
the
war
went
by&dquo;
(p.
viii).
But
he
strongly
rejects
the
possibility
that
his
&dquo;depression&dquo;
which,
by
the
way,
&dquo;has
passed,
largely
as
the
result
of
a
visit
to
the
United
States&dquo;
(ibid.),
may
have
been
due
to
a
wrong
prem-
ise.
It
is
likely
that
his
renewed
confidence
is
inspired
by
the
belief
that
the
United
States
is
the
most
successful
example
of
what
he
calls
&dquo;piece-
meal&dquo;
engineering,
in
contrast
to
the
&dquo;total,&dquo;
planned
variety.
It
does
not
seem
to
have
occurred
to
Dr.
Popper
that
even
in
a
liberal
society,
socio-
economic
acts
do
presuppose
antecedent,
if
unconscious,
choices
between
fundamental
values.
The
instrumentalist
approach
in
which
he
seems
to
see
the
ideal
modus
vivendi
of
a
free
community
requires,
no
less
than
any
other
method,
an
agreement
as
to
ends.
With
us,
such
agreement
is,
of
course,
the
result
of
democratic
compromise,
not
of
dictation.
But
that
is
not
the
same
as
saying
that
our
social
engineering
moves
outside
a
given
frame
of
general,
if
changing,
predilections.
_
University
of
Michigan.
JAMES
H.
MEISEL.
The
Prodigal
Century.
By
HENRY
PRATT
FAIRCHILD.
(New
York:
Philo-
sophical
Library,
Inc.
1950.
Pp.
xvii,
258.
$3.75.)
This
volume
develops
two
major
themes-our
prodigality
in
the
nine-
teenth
century
and
the
problem
it
left
for
the
present
one.
The
argument
runs
as
follows:
Mankind
was
presented
an
unparalleled
opportunity
in
the
nine-
teenth
century
by
&dquo;the
synchronization
of
access
to
the
land
of
a
whole
hemisphere
on
the
one
hand,
with
the
creation
of
the
physical
instruments
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