A Preface to Morals

FIFTEEN years ago when Mr. Lippmann, a brilliant youngster, wrote his Preface to Politics, an old lady, one of the library committee of Trinity Church in Boston, insisted that the volume be bought for the church shelves.

‘But you don’t approve of its contents,’ objected a friend.

‘Of course I don’t!’ retorted the old thoroughbred. ‘But that is the kind of book young men ought to be encouraged to write.’

Mr. Lippmann has gone on writing such books, and this latest is a spring housecleaning of our chaotic modern dwelling. He throws away rubbish, cherishes the priceless heirlooms, renovates, rebuilds, and even draws plans for more stately mansions.

His thesis is that there have always been two religions: one of hope and fear intelligible to the many; the other, of high spiritual insight, achieved by the exceptional. The peculiarity of our modern situation is, he thinks, that the religion of rewards and punishments has been deflated to such an unparalleled extent that the higher religion of spiritual insight, once a possession of the few, has now become a necessity for the many, lie admits modestly that he is under no illusions as to the value of the conceptions arrived at in this volume, but that he does regard them as a probable clue to the understanding of modernity: ‘I believe that the insight of high religion will, if pursued resolutely, untangle the moral confusion of the age and make plain what we are really driving at,’ He then, in three brilliant and penetrating chapters, applies his thesis to three major fields of contemporary experience

— business, government, and sexual relationships

— with enlightening results.

Orthodox moralists, he concedes, can point to the urban crowds and ask whether anyone supposes them capable of ordering their lives by reason. His reply is that, if the populace must continue to be led by hopes and fears, the question is not how the populace is to be ruled, but what its teachers are to think. ‘That is the preface to everything else. If a civilization is to be coherent and confident, it must be known in that civilization what its ideals are. . . . That knowledge, though no one has it perfectly and relatively few have it at all, is the principle of order and certainty.’

People who already have any profound inner life either of aspiration or of creating are likely to find much of this book indeed a ‘preface’; but the author knows that perfectly and says so in his title. No matter how vivid one’s inner life may be, this Volume is invaluable as a clarifier of his outer environment. And what a refreshment of one’s whole being are its tone and temper and excellence! This quiet and sincere voice begins speaking, and the blatant are silenced. Mr. Lippmann has set himself patiently first to understand, then to write, without officiousness or ostentation, a book which should be useful to his generation, which should steady mature people of good will who find themselves painfully confused in our world of change, and which should instruct without a taint of preachiness that part of the younger generation who in their secret hearts, despite a show of cynical bravado, are anxiously seeking some sort of responsible counsel. Here is a thinker who has experienced everything they have experienced of disenchantment and quest, but who also sees a way to peace of mind and victorious living.

LUCIEN PRICE