The New Belief in the Common Man
By
LITTLE, BROWN, $3.00
THIS analysis and defense of democracy, the product of ten years’ studious reflection, is an uncommonly fruitful book. At least, it is that for anyone who can command the mental toughness to stop echoing the more or less sacrosanct clichés and to re-examine fundamentals without assuming anything that wants proof. You get. a simple pragmatic measure of its fruitfulness when you insert slips at the passages that excite, jolt, alarm, or specially hearten you. On this system you get the volume so bristling with slips that to retrace the noteworthy passages virtually means to reread it entire, probably inserting as many more slips as you go. The book, in short, grows on you, and it makes you grow.
The task of these chapters is to formulate a realistic conception of the irreducible democratic unit to wit, the common man, Everyman that will stand up under the criticism of the modern pseudosciences of psychology, sociology, and economics, and under the pounding of the totalitarian challenge and of current world events in general. The book is a closely reasoned affirmation of faith — faith in the collective common sense, character, and judgment of workmanship; faith in the present and the future of American democracy; faith in the common mail’s evolution toward a world citizenship of practical coöperation in respect to universally felt needs, even in the face of flat disagreement on fundamentals. Books more sanguine have been written: there can hardly exist a book more hopeful that is at the same time as levelheaded. W. F.