Kenneth Burke - Homo Faber, Homo Magus

n e NATICX~
Me
central
oal-
rebullding a s ~ u n dand preoporQU5

economic system
IPom Annual Report, Twentleth Century Fund
CARTELS ACTION
A Survey for
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Research Dlredora
A case kook on international cartelsda factua

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FCDR THlS UWh FOUGHT

By BTUART CEABE. This snth and flnal volnme In
seriea of reports toTheTwentlethCenturyFund

b
Stuart Chase lmesents his framework of a prnctlcabl
oliticnl nna economic syatem whereby we may seem
or the individual and the nation R truly abundant ]if(
AMERICAN
for them by direct legal compulsion. Now it must be cleat t~

a child-to write like the author-that just the opposite has
happened. W e have the state everywhere taking from private
capitalwm. Even in this country the state is more powerfhl
economically and private business less so than they were
tweDLy years ago, Throughout ELIXOP~
basic industries are
being nationalized, the bourgeoisie is vanishing as a significant social force, snd while there are plenty of indications of
the growth of servile relations, they are notarising on Bellocs
basis. (That state is not servile in which all citizens .
must labor at the discretion of state oficials.) The natianallkation of industry which he proves in detail cannot ever tako
place in England is-now coming about. As for Russia: in the
preface to the 1927 edltion Belloc writes, I have not modified the sentence in which I say that state collectrvis@can
show no working example, for the Russian Revolution . . .
has not produced a collectivist state; on the contrary, it has
produced a state the vast bulk of which-some nine-tenthshave, by it, been confirmed as peasant-holders. It was a
brave bit of casuistry, with just enough truth to be effective.
The Old Guard dies but never surrenders. And death came
a few years later when Stalin put through the forced-collectivizntion program.
How did Belloc come to adopt such a fantastically wrongheaded thesis, and to stick to it as late as 1927? That he is a
superficial thinker is clear from the false-lucid rhetoric ~f
hls style: baby-talk for the intelligentsia. That he is a dactrinaire of the most irresponsible kind, handling ideas and
data with the fine ree sweep of an undergraduate deb*,
appears in the forty-page historical digression in which he
traces the social and economic histdry of Europe from the
RomanEmpire to the Industrial Revolutian, showing how
everything good flowed from the Catholic church and everything bad from the pagan centuries before its rise and the
Protestant centuries after its decline. As a doctrinaire, he
saw private property as an eternal principle, for good or ill;
and the superficiality of his intelligence enables him to stick
to this in the face of all evidence. His book might still be of
value had he notadopted an objective pose rhrmghout,
insisting that he is not using the term servile pejoratively,
and that he is not concerned with inquiring as to which
form of society might reasonably be preferred. This pseudoneutrality-for such it is, whether in Belloc or in Burnhamis a cheap rhetorical trick designed to persda.de a scientificminded audience. But once the thesis to be advanced thereby
has been outmoded, very little is left.Had Belloc frank
tried to sliow the virtues of his distributive society and w
it should reasonably Le preferred to other societies, his
book mightstill be to the point today. As it is, it would
seem he outsmarted himself,
DWIGHT MACDONALD
g1.a
HousmWQ:
Problem and Prorpesh

T h e Factual Flndmgs by MILEB L. COLXAN; The Pr,
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44388 pages, 61 tables, 26 charts. $3.
H Q ~Faber,
O H o m o Magus
THE A4YTI-H OF THE STATE. By Ernst Cassirer. Yak

University Press. $3.75.
M HIS Myth of the State the late Ernst Cassirer has

provided an dluminating survey of some major texts in
the history of political theory, such as Blatos Republic,
Machiauellis Prince, the doctrine of &e social contract,
December 7, 1946
Carlyle on hero-worship, Hegels metaphysics of the state,
and so on. The exposltlon is keen and clear, well reflecting
the authors thoroughgrounding in philosophy. A reader
shown over the field by such a guide can consider himself
well guided indeed.
The political nlyth-there is no talk of ideology-is
here placed in terms of a dualisticdistinction bemeen the
magical andthe semantic. The magical use of lan-.
guage, we are told, tries to produce effects and to change the
course of nature, while the semantic serves to describe
things or relations of things.
The historians of human civilization have told us that
mankind in its development had to pass though two diff a r t phases. Man began as homo mdgns; but from the
age of magic he passed to the age of technics. The homo .
magnr of former times and of primitive civilization became
a homo jdber, a craftsman and artisan. If we admit such
an historical distinction our modern political myths appear
indeed as a very strange and paradoxical thing. For
what we find in them is the blending of two activities that
seem to exclude each other. The modern politician has had
to combine in himself two entirely different and even incompatible functions. He has to act, at the same time, as
both homo magus and homo faber.
Much valuable insight is got through this approach. Yet it
may cause contemporary doctrmes of political motivation to
seem somewhat morestrange and paradoxical than need
be@
although there are aspects of language that cannot
be comfortably reduced to eitherthe magical or the semantic, when we have but these two- bins whatever cannot
be classed as semantic must be classed as magical. As a
result, with so much disturbing evidence of reversion to
savagery in the modern world, we are invited to conclude
that there is even more.
What seems to be missing in this study of political myth
is a systematic concern-with the functions of speech that fall
under the tradltlonal headingof rhetorJc. When one human
agent sets otherhumanagents in motion, for instance, by
calling for help, such a persuasive use of words is not sheer
magic spell, as with the attempt to coerce physical nature
by incantatory means. Nor is it quitethe semantic use of
languageto describe things or relation.5 to things. It is
to
the motive that goes into rhetoric.
True, it may begreatly misused, as with race doctrines
designed to promote social cooperation for sinister ends. But
+~ortatory
itself it is normal and proper fun,ction of words. Being
ratherthan descriptive, it would fall outside the
a
semantic bin; yet its essentially realistic nature,when

properly used, would make i t abadfit for the inagical
bin. If we giveit a bin of its own-the category of the
rhetorical, with a systematically generated set of terms to
roundoutthe
analysis-we
can study its ways shrewdly
enough, but without so many extremely discouraging incentives to believe that presumably civilized populations are
running around with rings in their noses.
Technically, the dualistic approachhere seems to get an
important aspect of language turned backward. For if there
is any sort of real experience motivatingprimitivemagic,
it must be rooted in the fact that one persons expressions,
mmmands, and-requests, when interpreted by other persons,
Gb?
SIX PLAYS OF RUSSIAN LIFE

Translated by
ALEXANDER BAKSHY
In collaborafion wlfh
PAUL 5. NATHAN
This anthology, representing the typical best

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Translated by
ALEXANDER BAKHY
in collaboration wMh
PAUL S. NB$THWN
Includes notes on each play, and a biograph-
ical sketch. Second Printing,
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THE
A Study of the Unterplay of Character
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WiIliam McFee,
Y.Sun. , $4.00
v.
Edited by Joseph Kinsey Howard, author of Montava: High, Wide and Handsome. A collection of
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tlhe present.
$4.50
TmE
ILNBERAL
By WILLIAM A.
ORTON
A lucid analysis of
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Third printing. $3.50
The NATION
668
really can produce desired effects. Error arose when men

transferred the use of the verbal instrument to areas where
it does not belong, as when trying by incantation to influence
natural things that do not understand language. But if, as
with the Cassirer dualism, you begin with natural magic, t h e
hortatory use o language to influence htrmala conduct s e a s
derivative from this derived magical use, rather than existing
in its own right. Hence verbal inducement, even in the sphere
of human communication, is treated roundabout, as a social
magic that descends from natural magic. The point is wo&h
stressing because it is characteristic of much modern theory,
with its tendency to define human motix7es
by
matching
science against some antithetical term.
But whether or not the modern political myth m@t be
approached more directly, and with less distressing implications, than in The Myth of the State,, there is much of
great moment to be observed about it: when v i w e d in the
Cassirer
perspective,
which considers it primarily as a
mixture of bad poetry and bad science: For large areas of it
are just exactly that. And much of the book is an apt s m mary of woks in theirown terms.
KENNETH B u R m
by WAEDO FRANK
This is the stmy of Jonathan Hartt and Bvam
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-N. Y.Herald Tribune.

it
<As rare as
L exciting.-Cleveland Plain Dealer.
A Philosopher F d m
AnthropsIsgists
T H E THEORY OF HUMAN CULTURE. By James Feibleman. Dnell, Sloan, and Pearce. $5.
-riE
T IS not in the nature, tradition, outlook, or techniques
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of philosophy to make any significant contribution to

the social sciences by way of subject matter or method. We
can, however, legitimately expect philosophy to supply generalizations of a higher order that can lead to more precise
insights. We have the right to expect, moreover, that higher
orders of generalization prove their usefulness, and not remain exercises of translation into phllosophical lingo of wellestablished facts or relations more simply described in the
social sciences. It is in the light of this anticipation that we
approach Mr. Feiblemans effort, and in the light of its specific failure that we must register disappointment. No new
-k
knowledge comes out.
.k
The author tells us that he will employ ontology, the study
of being, as an instrument of analysis and discovery. What
he actually does is begin with the basic drives of feeding,
+c
breeding, andinquiry-otherwise known as hunger,
and curiosity. One could debate at length the merits of 11s
selection of primary drives, but to no purpose. Ontology,
-B
the author says, exists in social groups in the beliefs which
its members hold in common; and since these beiiefs are
maintained implicitly, the formula for any culture is the implicit dominant ontology, i. d. 0. for short. The i. d. 0.
Sr
has, in addition to an ideational content, an affectiveone
-R
which Mr. Feibleman calls the ethos.
-H
One has no right to quarrel with the particular constructs an author wishes to use to manipdate his data. In this
anarchic age each investigator considers it his sacred obligation to invent constructs never used before. This fashion
%
prevails in all the social sciences, where recurrent phenomena
cannot be defined in terms of a precise and delimiting uni~
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n e NATICX~

rebullding a s ~ u n dand preoporQU5

The Twentieth Century Fund

A case kook on international cartelsda factua

FCDR THlS UWh FOUGHT

seriea of reports toTheTwentlethCenturyFund

for them by direct legal compulsion. Now it must be cleat t~

Problem and Prorpesh

gram by the EtOUSIRQ CONNITTDD. A comprehenplt

THE A4YTI-H OF THE STATE. By Ernst Cassirer. Yak

M HIS Myth of the State the late Ernst Cassirer has

semantic bin; yet its essentially realistic nature,when

SIX PLAYS OF RUSSIAN LIFE

This anthology, representing the typical best

ical sketch. Second Printing,

really can produce desired effects. Error arose when men

nightmare of the bloody Draft Riots of

colorful, most exciting era-the

scene of New Ibork through fifty years of its

rich in events, scenes, end characters.

-N. Y.Herald Tribune.

L exciting.-Cleveland Plain Dealer.

T IS not in the nature, tradition, outlook, or techniques

+ BISHQP ARTHUR W. MOULTQN, Ch&rmam

ALL SEATS RESERVED:

Azlailable at Book Shepa, Trade Uniox Ofices and

SPANISH REFUGEE APPEAL

of philosophy to make any significant contribution to

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