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Affirmations, by Havelock Ellis
In The North American Review, December 1915, pp. 943-944 - Previous Article / Next Article

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NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 943
the idea o£ hope has been less fully treated hitherto than the
ideas which form the themes of the earlier books. In importance, this
book, What May I Hope ? proves scarcely inferior to any one of the
other three. To be sure, most persons would promptly enough agree
that hope ought to be both moral and reasonable---these are the
author's fundamental contentions;---but there are few who could
give any coherent account of the nature or justification of this readily
assumed belief. Such an account Dr. Ladd supplies. Applying
his tests to personal, social and scientific hopes, to the hope of moral
perfection, the hope of immortality, and the hope of a divine kingdom,
the author is highly successful in forcing his readers to recognize
the fundamental psychological validity of morality and reason,
and in enabling them to see to what extent these two elements may
warrant the highest hopes. Taking broad and sympathetic views,
the author finds use and justification not merely for the cautious
hopes of the typically " reasonable" man but for the " hope too
high for which we die" of the young and the enthusiastic.
AFFIRMATIONS. By Havelock Ellis. Boston and New York:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915.
What one wants and expects in a critic is first of all a man with a
point of view both reasonably definite and reasonably liberal---a man,
too, who applies his general ideas of life and literature to individual
works with firmness but with due modesty and without pretense of
absolute finality. Such a man is Havelock Ellis, whose book of
critical essays, Affirmations, originally published in 1898, has been
recently reissued---a recognition of its worth which it richly deserves.
Without attempting to distinguish closely between competing
schools and methods, one may in fairness declare that Mr. Ellis is a
representative modem critic---a highly successful practitioner of the
art as it is now understood, so far as any common understanding in
regard to it exists. In general, Mr. Ellis's point of view is humanistic
and scientific. As he seeks to render this point of view more specific,
it becomes usually psychological rather than ethical or philosophic.
Mr. Ellis, however, keeps his fundamental beliefs well in check, confining
their influence for the most part to the task of clarifying the
particular subject in hand, seldom extending them in such a way as
to bring into question the whole philosophy of life. Mr. Ellis is thus
possessed of the necessary definiteness of standpoint; he shows
sufficient liberality in the interpretation of life (for nothing human
is excluded from his philosophy) ; and he is in general modest---as
scientists are usually modest---in the broad application of his
views. Occasionally, it is true, Mr. Ellis carries his scientific view
considerably beyond the immediate critical purpose of the moment;
and the old-fashioned reader gasps. " Be sure," writes the author,
in his essay on Huysmans,'' that Nature is your home and that from.


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