Shorter notices
1848: The Romantic and Democratic Revolutions in Europe Jean Sigmann (Allen & Unwin £5.50)
The Great Revolutions Series has some interesting, even distinguished volumes. This is not one of them. Of the few books on 1848 to appear recently, this is arguably the worst. The author's aim is to describe both the underlying causes — emotional, economic, social — and the course of the various revolutions of 1848. The result is pseudo-history, with glib generalisations tacked onto the fabric of events. The book is scattered with gnomic references drawn from Great Scholars. The economic data is shaky, as, occasionally, is the chronology; the book lacks a bibliography or any system of references. and the index is radically incomplete. Fortunately, the price may deter many prospective purchasers. A.W.
Crime or Disease? Antony Flew (Macmillan £2.20) This is a sincere, shrewd and to me totally convincing book, which challenges the familiar but imperfectly thought-out equation between criminality and mental sickness. Flew's central message, for which he argues with a desperate (and sometimes disagreeable) vehe mence, is that it is no use defining mental illness in terms of "disfavoured behaviour," as this involves a vicious circle: you cannot define an excusing condition in terms of the behaviour it seeks to excuSe. Instead we must adopt the lawyer's approach, and define mental illness in terms of incapacity: incapacity to know what one is doing, or that what one is doing is wrong. (Flew, unlike Szasz, does not think the concept of mental illness is vacuous, just grossly misapplied). Mental health is then the unimpaired capacity to achieve the goals one sets oneself. Such a negative approach has the merits of avoiding "Clockwork Orange "-type psycho-therapy; and of preserving the right of an individual, however nasty, to choose his own life-style-again, however nasty. So the Nazi can reserve the right to gas Jews; but others can reserve their right to hold him responsible for it. N.S.R.H.
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