This Week's Books Mn. WYkDIIAld LEWIS, with breathless energy 'and
a sidelong darting method-of attack, resumes his contemptuous criticism of the thought and art. of his day in Time and Western Man (Chatto and VVindas. 21s.). His main theme is the ignoble subjugation of these by the Time-idea, glorified by Bergson, and elevated by Einstein, as Space-Time, into a kind of god, to the confusion and diminution of human per- sonality. The argument is hardly lucid, for Mr. Lewis, con- stantly excited by the name of some " time-snob," or base rcnnantic, is always rushing off to secure a scalp (sometimes very neatly tomahawked) and returning at leisure to concepts' of " spatialization." His comparison of himself with the challenging Cynics of antiquity has its validity : -he does irritate his readers into thinking, when he is not too prolix.. In these side-issues he is amusing, as when he discovers a deadly' and convincing likeness between the Misses Gertrude Stein: and Anita Loos. James Joyce and Marcel Proust appear as writers dedicated to the Time-god. The criticism is often acute and sometimes valuable. We heartily applaud, for' instance, his able demolition of the fantastic theories of. Spengler. And so far as he calls—or seems to call—for some. recognition of Platonic absolutes, and Hellenic perfection of form, some rescue of the insulted Ego from Freudian mud, some Renaissance of the intellect, he is sure of a response. Would that he himself were more of a Greek in his style !
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