CURRENT LITERATURE
'RESPONSIBILITY AND CULTURE. By L. P. Jacks. (Humphrey Milford, Yale University Press. 7s. net.) IN these, the Yale Lectures on the Responsibility of Citizen- ship, Professor Jacks discusses, in his own lucid and charming style, the present state of civilization, and • our attitude towards it. Civilization is, he thinks, in a state of sickness, and alarmingly open to the ministrations of the soul-doctor and the social quack. Long ago, Disraeli said that the English race had discovered comfort, and called it civilization. Mr. Jacks.would agree with him. But the true aim of the body politic is not happiness, despite Bentham's and Mill's advocacy of the notion. " A very paltry speculation," said Carlyle, and so it is, contradicted by every law of the human body, whose nerves are made for pain as well as pleasure, and whose vision is not confined to the prospect of what is cheering. `No; our highly complex industrial civilization really fits in with Aristotle's dictum that " the end of man is in action." -This dictum he applied to States as well as to individuals, and, what is important, it embraces leisure as well as labour. Now leisure is not idleness, for that would be a drain on the " eudaimonia " of others ; it is cultivated enjoyment in the domains of Art, Science and Thought. For these, in turn, man must scorn delights and live laborious days. He cannot enjoy till he knows how to enjoy. And hence the need for Education. The last lecture is devoted to the subject of International Trusteeship, and is an eloquent plea for the League of Nations. This plea was a courageous one to put forth in America, and Mr. Jacks is careful to say that the present League is one of Governments rather than of Nations, and that America has a wider function in helping to create a public opinion towards peace, co-operation and good will. " Most nations are better than their foreign policies." The first move might very well originate in the Universities, and we think American idealism will respond to the clear and cogent appeal of this little book.
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