Riddles of the Universe
The Circle of Life. By Kenneth Walker. (Cape. 7s. 6d.)
IN his Diagnosis of Man Mr. Kenneth Walker wrote a remarkable work that deservedly received very wide attention, and has already shown signs of exerting a considerable influence. In his present volume he surveys, from the point of view of a broad-minded and widely-read surgeon, the problems of disease pain, old age and death.- Each of course presents questions to which not only science but philosophy and religion have provided—or attempted to provide —answers; and, as in his previous volume, Mr. Walker has laid stress on the limitations of science, in the accepted sense of the word, and on the validity of the knowledge acquired—at any rate, by some people—by such non-scientific (although not anti-scientific) avenues of approach as worship, prayer and contemplation. And he again emphasises in respect of these latter, the lessons waiting to be learned by the West from the East.
Basically, he maintains that all these approaches have information to give, and that the experiences of the scientist, the artist, and the mystic—and the little bit of each that resides in the ordinary man and woman—must at least be given equal weight. Pain, for example, from the medical standpoint, can be beneficial because it may give the first warning of curable disease, and assist in its location and diagnosis; and it is one of the school-teachers of infancy learning to wk and climb, and co-ordinate its actions. Again, the disease and death of certain human beings—if humanity is regarded as an integral part of the total sum of life covering the face of death—may benefit certain non-pathogenic lower organisms, and indirectly, by so doing, the human race as a whole. There are also biological compensations for the gradual decay, in old age, of various physical activities. But man, by virtue of his self-awareness and faculties of wonder and imagination, has also sought an explanation for all these things in the sphere of values that cannot be weighed and measured. Some of these answers have been conditioned by the fact that .many men of most races, and at most known periods, have believed that there is something in themselves that is a passenger through physical life for whom physical death is not a terminus ; and that disease and pain and the disabilities of old age are disciplinary and educative not only for the span of men's mundane years.
Many of these answers are examined with Mr. Walker's usual concision and lucidity ; and if he has occasionally tended to over- simplify, this was perhaps hardly to be avoided within his self- imposed limits. Nor could he expect agreement with all his state- ments. He assumes, for instance on page 16—and it is a very common assumption—not only that there has been an increase, during the last fifty years, of diseases of the central nervous system, but that these are attributable to the stresses of modern civilised life. But is there 'any basis of accurately observed, comparative, large-scale figures to warrant either of these assumptions? Rela- tively to our larger population are nervous diseases and what are now called neurasthenia or neurosis, more common than they were 50 or too, or 150 years. ago? Surely the answer is that we do not really know. But we do know from contemporary diaries, novels and plays how frequently men and women appeared to swoon on the slightest provocation, and many of us can remember plump and patient Victorians who had apparently spent most of their lives on sofas for no obvious organic reasons. And are the stresses of modern civilised life greater than were the stresses of life then or in the days before anaesthetics, municipal water supplies, electric light, free education, and old age pensions? Was Hogarth's London easier to live in for the majority of its inhabitants, than modern London before the war? If nervous diseases have, indeed, increased, is this due to stress? On page 42 Mr. Walker himself suggests another, and, perhaps, more probable answer.
Incidentally, and for correction in what it is to be hoped will be many future editions, there are two small errors of fact. The Mollusc, page 53, was not written by Somerset Maugham but by Hubert Henry Davies ; and the remark on death, page 85—in one of Mr. Walker's best chapters—should have been attributed to
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