“The book is well worth reading, but the student will look in vain for any considerable contribution or stimulating suggestion.” J. K. Hart
+ − Survey 45:547 Ja 8 ’21 470w
“The three chapters on ‘The race-making period’ and the following one on ‘Racial changes during the historic period’ form a singularly illuminating study of race problems.... The defence made on page 174 of the maxim ‘My country right or wrong’ suggests that his enthusiasm for the virtue of group loyalty is a little in danger of obscuring to his eyes the rights of the individual conscience. A Treitschke might with a little sophistry subscribe it.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p730 N 11 ’20 2000w
MCDOWALL, ARTHUR SYDNEY. Realism; a study in art and thought. *$4 Dutton 701
(Eng ed 19–12352)
“Mr McDowall makes his position clear. The material world has, he believes, a real existence apart from man. At the point of consciousness its circle and our apprehension intersect, but they remain separate circles. The problem of realism is to represent this world that our senses claim for us, not, as Zola supposed, by a literary photograph, not scientifically, but by ‘truth of impression in which feeling and imagination play the essential part.’ ‘Truth for the realist artist can never consist in ... a simple correspondence with facts. He is an observer, but he is not a reporter. He does not copy, but he creates a world which refers us back to our own world and shows it to us more truly.’”—N Y Evening Post
Boston Transcript p8 S 15 ’20 980w
“Often the book is murky with the philosophical abstractions, crystallizing into dogma. He has the caution of the scholar, and not the audacity of the artist. He avoids the impertinences of brilliance, but also its decision.”