“The young sculptor and his difficulties do not produce a very lively impression. Miss Van Vorst never brings her readers into intimate touch with him, and the short, jerky chapters are irritating in their effects.”
− + Springf’d Republican p11a My 30 ’20 550w
VAN WESEP, HENDRIKUS BOEVE. Control of ideals. *$2 (5c) Knopf 171
20–18312
This “contribution to the study of ethics” (Sub-title) is concerned primarily with the problem of war prevention. The author holds that man is more an imaginative than a rational animal and apt to mistake his imaginative world for the world of reality. By learning to control our ideals we learn to distinguish between an ideal and a fixed idea and to live by rather than die for them. The book takes up in turn the origin, nature, and function of human ideals and the supreme worth of the individual and of human life. Contents: Variety of ideals; Attitude toward ideals; Assimilation of ideals; The survival of ideals; Nations; Development of self-consciousness; Society versus the individual; Utopianism; Democracy; Tolerance; Harmony; Symbiosis; Atomism; Functions of ideals; Moral courage; Index.
“Scholarly but written for the layman.”
+ Booklist 17:92 D ’20
“His optimism seems a little too easy for a disillusioned civilization, but at least he is intelligible, a great recommendation for any one educated among the fogs of metaphysics.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p13 O 30 ’20 70w The Times [London] Lit Sup p670 O 14 ’20 90w