“The surface of life has been broken by the war, says Mr Cannan; there is no longer any structure in social existence: ‘For the artist there is metaphysic or nothing.’ And in this highly metaphysical, mystical essay he attempts to convey a programme for the immediate future of society and especially for the artist. We are told that the book was written during Mr Cannan’s recent visit in America, in a period of intense creative inspiration. As a record of mystical experience, as an endeavor to express the ineffable, it expects from the reader a coöperation more sympathetic than that of the intelligence. Stripped of its mysticism, the argument is a tolerably familiar one; it is a fusion of certain beliefs almost universally held now by the younger writers and artists, beliefs regarding the industrial régime, bourgeois democracy, intellectualism, the instinct of workmanship, the release of the creative impulses.”—N Y Evening Post
“Mr Cannan’s new book is, indeed, unusual. The words God, soul, life, occur with extraordinary frequency but the variety of their syntactical connections throws no light on their meanings. Since we are neither provided with, nor enabled to deduce, definitions of Mr Cannan’s chief terms, we find his book unintelligible.”
− + Ath p764 Je 11 ’20 500w
“The tone of the book is rhapsodical; its sentences are so desultory; and even the illustrations drawn here and there from history, art and literature are so loose, that it is difficult, if not impossible, to decide at times what he exactly does mean.”
− Cath World 111:832 S ’20 230w
“There is little art in his exposition and less evidence of work. And it takes more religion of a charitable nature than Mr Cannan preaches to restrain one from saying that the author of this work has released his soul so very successfully that it has disappeared.”
− Dial 69:433 O ’20 110w
“Flashes of fine thought are not incompatible with loose thinking. A book may be very stimulating and suggestive in its details and yet as a whole leave behind an impression of hopeless confusion. This is just the kind of book Mr Cannan has produced.” Edwin Bjorkman
− + Freeman 2:19 S 15 ’20 1600w