January i8, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
Books to Read 
By Lucian Oldershavv 
^^ 
NOT being a philosopher, in anything but the 
purely etymological sense of the word — as 
readers of this page may before now have dis- 
covered for themselves — I do not feel competent 
to pass serious judgment on such an important work as 
The World as I magination (Macmillan and Co., 15s. net), 
in which Mr. E. D. Fawcett develops the philosophical 
system which he has adumbrated from time to time in 
the pages of Mind, and, I believe, in a previous volume, 
The Individual and Reality. I propose, therefore, to 
make such few remarks as I can here make about the 
book almost wholly on the subject of its relation to the 
war. The author himself brings to the first this topical 
importance of his work in his brief preface : " The crisis 
through which Europe is passing is, above all, the fruit 
of false ideas ; false conceptions of the standing of the 
individual, of the State, and of the meaning of the World- 
System regarded as a whole. Sooner or later a recon- 
struction of philosophical, religious, ethical, etc., belief, 
in the interests of ourselves and our successors, will be 
imperative. The World as Imagination is simply an 
experiment in this direction." 
I like to beh&ve that Mr. Fawcett has captured a trade 
—that of metaphysics — of which the Germans have 
long had in our schools a virtual monopoly (although 
even before the war we had shown some signs of " pre- 
paredness " in this direction and our native philosophers 
had called in as Allies a Bergson and a James). I cer- 
tainly see him in this volume vigorously combating a 
whole enemy host, and hke a skilful general making for 
and destroying their main armies of arguments. The 
Kantian Categories yield in a skirmish of outposts. 
Schopenhauer's Will falls to his heavy artillery, and 
Hegel's Reason, harried throughout the book, is even- 
tually surrounded and overthrown. In the end the Idea 
with which Mr. Fawcett advances to the attack, the 
Cosmic Imagination, somewhat flippantly referred to 
throughout the book as the C.I. (perhaps owing to the 
prevaihng influence of the W.O.), emerges triumphant, 
providing at the least a working hypothesis in which 
many of the knotty points of the philosophers, such as 
the existence of evil, are, if not finally resolved, at least 
suggestively unravelled. Here, as it seems to me (knowing 
as I premised, nothing about the subject), is Pragmatism 
rightly used as a method and not as a system, and here 
is a system or Ground or whatever it be called, more com- 
prehensive and explanatory than any previously set forth. 
«!■ ^ ^ S|C jfi 
It is interesting to note, by the way, that, in his brief 
history of the hypothesis of the C.I., Mr. Fawcett finds 
the poet Blake as "the sole champion of imagination as 
adequate Ground of phenomena in general." Shake- 
speare, " perhaps glimpsed " the idea. It has thus an 
English ancestry. I wish it were expressed in the 
English language. The jargon of philosophy, which we 
seem to owe almost entirely to the Germans, has always 
appeared to me an affectation, and, even if we have, for 
the sake of historical continuity in the science of meta- 
physics, to retain many of the special terms that writers 
have coined to express themselves clearly, we need not let 
the habit of jargon grow upon us. Is, for example, such 
a sentence as this really necessary, for the sake of 
lucidity of expression ? " Thus, if I aware a patch of 
red against the darkness, there is imaginal supplementa- 
tion of this, and I am said to perceive a fire." Or does 
this definition of beauty gain anything by its laborious 
attempt to be precise ? " Any content or content- 
complex is ' beautiful ' if I can Rest in it with a joy 
satisfied within the limits of the complex." I ask these 
questions in all humility, for Mr. Fawcett is clearly a 
master of words and he has a sense of humour. He may 
be able to justify as a necessity what I have a suspicion 
is a pernicious habit of modern schools. Anyway, 
he has written this book for the philosophers, and it 
will be interesting to hear their judgment on what seems 
to be, in reviewers' jargon, an epoch-making work. 
To get back to a more direct connection with the war ; 
I have found considerable value in Pros and Cons in 
the Great War (Kegan Paul, 3s. 6d. net). In this volume 
^Ir. Leonard Magnus has compiled with considerable 
judgment and what must have been infinite patience, a 
most valuable work of reference dealing with almost all 
the controversial aspects of the war. (I say " almost 
all " advisedly, for there are, particularly in the religious 
sections, some noticeable omissions). The book is 
dedicated to the enemy with the apposite quotation 
from " Samuel," " Thy mouth has testified against 
thee," and the plan of the book is to state briefly under 
every subject the enemy view and then to summarise 
the counter-arguments. It is certainly a reference book 
which at any rate every modern publicist should have 
for his shelves. In these special appendices on " The 
Balkan States," " A Settlement on Racial Lines," and 
" How Italy and Austria went to war," Mi". Magnus 
shows that he can handle his material in a connected 
form as well as in the note-book form of the body of his 
book and makes us look forward to further useful work 
from so well-informed a writer. 
* • * !)C if if 
Another book from which the controversialist can draw 
on for arguments with which to impress neutral opinion 
is The Mark of the Beast (John Murray, 5s. net). Readers 
of The Field know the service which its editor has done 
for humanity in the vigour and unremitting presentation 
of the moral case against the enemy, and will be glad 
to have Sir Theodore Cook's articles in this amplified 
and more permanent form. Recent events have shown 
that English people as a whole are not to be tempted by 
the German peace-bait, but if you know anyone who 
is wavering in opinion and thinking that perhaps, after 
all, things have gone just far enough, just send him a 
copy of The Mark of the Beast, and let Sir Theodore's 
righteous indignation, based as it is on a sound standpoint 
of morality and a knowledge of facts, recall him to the 
state of mind which will not leave half undone a work 
that is necessary, however unpleasant it may be. 
if if if if if ' 
" The Style is the Man " can certainly be predicted of 
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's art, both on and off the 
stage. In Nothing Matters (Cassell and Co., 6s.), which 
is published on behalf of a fund for actors disabled in the 
war, Sir Herbert collects together a number of short 
stories told with those inimitable airs and graces which 
distinguished his previous volume Thoughts and After- 
thoughts. The book also contains a characteristic lecture 
by the author on " Humour in Tragedy," which is a 
feast of good things served up with the sauce of wisdom. 
When Sir Herbert finishes his stories, the fear strikes him 
that some of them may have been told before. He has, 
he says, no means of knowing, for he never reads. So 
far as I can see the only person he plagiarises on at all 
is himself, when he repeats a situation in his tragic first 
tale in a remarkable study in the macabre. The Stout 
Gentleman, a story suggested by a famous picture by 
Velasquez. A most characteristic tale is that of the 
vain actor who m5.de up his mind to " commit suicide or 
perish in the attempt." ^^■hether Sir Herbert's plots 
have been used before or no, the setting of them is all his 
own, and that is all that really matters — a mean you 
will see between the extremes of his first tale. " Nothing 
matters ! The pity of it ! Everything matters." 
Mr. Frank Debenham, who died in his eightieth year at the 
Fitzjohn's Avenue, Hampstead, was the true founder of the 
present great firm o£ Debenham and Frcebody, though he 
actually inherited the business from his father. lie was a 
man of ideas, very progressive in all liis methods, and he 
not only occupied a leading ])osition in the drapery business, 
but interested himself in local government and for six years 
was an Alderman of West Marylcbone. He also sat on the 
board of management of the Middlesex Hospital. His son, 
Mr. Ernest Debenham, who has succeeded liis father as chair- 
man of the business, lias been Mayor of Marylcbone, and 
sits on the County Council for East Marylcbone. 
