BOOK REVIEWS

Radhakamal Mukerjee, The Sickness of Civilization, Bombay, Allied Publishers Private Ltd., 1964, pp. 131 + xii, Price Rs 12.50.

Writing in 1930, declared that the psychoanalytic under- standing of the individual may be made the basis for a complete re-assessment of the dynamics of civilization and culture. May we not be justified, wrote Freud, "in reaching that diagnosis that, under the influence of cuFtural urges, some civilizations, or some epochs of civilizations - possibly the whole of man- kind - have become 'neurotic' ". And, although Freud certainly recognized that the attempt to apply to the explanation of cultural phenom- ena was not without difficulties, he felt some confidence that "in spite of these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture to embark upon a pathology of cultural communities" (Civilization and its Discontents, ch. VIII). Freud's expectations were indeed well founded. Social pathology has in fact become a thriving acedemic industry. Among the more famous adventures in this direction are The Sane Society by , Life Against Death by Norman O. Brown, and, to a certain extent, by . Less well known, perhaps, but of great value and substance is R. G. Colling- wood's The New Leviathan, a work which consciously sets out to perform a social pathology, although not on psychoanalytic grounds. Finally, there is the existential-ontological analysis of social disorder, beginning with Hegel's Pheno- menolo?y of Mind, and continuing through the philosophies of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel and Sartre. The existentialist analysis of "inauthenticity" provides a basis for a non-psychoanalytic approach to social pathology. The Sickness of Civilization, by Radhakamal Mukerjee, is a further attempt at social pathology which is, in many respects, reminiscent of Erich Fromm's approach. Mukerjee is concerned not only with the social and psychological effects of technology, and modern living, on the human spirit, but also with the biological effects. "Mechanization, articulating and ordering space-time rela- tions as a system of causes and consequences, and cramping space-time relations according to the rhythm of the machine, not only leads to a loss of man's emotional integration and equilibrium with his surroundings, but also upsets his vital or physiological rhythms of activity and rest, fatigue and recuperation of body and mind" (p. v). Unless checked, he continues, "this process will bring about an inevitable deterioration of the genetic constitution of the race with inferior capacities, feelings, and sentiments and models of adjustment and experience" (p. viii). Just how this change in genetic constitution comes about, however, is never explained. One suspects that there is implicit throughout (see especially chapters III-V) a thesis to the effect that the psychological stresses of modern industrial life will stimulate "mutations" leading to genetic changes - possibly something along the lines of a Lamarkian theory of the inheritance 122 of acquired characteristics - but no empirical evidence is cited in support of this thesis. Together with the diagnosis, Mukerjee's book recommends a therapy of critical self-evaluation, leading to the development of a deep feeling and senti- ment of reverence for Man and for life derived from authentic religious tran- scendence (p. 56). In this respect Mukerjee places himself in the tradition of the great mystics. The qualities of "transcendent man" are a capacity to treat others as ends rather than as means, a readiness to think outside the boundaries of specialization, and finally, a disposition to experience oneself as a responsible agent rather than as an instrument of necessity. "Not intellect and practical skill but new emergent qualities of intuition and imagination can alone effec- tively overcome the arid intellectualism, nihilism, dread, and despair of modern life, safeguard human wholeness and survival, and direct the evolution of that new, infinite human organism called mankind-and-cosmos that has emerged in human consciousness as the end-product of cosmic evolution" (p. xii). These qualities arise, however, only for those who have achieved a mystical transcend- ent intuition into the essence of the "One-and-the-Beyond" (p. 118). The quali- ties through which man may yet overcome the limitations of finite human exist- ence presuppose, then, a special kind of experience or intuition into transcend- ent reality. This doctrine is, of course, strongly reminiscent of the tradition of Bergson ( The Two Sources of Morality and Religion) and Teilhard de Chardin ( The Phenomenon of Man), both of whom attempted to outline the qualities need- ed by man in order not only to survive but to prevail. Few would quarrel with the sentiments of such writers as Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin, and Mukerjee; but we can, I think, be justifiably impatient with their failure to show how in fact this transcendence is to be achieved, especially since, as Mukerjee himself realizes. the disease which transcendence seeks to cure is one which modern man does not yet sufficiently realize that he even possesses (p. 81). Bringing the nature of the disease to the surface is certainly one of the tasks of social pathology; and in this respect Mukerjee's book may have some merit. But the more important task, it seems to me, is to define the therapy through which civilization can cure itself. In this respect the book is somewhat weak and inadequate. Simply to define the characteristics of the qualities needed in order to meet the crisis of our age is no substitute for the therapy of actually producing these qualities. Thus while I may agree with Mukerjee's own comment that "to understand and appreciate how this happens is one of the most urgent and difficult tasks that the "proper study of mankind" should no longer overlook" (p. 119), I must confess that Mukerjee's own attempt to do just this, while interesting, and certainly worth reading, nevertheless falls far short of the mark.

York University, Canada LIONEL RUBINOFF

I. DeVore (Ed.), Primate Behavior. Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. N. Y. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, pp XIV + 654, $ 7.90 (Aust.).

The very rapid growth in the number and significance of primate studies over the past decade has stemmed, in part, from a growing interest in compara- tive behaviour but, even more, from a realisation that a study of man's nearest