HUMANIZING EDUCATION. By Samuel D. Schmalhausen. The Macaulay Co., New York, 1927. $2.50.

THE jacket of "Humanizing Education" is completely plastered with its praises from such authorities as George Santayana, Bertrand Russell "The American Mercury." But somehow I suspect that they are rather in favor of Mr. Schmalhausen's aim than his method. His aim is de-bunking education; his method is almost non-existant. Perhaps the fact that he makes no attempt to stay near his subject is better for the world at large, because not only does Mr. Schmalhausen de-bunk education, but also War, Romanticism, Literary Criticism, Jesus of Nazareth, and conventional morality. The result of these fliers may be a more thoroughly entertaining work, but scarcely one from which any definite conclusions can be drawn as to what to do with modern education.

I suspected that Mr. Schmalhausen was a rather close spiritual relative of Mr. Sinclair or Mr. Gundelfinger after the first ten pages. He has the same savagery, the same sense of outraged righteousness, the same lack of a sense of humor. "The Goslings," Mr. Upton Sinclair's study of the American schools was brought to light for comparison. Mr. Sinclair states in the first page of his introduction that the purpose of his book is to show how the "invisible government of Big Business which controls the rest of America has taken over the charge of your children;" on the second page he traces his plan of attack:

"Pages 1 to 22 take you behind the scenes of that invisible government which is now ruling America, including its schools. Pages 22 to 59 show in detail what this invisible government is doing to the schools of one large American City--Los Angeles, (etc.): The concluding chapters discuss 'The Goosestep' and its critics and developments in the college world since its publication." It is all completely damning, completely integrated.

Mr. Schmalhausen embarks upon his preface with the following portentous sentence: "The main thesis of this volume is simple and lucid, to wit: that critical-mindedness spells enlightenment while credulity spells superstition; that America, speaking educationally is persuaded that critical-mindedness is a crime against bad manners; that the capacity for self-delusion is the over shadowing defect of the human mind, nowhere more in evidence than in optimism-haunted America; that the pursuit of knowledge somehow manages to ignore the pursuit of wisdom; that facts are mistaken for comprehension and information mistaken for insight; that, in short, our education stresses credulity, subtle superstition, make-belief, self-dupery and as valiantly evades and cunningly taboos critical-mindedness, sceptic enlightenment, disillusion (which is the beginning of wisdom), self-knowledge." This is rather a large program. Mr. Schmalhausen does not indicate how he is to complete it, and this reviewer never discovered from his book, perhaps merely because he lacks the mental acumen to follow the implications of the author's excursions off the beaten track.

While lacking any architectonic sense or inclination, Mr. Schmalhausen has a peculiar faculty for "neat, attractive expressions--simple dogmatisms." Thus:

"The ethics of Jesus are the fragmentary ethics of a defeated intellect, the exhortation of a noble man perplexed by the concrete discordance of a 'pain-economy'--to borrow Professor Patten's graphic phrase."

"All wisdom is tinged with pessimism. All wisdom is tinged with cynicism. And that is because our wisdom is so limited, we can't recover from the disillusionment of actuality."

"Wisdom is the perception that our deepest longings are incapable of realization."

"Chastity has thus far been too chemical a virtue."

"There is an intellectual blindness in scholars that troubles the dreams of the wise."

Obviously Mr. Schmalhausen hits the nail on the head as often as not, but he tries to hit too many nails, to destroy too many windmills. And he should never have recounted his woes in his appendix, a "Psycho-Biography." It savours too much of Gundelfinger, and arouses painful comparisons with Upton Sinclair.