The Role of History in Religion (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 137 or explaining something causally or otherwise. In art it may be transmitted through visual or auditory, verbal or other stimuli; in literature it is a common characteristic of meditative lyric in addition to the essay proper. It is used in pictorial or sculptural representations of religious subjects. It is often symbolic or metaphorical. It may be accessory to a utilitarian, representational or thematic framework. It is in this context that figurative speech and myth are discussed in the book. The cathedral is a static spatial framework for representing Christian symbols. Duerer's engravings of the Apoealypse are mentioned as examples of expository art. Another example is Dante's Divine Comedy with its fourfold interpretation of every symbol--the literal, the allegorical , the tropological or moral, and the anagogical. After explaining tlae traditional overall meaning of Dante's poem, Munro states that in the visual arts the closest thing to it in complexity is the cathedral. He goes on to discuss figural symbolism in lyrical poetry, especially that of the Symbolist Movement in France, then in that of William Blake and in the poems of Milton. He then turns his attention in the visual arts to the emblems, so popular since the Renaissance period. This mode of composition is most often used in literature and there, apart from the essay in general, it has an accessory character. The chapter on the thematic mode of composition is concerned with "the elements of design" in all the arts. It is a systematic survey of the principal forms of design and describes the basic types of thematic development from simple to complex. Thematic types are constructed by variation, repetition and contrast as well as by addition and division. This mode of composition is prevalent not only in music and in decorative visual design but even in the plastic arts which may show the development of a theme, for instance, that of the Crucifixior, It occurs also in such poetical forms as stanzas and sonnets. The Tales o/ the Arabian Nights show a form of thematic development. The main form of developed western music is the sonata with its usual division into four movements. The symphony is a complex derivative form of the sonata. The chapter includes a discussion of the nature of themes, the thematic series and the thematic development , both presented and suggested. It has all the elements of a comparative text= book, a musical composition and a theory of visual design; it has, according to Munro, the same relationship to the practice of art as botany has to horticulture. The whole book is an almost inexhaustible treasure trove of ideas and reflections on the arts. Max RINSER New York City Civilization and Progress. By Radoslav A. Tsanoff. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1971. Pp. 376. $12.50) When, fifty-five years ago, just before going with the rest of the world to war, I wrote, with Dewey's help, an essay on Ethics as the Science of Social Progress for the Ph.D. degree, I did not expect progress to be steady, but I took for granted that the concern for progress would become central for moral philosophy. Every succeeding year has proved to me how wrong I was in my expectation. At last there comes into my hands to comfort me this volume by Professor Tsanoff, which reviews the history of philosophy from the point of view of men's ideas, or absence of ideas, about progress, the'~r attitudes towards it, and their varied writings rate.feting it. The book is a Iittte encyclopedia of this subject. But it is better to let the author explain the book. He writes: 138 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY I outlined my broad view of civ!lization in its relation to progress forty years ago in a chapter on q'he Despair of Civilization,' in a book entitled The Nature of Evil. While my conviction of the essential validity of my basic idea has been confirmed by the turn of events during the past generation, I have felt increasingly bound to reexamine in greater detail the evidence on which my interpretation was intended to rest. And while thus undertaking this inquiry...