Living Standbys

WHAT WE LIVE BY--Ernest Dimnet-- Simon & Schuster ($2.50).

In his phenomenally popular The Art of Thinking Abbe Dimnet showed how men could add to their stature by taking thought. Lest mere headwork make them top-heavy he now writes more roundedly of the manly stature he believes all men desire. Motive for that desire he finds twofold--"the longing to live happy and the dread of dying ordinary." This longing, this dread induce men to follow strange teachers, strange doctrines. Hipped on some, they hobble along on others. But the true pilgrim's progress is not forwarded so much by crutches as by a comforting rod & staff. Such a vade mecum Abbe Dimnet gracefully provides in the form of the True, the Beautiful and the Good, as approved by philosophers, improved by artists, lived by the saints. To discover about the True, discover Truth's elation, it is necessary for a man to read philosophy, more necessary for him to think philosophically. To accomplish this feat the Abbe suggests that a man try to put himself in Adam's bare feet, look at the world with newborn eyes, try to answer the whys and hows his mind will naturally ask. That is philosophy. Its reward is less in getting questions answered than in a man's growing ability to ask higher and deeper questions. The Abbe illustrates his method by questions & answers in his book, suggests more than he states outright. On the question of overwhelming Evil he says: "If evil were not hidden like impure germs disseminated in our system, there would not be a single sane person on earth." This Truth he associates with a Good: "Brave sadness does for us what winter does for the earth."

The Beautiful is to be come at by reverent study of all the arts. Trained in harmonies, a man will begin to try to harmonize himself. Of his cacophonies he will no longer say. " 'Well, I am like that' or 'The Lord made me what I am,' which has some charm, perhaps, when associated with sweet seventeen but other wise is pretty sickening." This self-harmonizing, self-training, is for the Abbe the beginning of wisdom, and the Good. Though "a commonwealth of intelligent egoism has been built by the millions, and a skillful combination of the idealism of the few with the contributions of the many has largely eliminated from it all that might cause irritation and shame," there is plenty of cause for irritation and shame, says Abbe Dimnet, if a man will but take an inventory of himself. Starting with a detailed, impartial inventory of all his traits a man will soon discover plenty of Good work to do. Granting U. S. Presi dent Wilson's observation, "There is no more priggish business in the world than the development of one's character," the Abbe still holds with Thomas a Kempis: "We should soon be perfect if we would only conquer one fault every year." Presi dent Wilson, though he did not know it, was talking of annexing imaginary virtues, the monk was talking of disannexing real faults. This is the prelude to the Good Life which, says the good Abbe, is heavenly. A true account and touchstone of that heavenly state he finds in a saying of Mahomet: "Above all things I like perfumes, and above all things I like women, but I like prayer even more."

The Author. Canon of Cambrai Cathedral, the Very Reverend Abbe Ernest Dimnet was born in 1869 at Trelon in wheat-raising Flanders near the English Channel. He looked across it early in his youth, found English literature so fascinating that for years he taught it at the College Stanislas in Paris. A contributor to English and U. S. magazines, he was the Lowell Lecturer at Harvard in 1919, French Lecturer at the Williamstown (Mass.) Institute of Politics in 1923. Since the publication of The Art of Thinking (1928) he has received such a blast of U. S. letters of gratitude and inquiry that he wrote What We Live By to still the storm. U. S. civilization he considers immature, says "the life of young people in America resembles the wild turmoil of little birds on St. Valentine's Day." Books published in the U. S.: French Grammar Made Clear, The Bronte Sisters.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.