Notes on a Koestler

BOOKS & WRITERS

Koestler’s Act of CreationVision, Theory’, Romance -- By STEPHEN TOULMIN

T ~Is ~s ^ B~tD TIM~ for polymaths. Theold jibe about a Jack-of-all-trades being

master of none has bitten deep into our minds,so that few people will admit to an intellectualgrasp of anything more than a narrow range ofexperience. In a fragmented culture, everybodyis expected to be a specialist: so men cling tothe professional standards of their guilds as thelifebelts which will keep them afloat on a seaof general ideas which they have lost thecapacity either to swim in, or to plumb. Bynow, a politician who habitually quoted Horacein Parliament would be endangering his positionas an M.P.--and what matters more, it wouldbe the same if he had a reputation for habituallyquoting (say) T. S. Eliot. Natural scientists,again, took with suspicion at those colleagueswho stray too far outside their specialisms, andfor the most part they shut their eyes to thevery existence of philosophy. In return, thephilosophers have made their craft a "pro-fession" of its own: a professional philosopherno longer needs to understand even the broadestideas of contemporary natural science--to saynothing of its factual discoveries.

To use a phrase of Pascal’s, ours is an agedominated by the esprit gdometrique. Narrowprecision and deductive exactitude carry thepalms: analogies are distrusted, virtuosity sus-pect. So to embark on any large synthesis of

STEPHEN TOULMIN is a philosopher, scientist,and historian of ideas. He is the author(an’th his wife, June GoodfieM) of twovolumes in The Ancestry of Science series--The Fabric of the Heavens (196x) and TheArchitecture of Matter (i962). He was /ormany years lecturer in the Philosophy ofScience at Oxford and a Fellow of King’sCollege, Cambridge.

Koestler’s The Act of Creation has ~ustbeen published in London by Hutchinson(4as.) and will appear in New York thisautumn (Macmillan, $8).

58

the different sciences--still more, to range withconfidence through both the sciences and thehumanities~a man must have both a level headand a well-stocked mind. His esprit gdornetriquemust be counterbalanced by a well-developedesprit de finesse, and his personal position mustbe so well assured that he need no longer beafraid of making mistakes.

Who among our contemporaries daresmeasure himself up against this specification?.One man, at any rate, has had the courage~or the foolhardiness--to do so: Mr. ArthurKoestler, whose remarkable new book TheAct o.~ Creation is an attempt to integrate intoa single system of ideas the results of modernphysiology, psychological theory and his ownnovel analysis of artistic creativity and scientificdiscovery.

How ~s ore xo appraise a book of this kind?Some readers will be tempted to burke theissue by retorting, "Who is Arthur Koestlerto write st,ch a book, anyway?" (This will beespecially tempting for the theoretical psycholo-gists-such as Skinner of Harvard--on whomKoestler is most severe.) Yet this would bescarcely fair; for who, we might reply in return,is better qualified than Koestler to cover thewhole of his chosen field? To the general reader,no doubt, Darkness at Noon is "typical"Koestler, and The Sleepwal]~ers was a curioussideline--the propagandist storyteller beingdistracted by curiosity into the world of scholar-ship. Yet, although Koestler won his majorreputation as a political novelist and has sincebecome widely known as a public figure, hisinitial training was in fact scientific, and hestarted his career as science correspondent forthe Ullstein newspapers in Berlin.

Indeed, one might try looking at Koestler’soverall achievement in the opposite perspective:for perhaps it will appear in retrospect thatthe curious, anomalous phase in his career wasthat when he was writing novels, instead ofexercising his true concerns as a "natural

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Books & Writers 59philosopher." Certainly, many of those whoknow him personally will feel that The Act ofCreation gives a truer picture of his actual castof mind than the nightmare-obsessed plots ofhis earlier stories. At last the shadow of theStalln-Hitler Era can be forgotten, the menaceof the Cold War is lifting, and Koestler canturn his ample, serious mind away from thetortuousness of political conspiracy, to view withall-embracing scope the larger sphere of Manand Nature. Scientific and philosophical re-flections which he sketched fifteen years agoin the book lnsight and Outlook, and whichhe focused through the lens of Johann Kepler’spersonality in The Sleepwalkers, are expoundedat length for the first time in the 75o pagesof his new book. Throughout the whole close-textured volume, there is not a single referenceto communism, Karl Marx is alluded to onlyonce, ~ propos of Darwin, and there is onepassing reference alone to the Spanish CivilWar; for here, without the slightest ambiguity,Arthur Koestler is staking his claim to beregarded as a scientist. Whatever one’s finalverdict on his conclusions, it is at any rateessential to look at his argument carefully andseriously.

T HE ACT OF CREATION is scarcely thekind of book one can summarise. At best

a critic can describe and paraphrase its argu-ment in general terms, before attempting toassess its points of strength and weakness. Tobegin with, then, Koestler’s exposition is dividedinto two halves, which could--echoing Parme-nides-be labelled "the way down" and "theway up." The first half of the book ("The Artof Discovery and the Discoveries of Art")presents a general theory about the nature ofcreative originality as displayed in burnout,natural science, and the fine arts. The secondhalf ("Habit and Originality") argues that thiscreativity has analogies on all levels of an organichierarchy which extends from the sub-cellularworld of molecular genetics, up through thespheres of embryology and physiology to thoseof human behaviour, learning, and symbolicexpression. The first half of the book is not (asone might guess) a popular presentation of thesame theories which the second half expoundsin more technical language: the two parts arestrictly complementary, and both are equallynecessary for an understanding of Koestler’swhole thesis.

This thesis is a threefold one. Koestler hopesto demonstrate, in the first place, that "organiclife, in all its manifestations, from morpho-genesis to symbolic thought, is governed by’rules of the game’ which lend it coherence,

order, and unity-in-variety"; secondly, that"these rules.., whether innate or acquired, arerepresented in coded form on various levels,from the chromosomes to the structures in thenervous system responsible for symbolicthought"; and finally, that all creative origin-ality,,is the product of what he calls "bisocia~tion, which involves "the combination, re-shuffling and re-structuring of skills" or otherrule-governed activities. Artistic and intellectualnovelties all spring from the fusion--indeedfrom the marriage---of separate pre-existingroutines: in a manner of speaking, then, "thebasic model of the creative act" is "the bisocia-tion of two genetic codes" in sexual reproduc-tion, since this too is the ultimate source ofnovelty on the organic level.

LrT vs ~roiN ~Y looking at Koestler’s initialclaim, to identify a common pattern of origina-tire activity shared by the jester, the sage (orscientist), and the artist; then go on to considerthe "organic hierarchy" which he sees as under-lying all kinds of creative activity; and finallyask whether he is justified in equating theend-points of his two investigations--humancreativity, on the one hand, and top-levelorganic activity, on the other.

For much of the first half of the book,Koestler’s esprit de finesse is at its best. Whathe does here is to set out for us a theory aboutthe major originative activities of the humanmind; and he’ shows us the force of this. newview by a subtle presentation of selected ex-amples which gradually insinuate his key-ideainto our minds. This idea is a theoretical one,in a quite strict sense of that term. Whengiving a completely general account of motion,for example, physicists start by presenting asimplified "ideal type" of the phenomenon inquestion, from which all the complicatingfactors (i.e., "forces") have been eliminated bya deliberate abstraction. Such "inertial motion"need never in fact take place. We are presentedwith the model solely as an object of intellectualcomparison, and all the motions that we actuallyobserve are explained as deviations from thisideal, brought about by different permutationsand combinations of physical forces.

Koestler’s procedure is similar. He, too, treatsscientific and artistic originality as difficult andcomplex phenomena, which are best explained,not by looking at them directly, but ratherby comparing them with a simpler, idealisedexample from which complexities have beeneliminated. This simplified example he findsin the activity of the jester: as he explains onmaking the transition "from humour to dis-covery ....


60 .Books &I have started this inquiry with an analysis

of humour because it is the only domain ofcreative activity where a complex pattern ofintellectual stimulation elicits a sharply definedresponse in the nature of a physiological reflex.

What the scientist and the artist do to us insubtle, delicate and varied ways, the jester doesto us abruptly; yet for all the apparent simplicityof his achievement it already carries withinitself the leading characteristics of its moreadult counterparts--

Originality or unexpectedness; emphasis throughselection, exaggeration and simplification; andeconomy or implicitness which calls for extra-polation, interpolation and transposition.

Above all, the originality of the humorist dis-plays in simplified form a pattern whichKoesder is going to trace out for us in allother spheres of human and organic activity:

The pattern underlying all varieties of humouris "bisociative"---perceiving a situation or eventin two habitually incompatible associative con-texts. This causes an abrupt transfer of the trainof thought from one matrix to another governedby a different logic or "rule of the game." Butcertain emotions, owing to their greater inertiaand persistence, cannot follow such nimblejumps of thought; discarded by reason, they areworked off along channels of least resistance inlaughter,x

Notoriously, theories of humour tend to bedreary reading. Fortunately, Koestler has amuch better sense of humour than (say) Freud,whose account in some respects anticipated hisown, so we are spared almost entirely theembarrassing feeling that somehow or other--in the course of being "explained"--the wholepoint of the jokes under discussion has quietlyevaporated. If this is so, it is because Koestlerdoes more than merely identify the locus of ajoke as the intersection of two "planes." He

x What are these "matrices," which the jester"bisociates"? Here is Koestler’s general account ofthem:

"The term ’matrix’ was introduced to referto any skill or ability, to any pattern of activitygoverned by a set of rules--its ’code.’ Allordered behaviour, from embryonic develop-ment to verbal thinking, is controlled by ’rulesof the game,’ which lend it coherence andstability, but leave it sufficient degrees of free-dom for flexible strategies adapted to environ-mental conditions. The ambiguity of the term’code’ (’code of laws’--’coded message’) deliberate, and reflects a characteristic propertyof the nervous system: to control all bodilyactivities by means of coded signals .... "

Writersalso analyses with great sensitivitv the emotionalmechanisms by which this kind if juxtapositionproduces its effect on us, relating them back bystages to the laughter of the infant in thecradle, who responds to a mock attack withthe same laughter that actual tickling wouldprovoke.

WITH THIS PREAMBLE behind us, we read oneagerly, to see how Koestler will apply the con-cept of "bisociation" in the more contentiousareas of science and the arts. The closing wordsof the initial section provide a text for whatfollows~

Habits are the indispensable core of stabilityand ordered behaviour; they also have a tendencyto become mechanised and to reduce man tothe status of a conditioned automaton. Thecreative act, by connecting previously unrelateddimensions of experience, enables him to attainto a higher level of mental evolution. It is anact of liberation--the defeat of habit byoriginality.

High-grade intellectual and artistic activities,he argues, display the same contrast between"automatised routines" and moments of"creative originality," pr, o, mpted by the suddenworking-together of previously unrelateddimensions of experience"; and, in his accountof the evollution of scientific ideas, he appliesthis fundamental contrast convincingly andilluminatingly. For, indeed, the developmentof science has been characterised by just suchan alternation between periods of calm, straight-forward growth--during which the adequacyof the fundamental concepts and techniqueswas not seriously in question--separated bybriefer phases of intellectual metamorphosis,during which those fundamental concepts ortechniques had to be re-thought entirely. Andeach such transformation has been precededby a period of frustration, during which scien-tists were psychologically "blocked," andhunted around in vain for a way of escapefrom apparendy insoluble difficulties.

In this section, one is especially grateful forthe delicacy and clarity with which Koestlerdescribes the actual process of intellectual dis-covery--in a word, for his finesse: this is shown,for instance, in his thumbnail sketches of Guten-berg’s inw;ntion of movable type, Kepler’sspeculations about gravity, and Darwin’s dis-covery of "natural selection." By reconstructingthe intellectual situations confronting thesegreat innovators, he is able in the end to lendgreat plausibility to a claim that one mightotherwise Eave resisted--namely, that there is,psychologically speaking, an unbroken spectrumwhich stretches from the sublimity of ~Kepler


Books & Writers 61

or a Newton mastering the movement of theplanets, right the way down to K6hler’s chim-panzees laying siege to a banana. At both endsof the scale, as Koestler demonstrates, "dis-covery" comes about when techniques earlierdeveloped quite separately are, for the firsttime, combined together to surmount a newobstacle; and the same patterns of frustration(or "blocking"), withdrawal into the imagina-tion, hunting around and sudden insight canbe observed equally in the ape and in themathematician.

If science strikes the contemporary literarymind as essentially boring, that is because thecrucial importance of imagination and insightin scientific discovery has too often been playeddown. Somehow, the routine phases of scientificconsolidation have come to be’ regarded as more.respectable and "rational." Yet, as KoestlerlnSlStS,

the aesthetic satisfaction derived from an elegantmathematical demonstration, a cosmologicaltheory, a map of the human brain, or an in-genious chess problem, may equal that Of anyartistic experience--given a certain connoisseur-ship ....

To derive pleasure from the art of discovery,as from the other arts, the consumer--in thiscase the student--must be made to re-live, tosome extent, the creative process. In other words,he must be induced, with proper aid andguidance, to make some of the fundamental dis-coveries of science by himself, to experience inhis own mind some of those flashes of insightwhich have lightened its path. This means thatthe history of science ought to be made anessential part of the curriculum, that scienceshould be represented in its evolutionary context--and not as a Minerva born fially armed. Itfurther means that the paradoxes, the "blockedmatrices" which confronted Archimedes, Coper-nicus, Galileo, Newton, Harvey, Darwin, Ein-stein should be reconstructed in their historicalsetting and presented in the form of riddles--with appropriate hints--to eager youngminds ....

The creative achievements of the scientist lackthe "audience appeal" of the artist’s for severalreasons briefly mentioned--technical iargon, anti-quated teaching methods, cultural prejudice.The boredom created by these factors has accen-tuated the artificial frontiers between continu-ous domains of creativity.Koestler’s own picture of scientific discovery

is not just more engaging or "human" thanusual--for we all know those terrible coy anec-dotes thrown in, like’ currants, to give flavourto stodgy books about "the great scientists"--but, rather, more gripping and compelling,proving in action, his claim that we can all re-live the intellectual quandaries of our fore-fathers. Yet in one respect his theory is, in my

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62 Books &opinion, open to serious question. I am notreferring to his errors of historical fact andinterpretation: some of these are inevitable ina book ,of such length, and they scarcely touchKoestler s central thesis.~ What I do query isthe importance he attaches to the moments ofinsight being brief and sudden: he speaks re-

cW/icate,dl, y of "flashes of insight," "the bisociativek, and so on. Now, there is no doubt that

discoveries have sometimes happened as a resultof sudden--even instantaneous--inspirations, sothat Henri Poincar~ (for instance) could actuallytime the moment at which he realised that theFuchsian functions that he had been studyingmathematically were identical with those ofnon-Euclidean geometry to the instant at whichhe put his foot on the step of an omnibus atCoutances. Equally, some scientific discoverieshave been born from reverie as surely as Cole-ridge’s Kubla Khan--e.g., Kekul~’s theory ofmolecular rings. But surely to treat this kindof discovery as the typical case, rather than anexceptional one, is to make one’s account ofscientific discovery over-histrionic. It is, nodoubt, a matter of great significance in thatthe central novelty in a new theory can suggestitself to the scientist as a result of a momentary

.o For the sake of improving the inevitable secondedition, let me just note the following: (~) theauthor of L’Homme Machine (p. 48) was luliende la Mettrie (~7o9-5I); (2) the second law thermodynamics antedated Maxwell (p. x28); (3)Anaximander and Lucretius did not believe in theevolutionary development of one species intoanother (pp. I3I, I37); (4) Darwin had almostcertainly hit on the idea of "natural selection"before reading Malthus (p. ~40); (5) it was generally believed by "the educated classes" in theI5th century A.D. that the earth "was a flat disc,of a rectangle perhaps" (p. 227, but cf. p. 255);(6) Newton was explicitly aware that light haswave-like characteristics as well as corpuscular oncs(P- 240); (7) the status of W6hler’s synthesis urea is nowadays in serious doubt (p. 24o); and(8) the man who jumped into the crater of Etnato gain immortality was not Eudoxus of Cnidusbut Empedokles of Akragas (p. 256).

Note also: the same quotation is attributed toGalton on p. I6o and to Taine on p. ~65;T. H. Huxley is credited with a remark of HerbertSpencer’s on p. 214; George Sarton is called Henryon p. 224; Miletus is called "Milos" on p. 227; andHipparchus is misspelt "Hypparchus" on p. 234.Likewise on p. 588, for "Ecclesiastes" read"Epicurus."

I shall return later to the question why Koestleris unable to extend to Aristotle the intellectualcharity he insists on in the case of all otherscientists--c/, the remarks about Aristotle’s "absurdtheory of physics" which "paid no attention toquantity or measurement" and was "full of glaringself-contradictions."

Writersassociation of ideas; but more generally dis-covery is what Koestler would call a "dilutedEureka process," and for him to insist on thesuddenness of scientific inspiration makes onefear that for once he is allowing the novelistin him to get the better of the psychologist.After all, as he concedes, flashes of inspirationmay be deceptive, and the all-embracing term"discovery" can scarcely be used with accuracyto refer to anything shorter than the wholeestablishment of a new concept. Ideas may cometo us in. a flash: discoveries must be earnedlaboriously.

When this amendment has been made, wecan discount very largely the element of literaryexaggeration to be found in such a passage asthis:

Yet the evidence for large chunks of irration-ality embedded in the creative process, not onlyin art (where we are ready to accept it) butin the exact sciences as well, cannot be disputed;and it is particularly conspicuous in the mostrational of all sciences: mathematics and mathe-matical physics.., a branch of knowledge whichoperate.,; predominantly with abstract symbols,whose entire rationale and credo are objectivity,verifiab:_lity, logicality, turns out to be dependenton mental processes which are subjective,irrational, and verifiable only after the event.

Over the question where we get new ideasfrom, questions about "logicality" and the restscarcely arise. We may come by them suddenly,we may work our way to them painfully: itis the to.tal process of discovery--verificationafter the event and all--which has to be judgedby the canons of rationality. Koestler’s falseantithesis between irrational, inspirational dis-covery and rational, routine con’.solidation--God-given originality and earthbound habit--is thus a romantic exaggeration, rather than apiece of serious psychology.

SO w~ u ova. o~ to the fine arts. Hereagair, Koestler’s sensitivity and range of

experience are most rewarding. In many cases,he is able to demonstrate in the field of the arts,also, patterns of creation and originality analo-

gous to those he expounded in his analyses ofumour and scientific discovery. The resem-

blances remain striking, for just so long as hetakes care to talk about genuine "originality" inthe fine arts--as contrasted with "creativity,"in a more general sense. He demonstrates veryjustly tha’: the same kind of "evolution of ideas"that can be traced out in the history of sciencecan be recognised equally in the history of art:

In both fields the truly original geniuses arerare compared with the enormous number oftalented practitioners; the former acting as spear-heads, opening up new territories, which the


Books & Writerslatter will then diligently cultivate. In bothfields there are periods of crisis, of "’creativeanarchy," leading to a break-through to newfrontiers--followed by decades, or centuries ofconsolidation, orthodoxy, stagnation, and deca-dence-until a new crisis arises, of holy dis-content, which starts the cycle again.

lust so long as he concerns himself with stylisticinnovations, one can see how Koestler’s conceptof "bisociation" helps to explain the nature ofcreative originality, in art as much as in science.Equally, the process of frustration, withdrawal,imagination, and insight leading to a new stepforward, which was evident in many of hisscientific examples, can once more be showntaking place in the minds of those creativeartists who have broken with earlier styles andmedia, and branched out into new and originaldirections. (Is not to-day’s great novelty in paint-ing--Pop Art--well described as a "bisociation"of the pre-existing "matrices" of abstract paint-ing and the mass media?)

Yet in this section, too, Koestier the romanticgets the better of Koestler the psychologist and,as we read, the idea of bisociation graduallyloses its initial precision. To begin with, theword had been introduced as a straightforwardsingle-purpose term, whose relevance to any

pparticular example was clear enough. The wine-ress and thff seal are bisociated to yieldmoulded lead type (Gutenberg); abstract collageand advertising material are bisociated to yieldPop Art. But Koestler is not content with agood, but restricted theory of artistic innova-tion; what he wants to do is to give an accountof all artistic creation conforming to the samepattern. Yet how is this to be done? When weturn to consider a run-of-the-mill string quartetor poem, painting or no~el, involving no par-ticular stylistic innovations, what are we in thatcase to say is "bisociated" with what?

For the next fifty pages, Koestler keeps theequation "Creativity=Bisociation" on its feetonly by desperate measures, and there aremoments when he veers perilously near toliterary humbug. In a play, for instance, thebisociation is (he claims) between the actor’sreal personality and his stage-part, in a paintingbetween "sensory qualities and emotive poten-tial," in a great novel between "incompatibleframes of experience or scales of value, illumin-ated in consciousness by the bisociative act" ormore portentously between "the Trivial Planeof everyday life" and "the Tragic Plane.... theessential solitude of man." In due course, heeven uses the term "bisoclation" to express hisown species of philosophical idealism--

Man always looks at nature through coloured

~lasses--throu~h mythological, anthropomorphic,r conceptual~ matrices--e~ven when he is not

63conscious of it and believes that he is engagedin "pure vision," unsullied by any meaning.

Thus "form" and "meaning" too are made toserve as a "bisociated" pair, and the way ispaved for a general theory of artistic expressionowing something to Jung, and something toBergson and the idealists:

The difficulty of analysing the aesthetic ex-perience is not due to its irreducible quality,but to the wealth, the unconscious and non-verbal character of the matrices which interlacein it, along ascending gradients in various dimen-sions. Whether the gradient is as steep anddramatic as in a Grunewald or E1 Greco, orgently ascending through green pastures, italways points towards a peak--not of technicalperfection, but of some archetypal form of ex-perience ....

The aesthetic experience aroused by a workof art is derived from a series of bisociative pro-cesses which happen virtually at once and cannotbe rendered in verbal language without suffer-ing impoverishment and distortion.

THIS POSITION" IN. philosophical a:sthetics com-bines with his earlier psychological theory oforiginal discovery to yield the following generalthesis about the creative capacities of the humanmind:

The locus in quo of human creativity is alwayson the line of intersection between two planes;

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64 Books &and in the highest forms of creativity betweenthe Tragic or Absolute, and the Trivial Plane.The scientist discovers the working of eternallaws in the ephemeral grain of sand, or in thecontractions of a dead frog’s leg hanging on awashing-line. The artist carves out the image ofthe god ~vhich he saw bidden in a piece of wood.The comedian discovers that he has kno~vn thegod from a plum tree.

This interlacing of the two planes is found inall great works of art, and at the origin of allgreat discoveries of science. The artist and scien-tist are condemned--or privileged--to walk onthe line of intersection as on a tightrope.This message is, no doubt, very edifying, but

by this time we have left Koestler’s psycholo-gical theory about the nature of originality farbehind. In the process, the very useful term "bi-sociation" has become fuzzed and blurred, untilit has lost most of its explanatory merit. To me,at any rate, this is a sad disappointment. At theoutset, Koesder had seemed to be proclaimingfor the psychology of invention what Lavoisierdeclared about chemistry--that "it is time to

tion. In the course of his section on art, how-ever, Koestler’s love of generalisation leads himto devalue his own new coinage, to a point atwhich I find myself echoing Lavoisier’s protestabout the chemist’s use of the term "phlogis-ton"--

A vague principle, which they in no way definerigorously, and which in consequence is adapt-able to any explanation they please. Now thisprinciple has weight, and again it is weightless;now it is free fire, and again it is fire combinedwith the element earth; now it penetrates rightthrough the pores of vessels, and again it findsbodies impenetrable. It explains at once causticityand its opposite, translucence and opacity, coloursand the absence of colours. It is a veritableProteus, changing form at every instant.

Then suddenly, at the end, Koestler brings him-self back to artistic originality proper, as dis-played in the history of art, and we find our-selves back on beam again. The pity is that hedoes not take sufficient care to distinguish,throughout, between the creative capacitieswhich any artist must have, in the nature of his

dProfession, and the special originativeness whichifferentiates those men who create new stylesor exploit new media. Even a great artist isnecessarily for the most part a craftsman; andit is, once again, a romantic fancy to insist onfinding "bisociative processes"--in the sense inwhich Koestler originally defined that phrase--in all artistic creation whatever.

H r R ~ w E r~ v s x L r a v E Koestler’s accountof human creativity at the highest level,

Writersand turn to the general system of biological andpsychological concepts in which he seeks to root~hat account. This occupies the second half ofThe ,’tet o[ Creation. Once again, it is scarcelypossible to summarise his argument, especiallyas in this second half much of the discussion isat rather a technical level. Still, one can perhapsonce more describe and paraphrase the case heputs forward--even though one can do no morethan hint at the richness of examples and illus-trations which form so impressive a part of hisexposition.

The starting-point in this second half is thesame as in the first: the idea of a "matrix" char-acterised by certain "rules of the game."Matric~ of this kind (Koestler claims) are be found in all the manifestations of organiclife. "from embryonic development to symbolicthought"--

These rules or codes, whether phylogenetically orontogenetically acquired, function on all levelsof the [organic] hierarchy, from the chromo-somes to the neuron-circuits responsible forverbal thinking. Each code represents the fixed,invariant aspect of an adaptable skill or matrixof behaviour. I shall take the stylistic licence ofusing the word "skill" in a broad sense, as asynonym for "matrix," and shall speak of themorphogenetic skills which enable the egg togrow into a hen, of the vegetative skills of main-taining homeostasis, of perceptual, locomotive,and verbal skills.

(We shall have to ask later whether this verybroad use of the word "skill" involves only astylistic licence.)

Starting from this point, Koestler embarkson a thumbnail restatement of the leading dis-coveries of 2oth-century biology and psychology.At every stage he underlines the contrast be-tween fixed, predetermined patterns of growthand activ’2ty, and that residual scope for in-dividual variability and interaction with theenvironment that biologists call "plasticity." Ina newly-conceived, single-celled embryo, the"genetic code" transmitted by the ~r;a moleculeswhich make up the nucleus of the cell serves inmany respects to govern and limit the possibleways in which the resulting organism can grow,develop, and behave. To that extent, so tospeak, the embryo already has certain in-builtphysiological and psychological "habits," and itsscope for ";originality" is thereby curtailed. (Thequalification "so to speak" is important.) Yetthe existence of these fixed patterns of activityon a lower organic level is in practice a neces-sary condition, if there is to be any real chanceof freedom or development at a higher physio-logical or psychological level. As Koestlerputs it,

the emergence of life means the emergence ofspontanecus, organised exertion to maintain and


Books & Writers 65produce originally unstable forms of equili-brium in a statistically improbable system in theteeth of an environment governed by the lawsof probability.

(An example may help: at the physiologicallevel, a spastic cannot achieve anything like thesame degree of muscular control as a normalhuman being, and his behaviour is thereforesubject to a much greater degree of physiologi-cal variability; yet on that account he must bejudged--at the behavioural level--to have lessscope for freedom and originality, rather than

Koesder pays particularly close attention tothe facts of embryological development andphysiological regeneration. As he emphasises,one of the fundamental capacities of theorganism is the ability when necessary to revertto an earlier stage of development (reculer pourmieux sauwr), so as to re-create or make goodthe loss of some injured limb or organ. In this,running ahead somewhat, he sees an image pre-figuring a spiritual phenomenon--

the perennial myth of the prophet’s and hero’stemporary isolation and retreat from humansociety--followed by his triumphant return en-dowed with new powers. Buddha and Moham-med go out into the desert; Joseph is throwninto the well; Jesus is resurrected from the tomb.Jung’s "death-and-rebirth" motif, Toynbee’s"withdrawal and return" reflect the same arche-typal motif. It seems that reculer pour mieuxsauter is a principle of universal validity in theevolution of species, cultures, and individuals,guiding their progression by feedback from thepast.

As to this biological phase in Koestler’s argu-ment, let me add only one further qualification:

3 Incidentally, embryology is not a field in whichone can safely mix present-day evidence with quo-tations derived from sources thirty years old ormore. In particular, the term "organiser," whichKoestler uses without comment, is by now undera cloud among professional biologists--and forgood reason--and it is not safe to use the word asthough it were strictly equivalent to "evocator" or"inducer." So Koestler’s text at this point needsto be read with care. A reference taken at secondhand from a book of Michael Polanyi’s to a paperpublished by C. H. Waddington in 1932 hardlyrates as highly as an encyclopaedia article by JeanBrachet dated 1955, and one would have pre-ferred to see the argument based on--say--Wad-dington’s own post-196o work. Incidentally, somestraightforward corrections are again required:e.g., the formation of two complete frogs fromthe separated halves of a frog-egg and the produc-tion of rudimentary kidneys from individual cellstaken from the kidney area are not examples ofthe same phenomenon as the re-formation of aliving sponge from its dissociated cells (pp. 423-4).

though the analogies and resemblances forwhich he is arguing are in their way quiteappealing, he is undiscriminating in the evi-dence which he quotes to establish them.Though he himself protests later on (p. 556)against applying to human beings psychologicalconclusions derived from the study of rats andpigeons, for instance, his embryological argu-ment jumps without comment between observa-tions on salamanders, frogs, and human embryos(c[. pp. 427-8). We are not, in fact, in a posi-tion to know at the present moment whetherthis is entirely legitimate or not3 But I do notpress the point, for this biological section, likethe corresponding section on "The Jester" in thefirst part, is intended only as a preamble to themore serious discussion of psychology andbehaviour.

LET ME say AT ONCE that much of Koestler’slong and careful discussion of contemporarypsychological theory is valuable and pertinent.For the last half-century theoretical psycholo-gists have been as deeply divided into rivalschools and "tendencies" as metaphysicians ortheologians have ever been. Of the whole fieldwhich Arthur Koestler has set himself to ex-plore in this book, no single part has been more

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66 Books & Writersin need of attention from a sympathetic, un-prejudiced, and eclectic observer. In a warmly-phrased foreword Professor Sir Cyril Burt com-mends Koestler’s attempt to bring together andintegrate into a single consistent scheme theseparate results which have been achieved bypsychologists of all these different tendencies.And in this respect his praise--so far as I amin a position to judge--appears well deserved.At this stage Koestler turns away from hisattempt to generalise the notion of "bisociation."Instead, he makes it his business to do some-thing rather different--namely, to show howall the great and apparently disorderly varietyof human behaviour and activities can beordered as a hierarchy of skills, in which thoseat the higher level presuppose, and are depen-dent upon, the previous acquisition of those atthe lower level. From the moment of birth,when our instinctual skills and capacities are--necessarily--our only psychological equipment,we gradually acquire more and more complexabilities: the ability to "perceive" (for it is im-portant to realise that perceiving is something we"do"), the ability to generalise and discriminate,the ability to recognise causes, etc. Furthermore,Koestler shows, the capacity to move on fromany one level to the next is bound up with thepossession of an "inherent exploratory drive,"and apart from this the behaviour even of ratsand pigeons (to say nothing of human be-haviour) cannot be properly understood. Thisis the point at which Koesder makes his mostimportant and original contributions to psycho-logical theory, for exploratory and creativeactivities are precisely those with which recentpsychological theories have been least successfulin dealing.

It took experimental psychology nearly fiftyyears to re-discover, after its Dark Ages of need-reducing S.R. [stimulus-response] theories, thatrats and men are pleasure-seeking creatures, thatsome activities are pleasurably self-rewarding,and that exploring the environment, solving achess problem, or learning to play the guitar areamong these activities.

Those who could envisage only a pattern ofexternal stimuli producing behavioural re-sponses were at a loss to explain (say) how a ratsometimes learns to run through a maze with-out actually having this learning "reinforced"by punishments or rewards--

Several writers have considered the possibilitythat [this kind of learning] comes from thereduction of curiosity .... One might as well saythat composing a song is a silence-reducingactivity.All this has a considerable bearing on our

understanding of human behaviour, and leadsto a system of ideas more comprehensive and

adequate than we get from either pure learning-theory or pure Gestalt theory:

On the elementary levels of learning a skill avarying amount of stamping-in is required, de-pending on the organism’s "ripeness" for thetask; or, to put it the other way round, depend-ing on the "naturalness" of the task relative tothe organism’s existing skills. Learning to typerequires more stamping-in than learning to ridea bicycle; the former is comparable to the blind-fold memorising of a maze, the latter to thegradual adjustment of the various interlockingservo-mechanisms .... But even in acquiring amechanical skill like typing, bit-by-bit learningplays in fact a lesser part than seems to be thecase. The typist’s mental map of the keyboardis not simply a rote-learned aggregation oftwenty-six letters (plus numbers and signs) dis-tributed at random; it is a "coded" map, struc-tured by a system of co-ordinates--the restingposition of the fingers--and by the frequency-rating of letters, syllables, etc .... Whole-learninginvades bit-learning at every opportunity; if themeaningless is to be retained, the mind mustsmuggle meaning into it.

At every level, accordingly, we build a kind of"floor" of routine activities, which gives mean-ing to one whole range of concepts; then, inturn, this "floor" serves as the foundation onto which a higher range or "storey" of activi-ties is built, with its own more sophisticatedrange of concepts and meanings. And the stepby which we pass up from one floor to the nextabove is neither a pure process of trial-and-error,nor a brand-new intellectual leap~somethingcorrfi.ng entirely "out of the blue," without anyprevious preparation. It is, Koesder argues, agenuine act of discovery, in which we "put twoand two together"--or, as Hebb puts it, "ourevidence thus points to the conclusion that anew insight consists of a re-combination of pre-existent mediating processes, not the suddenappearance of a wholly new process."

F~ t¢ ^ ~. L Y, we are back again at the level ofthought, language, and symbolism in gen-

eral. Koesder’s last five chapters present atheory of thinking intended to link together theaccount of originality contained in the first halfwith the ideas about biology and psychologymaking up most of the second. Here, I confess--and this may be my fault as much as his--I.find my,;elf, once again losing sympathy withhim. A general framework of psychologicaltheory such as he had outlined during the pre-vious hundred pages could naturally have beenextended into the linguistic field in such a wayas to produce something valuable and importantfor philosuphy as well as for psychology. In-deed, the pattern of analysis he adopts for char-acterising pre-linguistic and non-linguistic be-


Books & Writers 67haviour has genuine and significant analogiesto the pattern of analysis used by Ludwig Witt-genstein in his later years to describe the lin-guistic and symbolic activities which give"meaning" to our concepts. The "rules of thegame" associated with the "coding" of Koest-ler’s behavioural "matrices" immediately call tomind the rules of the "language-games" interms of which Wittgenstein explained howour linguistic symbols are related to non-linguistic "forms of life"; and the same sort ofhierarchy that Koestler recoguises in pre-linguistic behaviour was recognised and de-scribed by Wittgenstein as an essential feature(or structure) within the pattern of linguisticactivities. To give one specific ,example:Koesder’s whole discussion ofK6hler s experi-ments on the counting abilities of lower animalsand birds and the relation of these experimentsto the human capacity to calculate symbolically,gains a new depth and interest if read in con-junction with Wittgenstein’s discussion of thesame subject in The Brown Book.

I say this, not out of professional concern asan "analytical philosopher," nor out of personalloyalty to Wittgenstein, but rather because,through neglecting the results achieved byrecent philosophical analysis in Britain and

America, Koestler is led to take up some un-necessarily naive philosophical positions. Hisinsistence that the behaviour-patterns associatedwith our linguistic concepts are fully developedbefore the relevant word becomes attached tothem is very just. But in expounding the impli-cations of this important point he places toomuch weight.°n an over-simple "reference"theory of meamng--words for him are "labels,"which acquire meaning through being used to"refer to" things. This section of his bookwould have been more illuminating if he hadtaken more notice of the central insight of con-temporary analytical philosophy: namely, that"labelling" and "reference" represent only oneof the many different ways in which words be-come associated with behaviour-patterns in thecourse of our conceptual and mental life. (Thereis no obvious reason why he should have re-jected this particular refinement: from time totime, indeed, his actual style and choice ofexamples recalls Gilbert Ryle.) It seems to behis obsession with neurology--which makeshim speak of "the neuron-circuits responsibletor verbal thinking" where others might preferto say "correlated," or "associated with"--thatleads him to prefer a crude and muddledaccount of concept-formation written by a

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68 Books &neuro-surgeon who is, philosophically speaking,little further on than Locke or Berkele-y to themore sophisticated and discriminating accountsof the same phenomenon that he could have gotfrom contemporary analytical philosophers.

CaN oNr rsss any general verdict onThe Act o[ Creation as a whole? It is too

soon for a final judgment, but let me do mybest. As in the first half, the second half of thebook contains a substantial amount of noveland illuminating material flawed by the sameaspiration to be all-embracing. In the first part,Koesder started with an admirable theory oforiginality, but forced it beyond its properscope so as to make it serve as a completely gen-eral account of creativity. In the second part hebegan with a clear idea about how to weave to-gether harmoniously the ravelled strands oftheoretical psychology, but once again he wastempted to extend the resulting notion of a"hierarchy" too far--aiming at a single systemreaching downwards to embrace embryologyand biochemistry, and upwards to a union withscientific and artistic originality. In both cases,his fundamental concepts will not stand up tothe strain he puts upon them. Jus~ as his notion,°,fp~’lbo~stloanti,,°,n~’° ennodwedh~sP ,,boYrgbaeni?~ h~r~cg~; oa~

activities," each with its own "codes" and "rulesof the game," ends up as a mere aggregate ofpartial analogies. It is always the death of atheory to be made to do too much--to bestretched and stretched until it can explainabsolutely anything. When criticising otherpeople’s arguments Koestler sees this pointclearly enough: when he remarks of the term"regeneration" that it is "difficult to find asatisfactory definition which would embrace thewhole r,a,nge of phenomena to which the term isapplied, or dismisses Pavlov in the words,"’Conditioning’ is still a useful term whenapplied to induced changes in glandular andvisceral reactions, but leads to confusion whenused in a loose, analogical way for other typesof learning." It is not easy to exonerate Koest-ler’s use of the terms "bisociation, .... matrix,""code," and "rule" from the same charge.

The trouble is that, once the necessary stepsare taken to escape this particular charge, TheAct of Creation simply falls apart. It waswritten as two separate books, and it is in facttwo separate books. As things stand, the twohalves do not have much to do with one an-other, though--to do Koesder justice--it is pos-sible that the connections he would like to seebetween them may be better established a hun-dred years hence. At the present time, at anyrate, the central conceptual spine around whichKoestler has organised his argument embodies

Writersnot so much a scientific theory as a philosophicalvision of nature. It may eventually prove legiti-mate to equate the mechanisms of physiologicaland biochemical genesis, the development ofnew routines of behaviour at all levels, and thecreative originality of human artists andscientists--and to embrace them all under asingle cor_cept. But, with all respect, I must saythat Koe.,;der has not convinced me that thistime has yet come. For the moment, the thingsin his new book to which I shall turn againwith pleasure and fascination are, first, his sensi-tive and humane reconstructions of the intel-lectual quandaries facing earlier scientists(except the unsympathetic Aristotle) and,second, his re-ordering of psychological theoryinto a hierarchy of habits and novel discoveries.

Wr~sr KOrSrLER OXVr.S VS r~RS is a vision ofnature. One can go further, and add that it isan essentially romantic vision of nature. Koest-let set out to stake his claims as a scientist. Buthe proves to be, rather, a natural philosopher inthe manner of Goethe. In several ways, indeed,the systern of ideas which he has been develop-ing in his own mind from the days of Insightand Outloot(, through The Sleepwall~ers, toThe Act of Creation resembles Goethe’s ownnatural philosophy. This fact shows itself notmerely in Koestler’s positive theses, but equallyin his prejudices and hostilities. For, as so often,the overall direction of his thought shows itselfparticularly clearly in his polemical passages,where he takes a dogmatic stand in order topreserve kis system of ideas more rigidly thanour present understanding really justifies.

For example, Koesder shares with earlierromantics and ide,a!ists an exaggerated suspicionof formal logic. ( The so-called law of contra-diction.., is a late acquisition in the growth ofindividuals and cultures .... The unconsciousmind, the mind of the child and the primitive,are indifferent to it. So are the Eastern philoso-phies which teach the unity of opposites, as wellas Western theologians and quantum physi-cists.") The intrusion of mathematics intoscience, and the reliance on intellectual abstrac-tion have also, in his view, been overdone. Inthe circumstances it is perhaps surprising thathe is quite so venomous about Aristotle, withwhose dynamic view of nature Goethe and thesubsequent Romantics had a good deal incommon. Perhaps it is only Aristotle’s Physicsthat Koestler rejects--though I, for one, wouldbe happier if he had produced for inspec-tion just one of the "glaringly evident self-contradictions" he finds in it. (Be as charitablein interpreting Aristotle as Koestler is towardsKepler, and these deficiencies Will soon dis-appear.)


Books & WritersIt is understandable, of course, that Koestler

should be merciless in rejecting psychologicalbehaviourism: this is one of the main targetsagainst which he produces some very solid andsatisfactory arguments. His attacks on neo-Darwinism, on the other hand, are more modishand cliquey. Like Michael Polanyi, MarjorieGrene, and Gertrude Himmelfarb, he beginsby caricaturing contemporary evolutionary gene-tics, and then pours scorn on his own caricature.(I know of no evolutionist who teaches that"the courtship and fighting rituals of variousspecies have all evolved by ’pure chance,’" andall evolutionists recognise that evolution bynatural selection frequently involves pre-adapta-t.ion to a changing environment.) What I dothink Koestler needs to do is to reconcile hisrejection of chance, as a principal factor inorganic evolution, with his positive espousal ofit as a factor in discovery (c[., "the familiarpattern of a playful habit being connected witha blocked matrix, with chance acting as atrigger").

In one respect above all, Koestler’s attemptto wed 2orb-century science and philosophicalromanticism into a unified natural philosophyends by producing intellectual difficulties. Theseshow themselves in his highly-ambivalent atti-tude towards "mechanistic" ideas. As a roman-tic, he must surely be as opposed to a purelymechanical view of human nature as he is toevolution-through-pure-chance and to mathe-matical reductionism. Sure enough, he rejectsFrancis Galton’s teaching that the chains ofassociation by which ideas are brought into ourminds act "in a mechanically logical way"--in-deed, he registers a formal protest against thisdoctrine. He takes a sideswipe in passing at"this computer age" and disputes the idea thatmodern biochemistry and psychology .haveproved man to. be "a marionette on strings,with the only difference that he was nowsuspended on the nucleic acid chains determin-ing his heredity, and the conditioned-reflexchains forged by the environment." Indeed, thewhole point of his book is to demonstrate that,by his scientific and artistic creativity, manescapes from the habitual action of a condi-tioned automaton--achieving "the defeat ofhabit by originality."

So ravcr~ for his romantic side: yet see, now,how Koestler himself describes the process bywhich creative originality operates. This issomething for which "the workings of thenervous system" are "responsible." The scientistor artist with "the prepared mind" stops think-ing about his problem, leaves his brain to geton with the job, and is eventually taken by sur-prise, when the solution of his problem pops

69unannounced into his consciousness, of itself.During this Night Journey, this "inner scan-ning" of the mind, this retreat to free creativeassociation, the scientist or artist is not impos-ing his will on the world. Rather, he is givingfull rein to cause and chance, and waiting forsome combination of ideas to come up whichfits the precise requirements of his problem (c[.,the example of Franklin). Two things alonedifferentiate the great artist and scientist:(I) the possession of a fertile mind, well-stockedwith experience, which he can leave to churnover of itself until something promising turnsup; and (2) the capacity to recognise a worth-while novelty when it presents itself, regardlessof its source or origin. Where the bisociationscome from does not matter, provided that hecan match solutions to problems when theyappear.

Yet is a theory of originality expressed in suchterms necessarily anti-mechanistic at all? Leav-ing aside all romantic prejudices, and consider-ing only the scientific content of Koestler’stheory, one must surely answer: "No." On thecontrary, the trouble with all dogmatically anti-mechanistic positions is this--the machinesalways catch up with them. For, in the firstplace, the very concept of a "machine," or of

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70 Books & Writersa "mechanical" mode of operatior, is itself in-herently vague. The machines of Descartes’ andNewton’s day were one thing, those of Fara-day’s and Edison’s day another; those of our"computer age" yet a third. The thesis that"man is a machine" has, accordingly, alwaysbeen inherently ambiguous--is it the actualmachines of the time in question which are toserve as the objects of comparison, or rathersome conceivable machines not yet built? Infact, it has rarely done scientists very muchgood either to assert, or to deny, this particularthesis in general terms; the only useful thingis to ask how far machines of some specifiedkind can be built to simulate humar~ activityof some other specified kind.

WE ARE THEREFORE LEFT with the question: "Aremachines capable of original discovery?" Orrather, "Are electronic computers of a kindalready in existence capable of performing thoseparticular activities which Arthur Koestler re-cognises as distinctively creative and origina-uve. The answer to th~s quesuon ~s: Yes.The latest generation of electronic computers,such as those used for the programme of re-search on "machine-aided cognitiorf’ at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, have infact been built to do just that: they are capableof making inductions, of matching hypothesesto phenomena, and so of making scientific dis-

coveries in Koestler’s sense. Two things aboutthe methods by which these "originative" or"creative" thinking-machines operate serve, in-deed, to reinforce Koesfler’s theory about thenature of originality. In the first place, they areprogrammed by building into them criteria andconditions which must be satisfied by any solu-tion to tk~e problems they are going subse-

,q, uea,,tly to be set. That is, they are given aneye for a solution. In the second place, theyare so constructed that, when a problem is fedinto t,h, em throug,,h a teletype-input, they thenstart ’bisociating’ at high speed, according toa randomised pattern determined by their dec-tronic ("neural") connections, and they continueto do so until a particular bisociation turns upsatisfying the initial requirements. Nor am Imerely describing a possible or conceivablemachine: such things already exist, and are be-ing used experimentally for such practical pur-poses as medical diagnosis.

What does this prove? For me, personally,not very much; since I myself do not think weare compelled to deny the possibility of com-puters doing original creative thought. But I dothink the existence of such machines creates a

F~oblem for Mr. Koestler, for it drives a wedgetween the two elements in his position--his

romantic philosophy and his scientific theory.In the long run, I believe, he will be forced tomake a choice between them.

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Books & Writers 71

Tough and TenderA Moveable Feast. By ERNEST HEMI~qGWA¥.

Jonathan Cape, I8s.The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Bodley

Head, 5os.

"’1 talk with the authority oJ failure--Ernestwith the authority of success. We could neversit across the same table again." (ScoTT F~xz-eERA’~n--NOXE~OOXS.)

GS R X X U n r s X r x N, sceptical as to Heming-way’s toughness and jealous of his success,

once wrbte: "What a book would be the realstory of Hemingway, not those he writes butthe confessions of the real Ernest Hemingway."Well, now we have the nearest thing to thatstory we are ever likely to get. Of course it isnot "the real story." It is a deliberately andrather felicitously constructed version of thetwenties as a doomed idyll. He portrays a rimeof pure beginnings, when nothing was spoilt,when talent burgeoned with love, and whenrich vivid impressions were eagerly hoarded upby the unclouded wondering eye. (He seems tohave had total recall of alI the meals he hadduring this time.) There areparagraphs of ex-quisitely accurate notation which evoke thattime with undulled intensity. But he sees thistime from the perspective of age, so that thedawn brightness is occasionally darkened bysombre intimations of twilight. The recapturedsense of the young time when everything waspossible is sobered by the recurrent realisationthat nothing lasts.

This is of course an exercise in nostalgia, butit is a controlled exercise: a few well-placedshadows prevent the vivid recollections fromspilling over into deliquescent idealisation. Thebook starts with rain, cold wind, and strippedtrees--"Then there was the bad weather"--andin Hemingway’s work such weather alwayscarries overtones of menace, transience, and loss.It ends with Hemingway having been unfaith-ful to his wife and already suffering some of thecorruption of success. Looking back at EdenHemingway can see some of the trampledflowers, and while the stress is on innocenthappiness there are muted portents of the falland banishment to come. Hints--" ’We’realways lucky,’ I said, and like a fool I did notknock on wood"--and the final realisation--"Allthings truly wicked start from an innocence. Soyou live day by day and enjoy what you haveand do not worry. You lie and hate it and itdestroys you and every day is more dangerous,but you live day to day as in a war." But formost of the book the scene is as follows: Hem-ingway sitting safely in a familiar caf~ ("ACl~an, Well-Lighted Place"?). He writes, eats,

and drinks. Then he makes his way quickly,even cautiously, across Paris until he is home(,a,s all Hemingway heroes long to find a true’ home"). There he makes love and relishes thesense of sanctuary. Occasionally there are mar-vellous trips or walks with his wife or someparticular friend who shares his own quietreverence for ordinary things.

BuT THERE are interruptions, intruders in para-dise who stop him from working or soil thesacred intimacy of his home. Real toads in theideal garden. Like Ford Madox Ford ("heavy,wheezing, ignoble presence"), Wyndham Lewis("I do not think I have ever seen a nastier-look-ing man"), and the unnamed visitor who daresto enter Hemingway’s "home oafS" to begreeted--"You rotten son of a bitch, what areyou doing in here off your filthy beat?" Thereare some angels--Ezra Pound with his endlessgenerosity and help, Sylvia Beach for lendingbooks and money, the euphoric Pascin--butthroughout the book one senses an almostneurotic resentment at the uninvited proximityof other people, a pugnacious fear of their con-tagion.. This impression is strengthened by hisamazing statement to Gertrude Stein when heis explaining his prejudice against homosexuals."I tried to tell Miss Stein that when you werea boy and moved in the company of men, youhad to be prepared to kill a man, know how todo it, and really know that you would do it inorder not to be interfered with." RememberMalcolm Cowley describing how Hemingwayalways moved around like a boxer?--and theincredible importance he attached to his spar-ring? One character in the book says thatHemingway looks like "a man alone in thejungle," but he sounds more like an animal atbay in the jungle, snarling to scare off a threatwhich is sensed, feared, but not yet seen.

Even the humour in the book (and parts arevery funny) is rather cutting--a weapon ratherthan a joy. Hemingway certainly reveals him-self more nakedly than he can have intended.What.he intends to .l°°k .t°ugh starts to appearneurouc. The book Is written with a good dealof arrogance: every episode is turned to leaveHemingway looking tougher, more talented,more honest, more dignified than anyone else.When he touches on his faults~and "touches"is the word--they turn out to be those of thesportsman (gambling) or of the dedicatedartist (bad temper). When he does u,p,b, raid him-self it is embarrassingly theatrical. You God-damn complainer. You dirty phony saint andmartyr, I said to myself." This pseudo self-criticism in Hemingway-ese is merely a matterof posturing--the reverse of self-knowledge.And behind all the aggressive implications that


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Notes on a Koestler