If any single controlling principle can be derived from what R. P. Blackmur has called the most sustained, eloquent, and original piece of literary criticism in existence, Henry James's Prefaces, it is that criticism is a creative act. This principle seems both sufficiently important and ambiguous to warrant a close examination of its meaning and consequences. In what follows, then, I propose to examine a theory of criticism as creativity, referring not only to James's remarks but also, and in particular, to an earlier and some ways more accessible version which we find in Robert Browning's work. Undoubtedly, in the great realm of speculation open to the critical theorist there are grander tasks which one could set oneself. Whether there are more difficult ones is another question. As it is, despite their peculiar particularity, both Browning and James are ambitious writers who refuse to be contained within narrow limits. Both demand an awareness of the context of critical theory, a sense of the problematical nature of criticism and the perplexities of the creative act. It is these latter considerations with which I propose to begin.

Lorsqu'on examine la vie de Alfred North Whitehead, on est frappé par le nombre d'activités qui l'ont occupé successivement à diverses époques. D'abord on remarque deux grandes périodes: la première, entièrement consacrée aux mathématiques, qui s'étend de 1880 à 1924 et qui culmine dans la publication de Principia Mathematica (1910-1913; 2e ed. 1925-1927),œuvre écrite conjointement avec Bertrand Russell; la deuxième consacrée à la philosophic et qui couvre la période allant de 1916 à 1947, année de sa mort. Comme on le voit done, la première période chevauche la deuxième puisque, de 1916 à 1924, Whitehead fait oeuvre, à la fois, de mathématicien et de philosophe.

An adequate theory of the self must provide for the fact of human agency. I would like to show that (1) we can put together a theory of human agency from Whitehead's later writings, but that (2) this theory is not satisfactory. This discussion will be, first, expository and then critical of Whitehead's position. An elaboration of Whitehead's theory has two moments. For Whitehead, all factors of the universe are finally derivative from the ultimately actual things, which he calls actual entities. The fact of agency is no exception. The establishment of such agency is the job of what I shall call Whitehead's microscopic theory. We are interested here, however, in the human being as agent. A person, according to Whitehead, is not an actual entity, but a society of actual entities. Whitehead's theory of human agency may be called the macroscopic theory. After an examination of these theories, I shall conclude by briefly criticizing them in two ways. First, for Whitehead there are no acts but only processes. Second, an adequate theory requires a doctrine of the persistence of the agent which Whitehead is unable to provide.

Si la discussion présente — comme la poésie — quelque au-delà d'ordre ontologique, il nous ferait plaisir de reprendre les points posés par M. Brault dans son post-scriptum à un récent article* …

D'abord il était question d'éviter les « à peu près» quant aux bases de discussion valable sur toute poésie; or, le but de notre exposé ne visait certes pas à polir une définition originale; il allait de soi que nous faisions nôtres les acceptions généralement admises, à commencer par celles de M. Brault. La poésie est rythme, chant, véhicule d'images — et de pensées — susceptibles d'émouvoir; témoignage de notre soif de certitude, prière … II n'en est pas moins vrai que, pendant des siècles, le concept a maintenu gaillardement ses droits dans l'expression poétique à côté du frisson causé par des impondérables et sans toujours, immanquablement, lui nuire. La poésie de Racine est tout de meme conceptuelle; et celle de Vigny — et celle de Chateaubriand si, comme on nous le fait justement remarquer, la poésie dépasse le cadre d'une prosodie plus ou moins traditionnelle.

Bernard Wand presented in this journal an article on the intelligibility of free choice or action. Sections I and II of his paper are devoted to showing that “the libertarian's position is one which makes free choice unintelligible, no matter what the principle of its explanation may be.” Basically his argument appears to be that any libertarian's explanation of free choice will contradict the libertarian thesis simply by being an explanation. Explanations function by the statement of antecedents (reasons or causes) for a fact; but if the fact is a specific 'free choice' in the libertarian sense, then it cannot be explained because, by definition, it has no antededents. If it cannot be explained then it is unintelligible. By this argument Mr. Wand claims to have shown that “the libertarian is forced by the logic of his own position to acknowledge the unintelligibility of free choice. …”

Professor Sellars has invited comment on his recent article in Dialogue dealing with the problem of perception. In brief, I believe that he has formulated the question in the right way, but has reached too facile an answer to it. To begin with the area of agreement, Sellars is surely correct in rejecting the empiricism of Locke, Hume, Dewey, Russell and the rest because they either end up with sensations or ideas from which we cannot get back to the real world or else have to reduce the latter to a bewildering proliferation of sensibilia. Second, no theory of perception can be regarded as satisfactory which leaves out of account the physiological data. In this Sellars echoes the complaint of the distinguished neurologist, Russell Brain, that realist philosophers have notably neglected the part played by the body in our perception of the external world. Third, perception results from the dynamic interplay of subject and object in which sensation performs a key role. Sellars recognizes the weakness in most empiricist theories that the activity of the subject is virtually read out of the situation in order to preserve something like the common sense account of the external world.

The problem which Professor Décarie has chosen for investigation can be briefly sketched, since it is familiar. In indicating the superiority of the highest kind of contemplation to the departmental studies and to the arts, Aristotle terms it at one time ‘wisdom’, at another ‘first philosophy’, at another theology. The difference between the names seems not to be verbal, but to be accompanied by a real fluctuation of emphasis. So one question above all obtrudes itself upon the reader and is, indeed, propounded within the treatise itself in E I ( = K 7). Is the supreme theoretical science particular, being focussed upon the highest order of reality, upon pure form, upon the divine ? Or is it a comprehensive study of being qua being, which will not only consider the lesser categories of being (because these are held to be derivative from ousia), but contemplate more than one grade of ousia itself? On the one hand, the supreme science is occasionally called theologikê. On the other hand, it is also declared to ‘contemplate being qua being’, a phrase commonly understood to mean that it surveys from a certain aspect all that is real, leaving other aspects to other sciences.