THE GOLDEN DAY. By Lewis Mumford. Boni and Liveright. New York. 1927. $2.50.

THE spectacle of material prosperity and outward greatness which the America of today presents, can be directly attributed to the single mindedness with which we as a nation have embraced industrial success as the standard of achievement. But the hollowness of a philosophy of life, which leads to nothing more substantial than mere progress, is already being felt with a poignancy, which even the Nirvana of Coolidgism has failed to allay. And in tracing the fading of the golden day into the gilded dusk, Lewis Mumford is voicing a discontent with the present idols, to which the pens of such widely different types of writers as Professor Babbitt, H. L. Mencken, and Sinclair Lewis have previously given form. Few critics however, have seen so penetratingly beneath the surface of the contemporary scene, as Mr. Mumford has done in this book, or woven the multifold threads of the country's history into a more harmonious pattern.

The author sees the origin of the American mind in the disintegration of European culture following the breakdown of the mediaeval ethos. Before leaving the mother country, the New England colonist, in the intensity of his Protestantism, had already rejected the historic outcome of Christianity, and to a large extent the ideals and modes of life which had gone with it. Three thousand miles of ocean merely made his disassociation from the past more permanent. The disassociated colonist, in turn, produced the pioneer, who renouncing even the fragments of European culture remaining on the sea-board sought an outlet for his restless vigor in the conquest of the wilderness. The frontier vanished; industrialism offered a new channel for his boundless energies. The pioneer became the business man. Pragmatists like James and Dewey, mistaking a means for an end, furnished him a philosophy. The utilitarian process was complete.

If this were the whole story, the Golden Day could not have existed at all. But the new nation had its hour of glory. It occurred in that brief moment, when there was a nice balance between farm and factory, when maritime contact with the Orient and the Mediterranean was widening the native horizon, when--to quote the author--"the inherited mediaeval civilization of New England dried up, leaving behind a sweet, acrid aroma ... when in the act of passing away, the Puritan begot the transcendentalist." Emerson, Thorean, and Whitman rediscovered the treasure house of the past and envisioned a new culture, based on the old ideas moulded afresh, by contact with forest and sea.

Naturally, a book of this scope has its deficiencies. For example, though containing an estimate of Henry Adams's historical philosophy, the equally significant work of Brooks on Adams is neglected. One feels a lack of understanding in the author's treatment of Poe, and also a hint of the unpractical--despite his appreciation of genuine scientific achievement--in his dismissal of Upton Sinclair's "Industrial Republic" as too utilitarian. For transcendentalism alone as a living force is found wanting by the same canons with which Mr. Mumford condemned the humanism of the Renaissance--it failed to affect the great mass of the people. Even a utilitarian remedy for the most pressing evils might provide the eventual access to the road to the earthly paradise.