THE BURNING FOUNTAIN: A STUDY IN THE LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM.
By Prof. Philip E. Wheelwright '39h. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1954. 406 pp. $6.00.
In his recent The Burning Fountain: AStudy in the Language of Symbolism, Professor Wheelwright applies his studies in poetry, mythology, and religion to the redressing of an imbalance which has recently been growing more pronounced in western culture. The manifest accomplishments of science have caused many among the learned, besides scientists themselves, to assume that the language of the scientist is the only language in which truth should or even can be stated; and that laboratory experimentation or other impersonal and public kinds of verification are the sole means by which the truth or falsity of assertions can be ascertained. As for the general mass of men, they of course do not often use scientific language in their everyday concerns; nor do they often test their beliefs in any way that would satisfy a scientist. Yet such is the prestige of science that even the man in the street feels uneasily that his language, insofar as it departs from scientific rigor, is a concession to the informal untidiness of the average cerebrum (his own, of course); and he is increasingly inclined to give immediate, undoubting credence only to statements prefaced by "Science says ."
As an inevitable consequence, the assertions to be found in poetry (and indeed, "literature" generally), in mythology, and in the symbolic utterances of religion tend to be discredited to be dismissed as "kid stuff" perhaps appropriate to the infancy of the race, but not to our present adult stature. At most, poetry and religion may amuse or distract us when we are too tired to be truthful. But Professor Wheelwright points out that the presumption of an exclusive validity for the scientific attitude rests not on self-evident, universally applicable truths, but on a set of assumptions which, though useful in certain circumstances, are irrelevant or even harmful in other situations. To the assumptions governing what he calls the "steno-language" of science, he opposes a list of principles which govern the "depth language" of art, mythology, and religion. And he shows with abundant and varied illustrations that the expressive statements of the poet and sage, interpreted and valued in ways appropriate to their nature, have as great a claim to be worthy of our assent - that is to say, to be "true" —as the most rigorously defined and experimentally verified proposition of the scientist.
Even for readers with no strong penchant toward the theoretical, many parts of this book are of great interest. For among the illustrative materials to which I have alluded as perceptive elucidations of Greek, Hindu, and (may one say?) Christian myths; of Greek tragic plays, notably the Oresteia of Aeschylus and the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles; and of the poetry of T. S. Eliot. On whatever topic he writes, Professor Wheelwright discourses with clarity, agreeableness, and unobtrusive touches of humor. And for the reader with Dartmouth affiliations, there is the not infrequent interest of noting an allusion (not always explicit) to some person or event of the Hanover community in the years Professor Wheelwright spent as a member of it. It is gratifying that these reminiscences seem attended with a sense of remembered pleasure.
