Publishers’ Note

The author’s reluctance to have this book published is all the more reason for the publishers’ desire to have it see the light of day. The author felt that the book would be regarded as presumptuous criticism. It is natural that he would feel that way, for he is one of those rare men who see more error in themselves than they see around them.

But what is presumptuous criticism? In “Human Nature and Its Remaking,” W. E. Hocking writes:

“Is it not true that the entire interpretation of instinct as will to power and of the will to power as a will to save souls, or to recreate, or reform, or educate mankind, has in it more than a trace of presumption? What it amounts to seems to be this, that if the complete salvation of an individual will requires the transformation of all its instincts into the will to save others, we must be saved by saving; and it is very doubtful whether in our unsaved condition we have any right to suppose ourselves competent to save.... Historically speaking, the crux of Christianity is its element of presumption.”

This book is both an illustration of and an effort to escape the note of presumption of which Professor Hocking speaks. Perhaps the book can be better understood in the light of Dr. Lynn Harold Hough’s dedication of his book “Imperishable Dreams.” The dedication is: “To my friend Reinhold Niebuhr, in whose words and writings the younger generation has achieved an almost disconcerting sincerity and a penetrating power of analysis which searches the conscience and refuses the comfort of even the most delicate and gracious spiritual self-deception.”

This is sufficient comment to lead into the book itself. Supremely human and simple in form, this is a book which touches life as it is. A questioning and open-minded young minister reports what he sees—what he hears—what he thinks. The reader watches. Page by page the cynic—the same cynic that is in us all—is tamed—not broken, not forced into compromises, but tamed by the release of impulses of sympathy, of maturer observation, of sincere analysis.

There is fine poise of judgment and delicate balancing of values throughout these Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic. This book is not abstract religious and secular philosophy. It is a report upon life and experience—upon America in the making. It is a book without pretense. Authority and dogma are absent. The book reveals an honest, unhampered and penetrating mind actually at work upon the vital problems of American civilization in their Christian import.

Willett, Clark & Colby