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This is the last work, honourably crowning the imposing edifice of a life-time's scientific research by Dr Waelder who died last year. The reader should be warned that this is not a clinical or therapeutical, perhaps not even a psychoanalytical book. It is, however, written in the
best psychoanalytical tradition, containing, as it were, the scientific testament of a sage and his message on the philosophy of history. It is written with incomparable dignity, a wealth of accumulated human wisdom, and in elegant prose, as for instance when he speaks of "the Hellenic search for clarity and the Christian search of charity" which characterize the author himself more than anything. The beauty of this book consists also in its well-chosen and apt quotations which, again, reveal the intrinsic and deep optimism behind Waelder's pessimistic facade. "When it is dark, he says (with Charles Beard, the historian), you can see the stars."
It would, perhaps, have been better had he given this book the title "Progress or Revolution", because this alternative is the topic with which he deals, summing both up with the last, the third part of the book: "The World Crisis of the Mid-Twentieth Century".
However, it is not very likely that this book will receive the popularity or even the recognition it deserves. It has not the appeal of being a "with-it" book. Of course, philosophers of history cannot avoid political issues. Waelder, however, does not advocate current "progressive" causes. He looks at history sub specie aeternitatis and is not carried away by partisan fervour. He quotes Saint-John Perse, that pacifism often does not mean more in practice than giving a green light to aggressors. Because of this attitude, some may even think Waelder a "reactionary": he would not abolish all the hereditary privileges or lift all the restraints from inequality or liberty. However, his "conservative" criticism of modernity is almost revolutionary in its challenging nonconformism.