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E. W. F. Tomlin sees the present cultural crisis as arising in the psychic sphere and in the inner life of man. P.N. stands for psychic nutrition and, although such phrases as ‘neg—P.N.’ or ‘communal psycho-niche’ do not encourage further investigation, his case is in fact based on a wide-ranging synthesis of ideas drawn from disciplines as diverse as philosophy, psychology, anthropology and history and from thinkers such as Dostoievsky, Eliot and Jung. There is no disputing the existence of alienation and despair in contemporary societies and Tomlin locates the source of the crisis in pseudopsychic nutrition deriving from conceptions and practices based on the Descartian dualism of mind/body, subject/object, and so on. This position, he claims, has been superseded by developments in modern physics and biology according to which ‘organism, psyche and spirit’ are not separated but joined in a ‘unified domain’. Life therefore involves ‘subject being’ and what is now required, Tomlin argues, is the cultivation of that being.
The remedy for the crisis is said to be P.N. which, based upon the ideas of the philosophers Raymond Ruyer and R. G. Collingwood, involves ‘the arousing of emotion for discharge in practical life’ as man's ‘normal and indispensable activity’. The basic resource of P.N. is culture, defined not only in the narrow sense of the fine arts, literature, music and so forth, but as a larger ‘way of life’; and it is culture which provides the crucial intermediation between the individual psyche and the social collective. It is a sensitive and fragile entity, however, and has been threatened to the point of destruction by social trends (secularisation is especially stressed) and ideological heresies (Marxism and humanism being special offenders). Tomlin describes how the breakdown of traditional religion has led to a ‘burgeoning of beliefs of every sort and kind’ and how science can be no substitute for myth and taboo which are necessary ingredients of human c