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The blurb on the outside cover starts off with the statement “Man is not a rational being,” and one feels immediately like querying, “Who said he was?” But this is the thesis, nevertheless, which is supported through nearly 350 pages of quite delightfully written and illustrative material. That man is not a rational being has become a commonplace in these days, but perhaps that is no reason why the point should not be labored, in fact perhaps it is the reason of reasons why it should, because after all it is the platitudes that are lost to sight among their kind. The unusual stand out by virtue of their uniqueness and by attracting attention, often succeeding where the platitudes fail.
The author carries his thesis from a discussion of the emotions as our prime movers in all sorts of directions, including a very interesting discussion of the esthetic emotion and emotions in politics. He comes to the conclusion, that to many it will not be acceptable, that man is not only not a rational being, but that he probably never will be; in fact, it is not written in the stars that he ever can be, because the cement substance that holds man together is emotional and not rational, and as long as man functions as a social being he must rely upon his irrational components to keep him related to his fellows.
While the book is not profound, it is well written and informative, except that here and there there is room for criticism of the author's point of view. He seems to have been rather gullible in his acceptance of the popular estimates of the part played by the endocrine glands. His position is as if “he believed that we are male because we have male gonads, or female because we have female gonads. We are gay because certain endocrines pour their secretions into the blood, and sad because certain others pour theirs in. Seemingly he has not grasped the concept of the organism as a whole in its setting. Similarly, in his interpretations of dream psychology, dreams are plausible be