Abstract
FEW careers provide such a romantic story as that of General Smuts, and a biographer could scarcely fail to give a fascinating narrative from such a wealth of material. Yet with a man so versatile and manysided as General Smuts, that very wealth of material may prove the biographer's undoing, and while the scientific worker will appreciate the picture Mrs. Millin gives of the statesman, he can scarcely fail to lay down these volumes with a feeling of disappointment that so little justice has been done to the philosopher. One searches these volumes in vain for any comment upon the selection of General Smuts by the British Association to fill the office of president in its centenary year, and the philosophical views which Smuts has expounded under the name of holism receive scanty treatment.
General Smuts
By Sarah Gertrude Millin. Vol. 1. Pp. xv + 394 + 12 plates. Vol. 2. Pp. xi + 496 + 11 plates. (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1936.) 18s. net each.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
BRIGHTMAN, R. General Smuts. Nature 138, 569 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138569a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138569a0
This article is cited by
-
The Perennial Dilemma of Science Policy
Nature (1971)