Books: God Out

THE AGE OF REASON—Philip Gibbs*—Doubleday Doran ($2.50). As usual, Author Gibbs is out to prove something—this time that a system of philosophy is bound to go on the rocks if it counts God out. There was no room for God in Hesketh’s firm belief that some day man would live by Reason; there was no room for religion in the behaviorist upbringing he gave his carefree earthy children. But this omission does not necessarily account for the boy’s morbid passion for his youthful stepmother (indeed every man in the book is in love with her); nor for the girl’s wild-faun beauty which ruthlessly lures the stepmother’s brother, traps his eager senses, torments his touchy conscience, abandons him to suicide. Author Gibbs does not prove the necessity of something more than a “Great Design” behind evolutionary progress, but he does write an engrossing story packed with engaging data on the younger generation full of life, the older generation full of ideas, and the oldest generation full of monkey glands.

* A. Hamilton Gibbs and Philip Gibbs are brothers.