Harold Innis delivered his ‘Plea for Time’ lecture¹ University Of New Brunswick on March 30, 1950. This was a year after Innis had participated in the ‘Values Discussion Group‘ at the University of Toronto with McLuhan, Easterbrook and others. In his lecture, Innis repeatedly referenced Lewis’ 1927 Time and Western Man and it would be interesting to know if McLuhan, perhaps through his 1944 ‘Wyndham Lewis: Lemuel in Lilliput‘ essay, perhaps through conversation in the seminar or elsewhere, had influenced him in this direction. The location of Innis’ discussion of Lewis at the end of his lecture might be taken to indicate a recent acquaintance with his work.

Here are the appearances of Lewis’ Time and Western Man in ‘A Plea for Time’:

“It was the gradually extended use of the printing press that dragged the obscure horrors of political economy into the full light of day: and in the western countries of Europe the new sect became rampant.” (TWM, 28)²

Wyndham Lewis has argued that the fashionable mind is the time denying mind. The results of developments in communication are reflected in the time philosophy of Bergson, Einstein, Whitehead, Alexander and Russell. In Bergson we have glorification of the life of the moment, with no reference beyond itself and no absolute or universal value.³ This contemporary attitude leads to the discouragement of all exercise of the will or the belief in individual power. The sense of power and the instinct for freedom have proved too costly and been replaced by a dummy sham independence of democracy.⁴ The political realization of democracy invariably encourages the hypnotist.⁵ The behaviourist and the psychological tester have their way. In the words of one of them “Great will be our good fortune if the lesson in human engineering which the war has taught us is carried over, directly and effectively, into our civil institutions and activities.” (C. S. Yoakum).⁶ Such tactlessness and offence to our good sense is becoming a professional hazard to psychologists. The essence of living in the moment and for the moment is to banish all individual continuity.⁷ What Spengler has called the Faustian West is a result of living mentally and historically and is in contrast with other important civilizations which are “ahistoric”. The enmity to Greek antiquity arises from the fact that its mind was ahistorical and without perspective. In art classical man was in love with plastic whereas Faustian man is in love with music.⁸ Sculpture has been sacrificed to music.⁹ The separation and separate treatment of the senses of sight and touch have produced both subjective disunity and external disunity.¹⁰ We must somehow escape on the one hand from our obsession with the moment and on the other hand from our obsession with history. In freeing ourselves from time and attempting a balance between the demands of time and space we can develop conditions favourable to an interest in cultural activity.