Rootless Cosmopolitan of the Age

Arthur Koestler: 1905-1983

Moral indignation did and still does affect me in a direct physical manner," he once confessed. "I can feel, during an attack, the infusion of adrena line into the bloodstream, the craving of the muscles for violent action." For most of this century, Arthur Koestler lived by those words. Last week at his home in London, he died by them at the age of 77. The "rootless cosmopolitan," as he styled himself, had been an ardent supporter of "autoeuthanasia," and when the suffering of old age and disease grew in...