TH.G SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IJEAS OF T. S. cl..

Iar

Submitted in pou-tial fulfilment of the require-

ment~ for the degree of Doctor of Philo~ophy in
Political Science.

by

Peter Dale Scott

NcGIU UNIVERSITY APRIL, 1955.

 TABLE OF CGN'fi.NTS

PI-ŒFACi; iii

T.S • .liJ...IOT: CUHRICULUL VITAE iv

!NTl'RODUCTION: A PcliSONAL APOLO::ZY 1

1. BACKGROUND: Tl ib LITERARY TRADITION 28

II. IilJlfiJ\NISE : BAilllITT AW.J HU Lht: 60

III. 'l'Ile; YOUNG CRITIC 101

IN. CLASSICISL 135

V. FASCISN 166

VI. ROYALISM 202

VII. LIB.ffiALISH: AN ATTITUDZ 225

VIII. LIBER.ALISh: A DOGMA 265
IX. TOWARDS TOTALI'1'AlUAHISH 298

X. DhlIOCdACY, Rcl..IGIOlT M ·] ) CULTURE 340

XI. CONCLUSIONS 389

BIBLIOGRAPHY 412
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SUPP.Ld-i:i::1;T 427
 PMFACE

l mu~t whole-heartedly thank my ~pervülOr, Professor H.B. Nayo,

presently at the Univer~ity of Alberta, for his extensive assistance

anei encouragement. l should add that l h ..ve profited not least from

his example of patient and friendly forbearance, while l w.s engaged

in the presentot.tion of a viewpoint ~o alien to his own.

l mu~t also thank l-ir. William Jackson, Virectory, Houghton Library,

nill.rvard University, and I,; rs. Theresa Garrett Eliot, for the use of

Harvard 1 s collection of Miot material. Lrs • .iüiot l must thank still

more for the bibliographical items, information, etc., which she so

kindly g ..ve :~e in connection Hith this thesis. Lastly, l llUlst thank

my friends who have so generously helped with typing, numbering, proof-

reading, and in rescuinr, me from the vaga.ries of litY own imae;iniLtion.

 T. S. ELIOT: CURRICULUM VITAE

1888. Born in St. Louis, Mo., the son of Henry Ware

and Charlotte Stearns Eliot.
1905. Graduated from Smith Academy, St. Louis. Entered
Milton Academy, Mass.
1906-09. Stutlied for A.B., Harvard University. An editor
of the Harvard Advocate.
1909-10. Studied for A.M., Harvard Universi ty.
1910-11. At the Sorbonne, Paris, attending the lectures
of Henri Bergson.
1911-14. Graduate student of philoàophy, Harvard University.
Studied metaphysios, psychology, Sanskrit and Pali
(as wel1 as taking boxing lessons in South Boston).
Taught philosophy, 1913-14.
1914-15. Enrol1ed at the University of Marburg Just before
the war. Later at Merton Col1ege, O~ord, where he
studied Aristotle with Joachim. Met Ezra Pound in London.
1915-16. Married Vivienne Haigh. At High Wycombe Grammar
Scho01, taught French, math., history, geography,
drawing, and swimning. tlprufrock" pub1ished (through
Ezra Pound) June, 1915.
1916-17. Taught Highgate School, London. Met manbers of
Bloomsbury Group. Published philosophical reviews
in The Monist and the International Journal of
Ethics, 1916-18.
1917. Entered Lloyds Bank, London. First books published.
Assistant editor of The Egotst, 1917-19.
1922. Founded The Criterion, which he edited until its demise
in 1939. In tirst issue, pub1ished "The Waste Land,"
winning the Q!!! Award and international acclaim.
1925. Resigned as chief of Foreign Information Bureau,
Lloyds, to enter publishing house of Faber and Gwyer
(since 1929, Faber and Faber).
1927. Entered the communion of the Church of England, and
became a British subject.
 NOTE
In bibliographical citations, the following
abbreviations have been used throughout:
E.A.M. EssaIs Ancient and Modern (New York, 1936)
I.C.S. The Idea of a Christian Society (New York, 1940)
N.D.C. Notes towards the Definition of Culture (New York,
1948) See also pp. 365, 366.
S.E. Selected Essays: 1917-1932 (London, 1932)
Second Edition
s.w. The Sacred Wood. Essays on Poetry and Criticism
(Lôndon, 1920)
A.S.G. After Strange Gods. A Pri@.er of Iltl odern Heresy.
(London, 1934)
 INTRODUCTIONl A PERSONAL APOLOOY

UNo one who wiahea to underatand

the operation of social lawa in the
modern world can afford to overlook
the evidence offered by the art •• "
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

"The standard of correctneas 1a not

the same in poetry and politics. N
Aristotle, Poetics

To write a theaia on the political ideas of Abraham Cowley

would, l have diseovered, require far less explanation than the present

work on T. S. Eliot. The man, to begin with, ia alive; thoae who are

aware of his political opinions may feel that these demend immediate

publicity, or else immediate refutation. More aerioua, however, ls

the shifting and almost aatronomical space which aeparatea Eliot and

his associates from the uaual study of political theory in the uni-

vereitiea. When there has been any contact at all between Eliot and

the university traditions of economics, political Icience, and sociology,

l am afraid thia contact has usually taken the form of mutual and rather

condescending attack. But such conflict has only taken place in the

limited zones of common discourse. More diecouraging to the enterprise

of thia theaia has been the apparent gulf of silence, where there

leemed to be lacking even that minimum of understanding which is nec-

essary for diasgreement.

 My natural impulse was to ignore, as far as possible, this

apparent dichotomy between two realms of discourse. But some of Eliotls

most pointed political judgmenta refer to thh very "dissolution of

thought," and the current teaching of the '.ocial .ciences' ii conipic-

UOUi evidence in his do.sler against Liberalism. Thus located in the

very heart of my own subject matter, l have failed to discover the

steady and neutral viewpoint which is the ideal condition of scholar.hip.

Perhaps somewhere was a quiet hilltop from which so much confusion could

be disinterestedly reported; but the confliet leemed to range over all

the available ground. l could find no zone whose neutrality wa. certain

to be mutually respected, no judgment which might not caule offense to

one or both '.ides'. Therefore it eeeme be.t to confeis this failure

at the beginning. If many of my remarks aeem offensive, l aak forgive-

ness; for l do not believe in conflict. And perhapi the bitternesi

and conflict behind my subject matter is no excuse. The final require-

ment of course is humility: to win humility one requires a good deal

more than the intention.

In this fir.t chapter, l have explicitly abandoned all pre-

teniions to the " objectiv1ty ll which ls the tiret criterion of a doctoral

thelie, in the hope of justifying 10 Itrange a title. My tirit apology

must be to T. S. Eliot himself, who is no friend to the notion that

l
1 ideas , can be soaked off, sorted, and arranged in row. on a page, like

lEngland, wrote Eliot in 1918, "has ••• beeome infested with

(ideas) in about the space of time within which Australia has b •• tIL -J
4n,u~bIri with rabbits. In England ideas run wild and pasture -Il~~:i the
emotioDe; instead of thinking with our feelingl (a very different thing)
we corrupt our feelings with ideas; we produce the public, the politioal,
the smotional idea, evading sensation and thought." "In Memory of Henry
Jame.," ~goht, V. 1 (Jan. 1918) pp. 1-2 (p. 2)
rare co1oured stamps in a stamp-collection.

For we know that Eliot'. ambition wa. not the production of 'ideas' but

the activity of thinking, "of intelligence it.elf .wiftly operating the

analysis of sensation to the point of principle and definition.· l

Such activity cannot ea8ily be photographed, even by direct quotation

least of all by the tediou8 machinery of what Eliot has called the
2
"scandal" of an American Ph.D. thesis.

But a more pressing apology is due to those who are unaware,

either that Eliot had any po1itical ideas, or why the opinions of a poet

should be given such extended treatment. l must re-assure such people

(and poaeibly disappoint others) by s~ng that the political implica-

tions of Eliot'. poetry and drama have been wholly ignored in the present

thesis. To abetract even a ·point of view" ia to turn literature into

something elsel a dangerous process, ev en with the most pointed po1iti-

cal mora1isation8.~

The Eliot we attempt to analyse is exclusive1y a writer of

prosel a critic, editorial commentator, and Christian publicist. 4

l S • W., p. 10
2
"Mr. Leacock Serious," New statesman, VII. 17' (Ju1y 29,
1916) p. 405.

~ As for examp1e the "Choruses from the Rock; or the film-

scenario additions to Myrder in the Cathedral. Mr. Dakin has, however,
ana1ysed i !. ·he presence of Irving Babbitt's ideas in the formerl Man
the Measure; an elsay on humanism a8 religion (Princeton, 19'9)

4If anyone i8 unaware of the quantity of Eliot'. prose, they

should know that the 1952 edition of his bibl10graphy cites (in aU)
57 published books, 86 contributions to books, and 568 contributions to
per iodicah -- this Hst being by no means complete. (Donald Gallup.
T. S. Eliot. A Bibliography. (London, 1952).
 '1

True, his earlier writings are for the most part critical essaya which

are political only by implicetion, like the youthful writinge of

Shelley or Matthew Arnold. We shall see, however, how the concern for

culture becomes a concern for politi~s, until by 19;4 Eliot could declarej

Il At the present t ime •••• l am not very interested

in literature, except dramatic literature; and l am
largely interested in eubjects which l do not yet know
very much aboutI theology, politics, economics, and
education. III

This interest produced, besides innumerable article., two

books which (whatever their professed intentions) are clearly essays

in political theory.2 However, these books are easily available, speak

for themselves, and are not yet visible in any coherent perspective of

time. Hence this thesis has concentrated on the periodical writinge

which culminated in these twin volumes, writings which for the most part

are concealed in obscure and almost unremembered little magazine •• '

M~8t important of these are Eliot's contributions to The

Criterion, the literary quarterly and sometime monthly of which he wa.

Editor from 1922 until lts demiee in 19;9. Beginning in 1924, Eliot

l"The Problem of Education," Harvard Advocate, CXXI. l

(Freshman Number 19)4) pp. 11-12 (p. 11)

2The Idea of a Christian Society, (London, 1939) Notes

toward. the Definition of Culture (London, 1948) .

'Were it not for Donald Gallup'a invaluable work, T. S. Eliot,

A Bibliography, and the extensive collection of Eliot materials at the
Houghton Library, Harvard University, the research for the aubject of
this thesis might have proven more costly and unrewaFding than for a
minor pamphleteer of the 17th Century. Apart from Harvard and Yale, l
know of no university library which would begin to heve the necessary
material.
contributed an editorial /lOommentary" to every issue; within five

yeara, the occaaional subjects he brought to notice had come to be

(aa with Matthew Arnold) predominantly political. Spme day, l hope,

these Oommentaries will be anthologized. Despite Eliot'a willingnea.

to indulge in idiosyncrasy, they are as brilliant, and frequently as

perceptive, as any contemporary political observationa l can think of.

They were indeed worthy of the journal in which they appeared, a journal

which justified its intentions of bringing together the best minds of

Europe. As Eliot PQinted out, it wasl~he first periodical in England

to print the worka of such writers as Marcel Prouat, Paul Valéry,

\
Jacques Riviere, Jean Oocteau, Ramon Fernandez, Jacque. Maritain, Oharles

Maurras, Henri Massis, Wilhelm Worringer, Max Scheler, E. R. Ourtiua. Ml

He might have added names of another atripe, such as for example, the

British Marxists A. L. Rowse, J. M. Murry, John Macmurray, Joaeph

Needham and Stephen Spender. When one reada the Oriterion to-day,

the names of so many of ita contributora have achieved popular celebrity,

that it is indeed saddening to think that in its best daya, ita circu-
2
lation could never reach nine hundred.

Many will aak of what aignificance were obaervations ao

little read and 80 deliber~tely cenacular. The inter-war period seethed

with vast, inchoate, and often uncontrollable political movements. It

was a time of Peace petitions and hunger marches; ideologies were

l/1Last Worda,d Oriterion, XVIII. 71 (Jan. 19~9) pp. 269-275

(p. 271) The Oriterion wa. one of a collaborating network of European
reviews, inc1uding Gide's Nouvelle Revue Francaise (unde~ Jacques
Riviere) and the Revista de Occidente _o.f..c!. o.~~ .. .Qr.:t~g.~ ..~ .C!.?B. !i_~t.
2
"A Letter from T. S. Eliot, O. M./I Oatacomb, N.S. 1-
(Summer, 1950) pp. ~67-~68 (p. ~67)
scattered 1n leaflets or broadcaet through loudspeakers; political

rallies could attract a hundred thousand or more. Is it possible that

an audience like the nine hundred namelesa readers of the Oriterion is

itself a symbol of a past era? Many think sOi not a few have suggested

that to seek out and address such an audience was to retreet from the

'reel' political issues of the day, and to indulge in a form of intel-

lectuel withdrawal.

To express su ch opinions is of course to define one'e own

political viewpoint, insofar as one measures the 'importance' of an idea

by the number of supporters it can muater. Traditionally the universi-

ties have been the homes of unpopular ideas; today, however, and not

just in North America, many profes.ors from the 'social science' de-

partmenta of the universities have been loudest in denuncieting Eliot

and his associates for this kind of intellectual withdrawal. Often,

indeed, their misprision of "intellectuals'! seeme to be the fruit of

complete bewilderment. We can sey nothing else for P~~ s or Barbara

Ohartier and her professed contempt for the "soc ia11y immature l! role of

the (sic) "avante guard.· l When she tells ua that Eliot "rejecting

society and the ideal of reform, turned to art for art's sake," one 18

at a loss for a reply.2 That Eliot "rejected" "art for art'a sake"

1
Barbara Ohartier, "The Social Role of the Lit'3rary Elite, Il
Social Forcee, XXIX (Dec. 1950) pp. 179-186 (p. 182-18')

2In an earlier and more enthuaiastic draft of thi. the,il,

an old-fashioned reply euggested itself. It was to point out that
Eliot has alweya !rejected' the ideel of art for art'a sake; and thet
he Iturned toi the need for urgent 80cial reforme But what Eliot
ectual1y saidis self-evident, and will not resolve a difference of
opinion which is far more fundemental.
far more explicitly than Professor Ohartier ie not at thi. point

relevant. Rer objection goea much deeper; ahe attacka a mental atti-

tude which, for exemple, is guilty of poetry that ia difficult to

understand. 1 And the aame objection ia made, with redoubled vigour,

by university political scientists of greater renown, of whom the chief

in England was probably Professor Laski, and in North America, Profeaaor

Las.well. Professor Laaki suggests that merely by turning to a amall

audience rather than a large one, to long-range rather than immediate

problems, to speculative rather than immediately constructive thinking,

Eliot waB guilty of "intellectual treaeonM~ And we suspect that to La.ki,

Eliot' s red lIintellectual treason ll wal to ~uggest that theology cou1d

help us more than'politica1 science' in the understanding of where our

society was going wrong.~ (For the Ohurch like the intellectual, despite

Archbishop Temple'e vigoroue condemnations of capita1ism, ia accused of

avoiding "the Battle ll )

In any case, "the treason of the inte11ectua1s n had become

another catchword which defined the prejudices of those who spoke it.

Origina11y it had been coined by Eliot's associete Benda to reprove the

1ncreasing degree wlth which intellectuals (notably Maurras) were be-

coming involved with the problems of practical politics. By 1940,

lIbido cf. Laaki, Faith Reason and Oivilisation, (London,

1944) p. 105
2Faith, Reaeon and Oivilisation, pp. 10,-106. Prof. Lasswell"
charge of withdrawa1 ie not, as far as l know, directed specifica1ly
against Eliot, but against aU "aesthetes who live in New York but
profees to over1ook Waehington, }..;oscow, or other 'mere1y political'
centers'.· The World Revolution aaQ Our Time, p. 'O.

'The objection of Max Eastman, The Literary Mind (New York,

19,2). Kathleen Nott, The Emperors' Olothes (London, 195')
 D

however, Max Lerner could say with philologieal accuracy,

"what we call treason now ia not the political

aetivity of intellectuals but their withdrawal from
politics and the fact that they were not realistic
enough fighters. 1 1
~

But Eliot's "withdrawal· was hardly the ignoring of contem-

porary political problems -- his Oommentaries discues matters ranging

from the Abyssinien criais to the economic policies of the National

Government. His "withdrawal," l suspect, consisted rather in suggesting

that these immediate problems must be seen in the light of more en-

during, indeed eternal problems. And for those who disagreed, Eliot

was ready (like Maritain) with his own peculiar counter-chargel not

the secular accusation of intellectual treason, but the ecclesiastical

one of heresy.

But from the events of his day, Eliot waa indeed in a sense

more remote. Like Benda, he decried the tendency of the intellectuals,

that amall residual element in society which might possibly show some

independence of mind, to be drawn increasingly into the line-ups of

political parties. This was, in his view, a further symptom of the

intellectual sickness of Europe at that time, of an age when the only

points of view which threatened to survive were the collective, an

age consequently in which truths became catchwords and independent

thinking ceaaed, an age so siok and befuddled by intellectual compromise

lIdeas for the Ice Age, (New York, 1940) p. 15.cf. Archibald
Macleish, IIThe Irresponeiblee,1I Nation, (May 18, 1940)(not June 1)1::
al cited by Lerner). Lerner considera the attempts of Macleish, Lewis
Mumford, Waldo Frank, and others to put part of the blame for the
present chaos on the intelligentsia, as II not wholly without merit.'
 ,

that to the younger intellectual, "the only person we can reapect ia

the extremi_t. u1 Some of this intellectual intransigence was indeed

reflected in Eliot's own earlier political writingsj but in the 19;0'a

his voiee became that of wisdom and moderation, seeking in all problems

the via media. He called for a more enduring basis for our political

judgments and actions than commitment to any purely political program.L

or party. This he sought iD the mutual discipline by each other of our

critical intellect and our humanitarian vnotions. This discipline led

him back not only to philosophy and firet principleaj but ultimately to

an elucidation of our ultimate beliefs about man, nature, and God, in

the form of theology. In other words, one cause of the present criais

in Europe, and a special concern for ita intellectuals, wea the defic-

iency of independent and all-embracing thinking.

So we see why Eliot has been accuaed of futility and with-

drawal, these seme reasons, the seme priority given to thinking and

independence over action and cammitment, ahould .cotch forever the abaurd

charge that Eliot wàs a fa_cist. This charge is e relie of the intel-

lectual barricades of the 19;0's; it would not have justified a whole

chapter of the present theais, had it not been recently revived to

haunt, like a debilitated ghost, the only three booka to be written on

Eliot'a political ideaa. 2

IStephen SpeDder, Forward from Liberali_m, quoted ~~ ~~.F.

1~mlin, OriterioD, XVI, 64 (Apr. 19;7) p. 51;.
2
Albert Mordell, T. S. Eliot's Deficiencies al a Social Oritic,
(Girard, Kan_al, c. 1951); Rossell Hope Robbins, The T. S. Eliot Myth (New
York, 1951);Dr. Erneat Beer, T. S. Eliot und der Anti-liberalilmua de. XX.
Jahrhunderts (Wien, 195;). Mr. Mordell, a literary critio, ie a worthy
disciple of Dr. Haldeman-Juliua and Joseph MoOabe. He ia interesting
for the information that Lancelot Andrewea wes responsible for the burning
of an Arian, and for hia begrudging admiration of Eliot'a mind, Dr. Beer ' ,
etudy, which takes us oDly to 19;4, is chiafly biographical, and welt~ch
~erzlioh. Not hav1ng had the opportunitiee of the Houghton Library OollectioD,
he does not reinforce our myth about German scholarship. Prof. Robbins de-
serves rather more attention, cf. infra, Ohap. V.
Eliot himaelf ia largely responsible for such accuaationsl often he

has proven willing to confuse rather than clarify the issue; he too

heartily enjoye arousing the intolerance of the tolerant, the prejudices

of the open-minded. l Many of hie earlier political writinge were po1emic

against a certain state of mind, in an effort to divest first 'democracy',

and later 'liberalism', from any automatic connotations of value. But

he himse1f averred the danger of attacking terme which had come in the

popular mind to be so closely associated with the western way of life. 2

5imilarly, Eliot affected an anti-humanitarian bias which evokes from

Professor Robbins, and others whose first claim is to be broed-minded,

nothing but strengled wails of outraged Victorien decency. This will

not make him a fascist.

Eliot's abstention or ao-~elled 'withdrawal' from practical

political commitments mean\first of all that he cannot be deacribed as

a member either of the "right" or of the "left." He wall a "tradition-

aliat N only in his coneeiousnese of the past, and of the importance of

preserving for the future, the best of all ages. But thoee who wish

to calI Eliot a conservative, a c1ericalist, a mediaeva1i8t, or a fescist,

will, l suspect, not be placated by the present thesis. It will not be

enough to state that Eliot iB reputed to have voted Labour, or that all

1
"I have no objection to being called a bigot myself," 8ays
Eliot (E.A.M., p. 1'5) as if there were never any need to worry on that
score.

2 11The term demooracy must continue to be used, becauBe it is

sacred to the Britiih mind. 1I "A Oommentary," Oriterion, XVII. 66,
(Oct. 19'7) pp. 81-86. "I ehall have expressed myself very i11 if l give
the impression that l think of Liberaliem ae something simp1yto be re-
jected and extirpeted, as an evi1 for which there ia a simple alterna-
tive. It iB a necessary negative element •••• " I.0.5., p. 14

J
 "

the aboye adjective. (and especially the firet) have been used by Eliot

as terme of approbrium. Such people, often compelled by a quasi-

Marxist analysis, must believe that Eliot'e stated sympathies with the

theories of the 'left' are mere hypocritical pretencej while his affilia-

tions with those of the 'right,' though perverse, are wholly real.

To correct such a perspective, we must point out Eliot's close

affiliations with the Guild Socialist and Ohristian Socialiet offshoots

of the Fabian tradition. Eliot was most closely connected with those

who after 192~ called themselves the "Christendom Group" of "Christian

Sociologists," such as V. A. Demant, M. B. RBekitt, A. J. Penty, and

others of the old Ohurch Socialist League. But these and other ex-
Fabians were also associated to a greater or lese degree with the move-

ment for Oredit Reform, and Eliot was aleo in contact with figures such

ae A. R. Orage. l Such people for exemple ware thoroughly in sympathy

with Gemrge Lansbury when he appealed to the National Governœent in

19~2 in the name of Christianity, to inaugurate the direct consumption

of surplus goods without heeding the fears of the financial interests.

The Labour Party wae indicted by them for its "oapitalism,n in accepting

"the reality and 'secredness' of credit and debt. M2 And like theee

lWhose journal, The New Age, was fram 1906-1922 not only one
of the chief outlet. for the literary avant garde, but also helped en-
gender the Guild Socialist movement and vigorously indicted capitalism
and (the word 1s Orage's) ·profiteering."
The charge that the Social Oredit movement was reactionary or
fa.cist may have gained credibility from the exotic behaviour of some of
its associates. Chiefly, however, l think it must be considered as a pub-
lic defence mechanism on the part of the orthodox Fabians, who otherwise
ran what was for a progressive movement the dangerous risk of appearing
old-fashioned.

~l. B. Reckitt, "Editorialz The Call for a Lead," Christendom,

II. 8 (Dec. 19~2) pp. 24~-248. Reckitt has some interesting information
on the behaviour during this incident of the Times, that "house-organ
of Threadneedle Street."
 ''''''

people, Eliot too indicted capitaliam and plutocracy for the social

and economic dislocations of the inter-war periode Frequently he referred

to the hidden powers of the industrial and financial interests, to the

sham of political without economic freedom, to the urgency of the unem-

ployment and housing problemsj indeed, by the Professor Robbins method

of compiling a acrap-book of quotations, Eliot might almost sound like

sny Labour deputy from Poplsr. 1

Such a picture, of course, would be no less milleading; l wish

only to destroy the stereotype of Eliot as s "rightiat. Il l would aug-

geat that none of the significant developments of 20th Oentury politica1

theory can be placed either to the left or to the right of the libera1

centre. Â:' new claasification 18 neededl too many have found the traverae

from ayndicalism to faschm, from neo-aocialism to Gaullism, a very

short one indeed. (Les extrèmes se touchent, it ie sometimea said, but

this same contiguity ia illustrated among men like the Tory Christian

Socialists, who were not extremists at aIl.) Standing at the gateway

to this century is the problematic figure of Georges Sorel, the anti-

intellectual intellectual, the academician of myth, who was clearly

l~q. infra, pp. \~~ltl0.Similarly, we ahould cite Eliot1e in-

terest in the comparable E.prit movement of Emmanuel Mounier: Christian
News Letter 44 (Aug. 28, 1940) n.p. Eliot was, with J. M. Murry, one
of the amall group invited to addresa Archbishop Templels Malvern Con-
ference of 1941~ he collaborated in, and (with reaervations) approved
the resulting Malvern Declaration. This document attacked the ordering
of industry for profit as "a aource of unemployment at home and dangerou8
competition for markets abroad." "The rights of labour," it continued,
Umust be recognized as in principle equal to thoae of capital in the
control of industry.1I Finally the Declaration questioned "whether a
just form of society can be established ao long aa ownershlp alone ia a
source of income, or so long as the resources necessary to our common
life are privately owned."
 I~

both a revolutionary and a reactionary. No political theorist of his

day has had 8uch a manifold influence. This has been most noticeable

over popular movements Bueh as revolutionary syndicalism and Mussolini

Fascism. But there have also been the isolated intellectuals who have

followed hh "revolutionary and reactionary" exemple, such as Oharles

Maurras, T. E. Hulme, and (explicitly) T. S. Eliot. Their common

objective has been the decomposition of the 'liberal democratic' state of

mind, or prejudice, which sees all theoretical choiees in terme of

'progressa and inertia, of 'left' and 'right'.

It is not fitting that one in my position should ask whether

this state of mind, sa alien to Eliot's, actually prevails among the

'social science' departments of the universities. But some explanation

must be found for the vexing phenomenon which originally prompted this

thesis: namely, the apparent 'university perspective' towards contempor-

ary politieal theory. It is understandable that public men, and those

most closely associated with the universities, should receive the

eloseat attention. But it ls the custom of most eontemporary histories

of political the ory to close with an amiable and non-objective chapter

on 'literary' theorists: here, invariably, the authors whoae view8

Eliot most despised (sueh as H. B. Wells or Julian Huxley) tend to be

given sympathetic attentionj while the erities he most admired (aueh a8

Irving Babbitt or T. E. Hulme) have been either briefly dismissed, or

(in nearly all cases) wholly ignored. l 'There 8eems, in short, to be a

Lprof. Lewis Roekow, for exemple, who has his own weakness for lit-
erary tropes, turns to the study of IIthose who have plumbed "the deepa of
human woe." Yet his approval falls exelusively on those who played hide-end-
seek with the idee of Progressl "We have selected Galsworthy, Shaw, Bennett
and Wells as the outstanding representatives of contemporary English litera-
ture." Oontemporary Political Thought in Englend, (London, 192,3) p. 260. l
must add, that the politieal writings of many men whom Eliot admired, such as
A. R. Orage or IIThierry Maulnier ll (Jacques Talagrand) will for one or another
reason not be found in most university libraries of North America. The politi-
cal writings of others (auch as Irving Babbitt or T. E. Hulme) are better repre-
sented, but in the English or Philosophy shelves, seldom in the section of
politieal theory.
 \~

whole second tradition of political thought, one almost out of sight

and sound from the present university one. The second tradition believe.

itself to be of necessity unpopular. It considers that in political

the ory the independent individual actlvity of thinking is a good deal

rarer, yet just as important (in political theory as elsewhere) as the

social accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge, we are always told, in-

creases absolutely from generation to generationj in knowledge lies the

liberal hope of progresse Yet intelligence, wisdam, and culture begin

from nothing in each new generation; we are indeed fortunate if we can

keep up our communications with the pest and future, and do as weIl in

our own time as the best that has been done before.

To talk in this way, in other words, ia to approve the labours

of Matthew Arnold, who energetice11y and aoliterily defended the politi-

cal theories of the "man of culture" against the attacks of the "men

of science," reformera, Benthamites, Oomtians,IJacobins l , and a1l the

1
other species of Philistine. One might go back even further, and say

that it is to defend what Mill called the "eJleridgean" or speculative

2
tradition again.t the complacent ignorance of Benthamism. But a good

lArnold, Oulture and Anarchy, ed. F. Dover Wilson,pp. '9-40,

6,.s. For the eake of making a point clear, l shall suggest that any
Ihistory of political theoryl ie suffering fram a serious limitation of
perspective if it does not recognize Oulture and Anarchy as one of the
most important political texts of the19th Oentury.

2Arnold, we remember, declared that he wai "delivered from

the bondage of Bentham," when he discovered Bentham's dictum in the
Deontology that "SocRates and Plato were talking nonsense." op.cit.,
pp. 67-68.
Yet l am sure that Bentham l • opinion has never been so wide-
spread as it is in the universities to-day.
deal has happened to the 1 speculative' tradition since Ooleridgels time.

Each of the great humanistic disciplines seem to have suffered in turn

from a failure of nerve: they begin (as synthetic) by offering truths

to the rest of the world, they end (as analytic) by annihilating their

OWD. To-day metaphysics has still not recovered from her great crise de

foi, and her voice ia almost silent. Ethics for a while survived her

older sister; but we hear from the younger dona at Oxford that she will

be finally disposed of within twenty years.

The paradox of 8uch a situation is that the voiee of certainty,

as it i8 driven out of the older and simpler subjects of speculative

study, retreate backwarde into the newer, more eubtle, and more problematic.

Today, our only defence against the anti-intellectual tendenoies of

"a bsolute relativism" seems to lie in fields whose material is most

intractable and where speculative treatment ia most recent: such as aesth-

etifs or literary criticism. If one takea an Ethics course, one can no

longer know whether or not it ie wrong to kill onele grandmother, be-

cause the Eskimos do it. The peak of speculative certainty to-day ie

reached in our absolute knowledge that Pope wrote better poetry than
l
Ohurchill.

It has been necessary to digress on this decay of the eynthetic

speculative activity. For in political theory towards the end of the

19th Oentury, old-fashioned philosophies were being dieplaced by

lThis inverse order of intellectuel certainty is most explicit

among French critics. To Oherles Maurras, our appreciation of claisical
authors ~shows that criticism doee not vary as cults and manners vary."
'Prologue to an Eesay on Oriticiem," translated by T .• S~ "El.i~:t, ërl:tetion.VII.l
'Jan. 1928) pp. 5-15 (p. 13)
Weltanschauungen. The diainterested speculatives who chose to write

in this field were less and less systematic philosophera like Green or

Bosanquet. With the exception of the Neo-Thomist tradition of Maritain,

nearly all of the • philosophera' with whom Eliot can have significant

discouree, were in their origin either aesthetic philosophera like

Bergson and Croce, or else literary critics. Arnold, Ste. Beuve,

,
Brunetiere, Maurras, Irving Babb1tt, Paul Elmer More, Henri Massis,

Julien Benda, Wyndham Lewis, Dandieu, these are only a few of those whose

intellectual convictions were powerful enough to campel them from lit-

erature and its criticism into politicel theory. In other words, when

we attempt to describe the gulf between the circle of Eliot's friends

and enemies on the one hand, and the university theorists on the other,

it will not do to distinguish simply between what we might crudely call

the Speculative and the Practical Traditions, the Coleridgeans and the

Benthamites. Green, Hobhouse, and Heldan~ were among the greetest of the

last liberal speculatives: they are familier points de repère to Prof.

Leski, but Eliot writes as if he had never heard of them. Eliot's tradi-

tion is still more isolated and unpopular, as well as difficult to under-

stand. We shall cell it the Critical Tradition, and suggest that with

the critical attitude the syatematizing or scientific mind often seeme

to draw only a blank.

Fortunately, we need not conclude that an intellectual tradi-

tion has been wholly alienated from the English-speaking Universities.

Deapite the acerbities of the 19,0's which pervade our subjeot, we still

dwell in aD atmosphere of good will. We are more united than, say,

France, with its Revolution and its Freemasonry, where the Maurraesians

and the universities were in open conflict: When, in 1905, the former

attempted to celebrate the centenary of Fustel de Coulanges, only their

traditional violence could deal with the legal prohibitions engineered

l
by the official revolutionery historiens.

Œn his early days, indeed, Eliot often sounded as if all

that Arnold had fought for was finished. We hear an almost Nietszchean

note of isolation: IIThe aristocracy of culture has abdicated before the

demagogy of science. H2 And even at an older age, when he faced the world

with greater equenimity, he still seems to accept that British Universitie.

shared the prejudices of Prof. Monod in the Bagarre de Fustel.~ Professor

Laski for exemple appeared to be just as prejudiced to Eliot as Eliot

eeemed Ireactionaryl to Professor Laski. La'kils Il:tntroduction to PoU-

~" was, Eliot Buggested,

II perhaps only an introduction to one kind of

politice; and that kind simply a development of the
old-fashioned American conception of democracy. This
view ie assumed, not defended. For he says straight out,
dlNo state will realize the end for which it exista
unless it is a democracy based upon universal suffrage
in which there are not only freedom of speech and associa-
tion, but also a recognition that neither race nor creed,
birth nor property, shall be a barrier against the exercise
of civic righta. 1
IIS uc h a sentence merely provokes a fresh explosion
of questions. For what end does the state exist? And

l
vd. Charles Maurras, La Bagarre de Fustel.

'nIt is refreshing, certainly, to meet a Bt., M.A. (Oxon),

Bainville, and Gaxotte." liA Commentary,1I Criterion, XIII.

pp. 624-6~0 (p. 628)
5'
F. R. Hist. Soc ••••• who is acquainted with the work of Maurras, Benoist,
(July, 19~4)
 IT

why ahould not race, creed, birth and property, any one
or more of them, be a desirable barrier? And what are
chic rights? It ie just the.e questions which we want
answered in an 'introduction to politica' i and we
must admit that there is more than one possible answer
to all of them. And some such aasumption is apt to
turn up just when needed, throughout Mr. Laski's essaye
'Historical research', he says, 'has shattered all 1
.ystems which claim to operate under theological sanctions'.
not practice, you observe, but 'historical research' -- this
bombshell against theocracy was flung from a window of the
London School of Economics. 1I2

l quote extensively from Eliot's attack on Laski, becauae

Laski typified for Eliot a state of mind that was far more widespread

in the universities, permeating even the views of such a cultured con-

stitutionalist 8S Professor Abbott Lawrence Lowell&

"At the American University at which l was partly

'educated' there used to be a course of lectures
called 'Government l': and thie 'course' gave one
just such a view of how governments were meant to
work, if they worked at aIl, ae Mr. La_ki's essay.·~

One observes here the wide agreement between Eliot and Laski

on the conditions of their disagreement. The conflict between the 'man

of culture' and the 'man of science' becomea also a conflict between

thoee who would criticize, and those who would assert on faith, the

basic assumptionsof liberal democracy. But Eliot dosa not (aa ia

sometimes assumed) accept Laski'e challenge that the empirical and

scientific approach must necessarily displace the religious. If one

1 cf. infra, p.~'i5.

211A Commentary," Criterion, XI. 42 (Oct. 19,1) pp. 65-72

(pp. 66-67)

~loc. cit., p. 68. Such a view, in the depreasion years,

seemed rather out of datee IIMr. Laski's account (h) as useful
aa a catalogue of spare parts for a motor car whlch ia no longer
manufactured. 1I
 "

reads his unpub1ished doctoral dissertation, one will understand his

contention that the scientific investigation of particu1ars can have no

baarings on ultimate matters of faith. Quite right1y, l think, he has

refused to be drawn into conflict with minds 1ikeMiss Nottls, for whom

there is an "a bso1ute contradiction" between a "theological world-view"

(something which apparent1y cannot be revived anyway) and the "scientific

1
approach. 1I

Similarly, his ear1y condescension towards subjects 1ike "tr~~

k"co .... " Q.' 2
American science - " socio10gy, Il waned with the realization that our

social prob1ems required profound analysia and etudy. If he argued

against the political science that was being taught in the universities,

it was only when that Iscience l presumed to dictate lobjective l answera

to problems which were rea1ly matters of choice; or when it denied

that the collection of empirica1 data could only be ancillary to the

operations of human wisdom.

"Wisdom seems to be a commodity 1e6s and les.

avai1ab1e in educational institutions; for the methods
and idea1s coming into vogue in modern education,

1
Kathleen Nott, The Emperorls Olothes (London, 195;), p. 58
cf. especially "Mr. Eliot 1 s Liberal Worms Il and "Mr. Hulme 1 iii Sloppy
Dregs. Il Miss Nott promises to devastate the IITvo Truths Theory; Il in
the end, however, she only borrows a hundred thalers from Kant and dia-
proves the onto1ogical argume(~t aIl over again. Meanwhile, she has
somehow 1inked Eliot with the attempts of Eddington and others to dis-
coyer God through eosmology; she shou1d have read "Thoughts after Lambeth,"
S.E., p. ;61,,0V' "R• .),~'." Q.... cl Sc\e"ce:' l.·,~ ..t! .... 'JlL \{,'1 CM<l".1.3.\G'31.) pp .4'2.S-CnQ (p .<nq).
2 "c. rQ.w...,,,... _"'1 "Vk:.,C," C~i+n;o"'. \J. 1 t'TQ.", , \C\1.'1) pp 12.1-1'1 ... (p.l'2'.4)
 scientific specialization on the one hand, and a treat-
ment of humanities either as a kind of paeudo-science or
aa superficial culture, are not calculated to cultivate a
disposition towards wisdom; something which, certainly,
educational institutions cannot teach, because it cannot
be learnt in the time or wholly in such surroundings, but
which they can teach us to desire, which they can teach
us to go about acquiring. The modern world separates
the intellect and the emotions. What can be reduced to
a science, in its narrow conception of 'science,' whatever
can be handled by sharpness of wit mastering i limited and
technical material, it respectsi the rest may be a waste
of uncontrolled behaviour and immature emotlon. I wish
that the classical conception of wisdom might be restoreà,
10 that we might not be left wholly to the political
scientist on the one hand, or the demagogue on the other.
For the ordinary politician, wisdom is identified with
expediency, for the political scientist it disappears in
theorYi but wisdom, including political wisdom, can neither be
abstracted to a science, nor reduced to a dodge; nor can you
supply it by forming a commit tee composed of scientiste
and dodgers in equal numbers. And human wisdom, I add
finally, cannot be separated from divine wisdom without
tending to become merely worldly wisdom, 6S vain as folly
itself .111

l suspect that such remarks seemed wholly beyond contention

to"~b.e audience which heard them (The Anglo-Catholic Summer School of

Sociology); but it has been my mlsfortune to discover few political

scientists who would give this approach even a measure of respect.

This utter dichotomy between contemporaneous climates of opinion does

not, l repeat, seem to be necessarYj but it ls hard not to believe that

it existe. If 80, it goes without saying that this thesis will 'satisfy'

neither 'party'. Its modest purpose is to fall between two alien tra-

dit ions each of which assumes a different background of knowledge and

scale of values. Its modest ........J.;. '.. .~a~R3J.m.....M~dQ~ hope iB that

~\S
some day through other such labours'Adichotomy may be bridged.

lllCathol1cism and International Order," E.A.M., pp. 120-121

Later we shall llsten to Eliot attack the universltieé for fai1ing to
malntain the traditional c1assica1 and re1igious background to an Art.
education.
 ~,

l must confess that l personally find the paragraph just quoted

(which except for its final sentence merely reflects the admonitions

of Arnold and Babbitt) carries sufficient warrant for a serioue examina-

tion of T. S. Eliot1s political ideas. But such idees, l am reminded by

Arnold, ere elways unpopular, and bound to be held by a minority. Never-

theless, they should be examined end discussed, even by those who see

no reason why such a minority should command any special respect. The

politicel ideas of T. S. Eliot may or may not be some dsy digested by

the universities~ but they had an indisputable fascination for the inter-

wsr intelligentsia.

In this thesis, l intend by the term "intellectuals" that

apparently growing clsss of people who sot primarily for certain ideas,

however crackpot; l do not mean the much larger class, including the

professoriat and the fourth estate, who produce or distribute certain

ideas for social consumption. The political importance of the intellectuel

class would appear to have increased steadily in European history aince

the Renaissance, especially in the history of revolutionary movements.

Perhaps not since the old Crusades has there been a phenomenon (so baffling

to the Materialist Oonception of History) like the International Brigade

which fought in Spain. Throughout the inter-wsr period, the intrigues

and by-play of the 'politellectuals l form a resonant fantasy, of confused

alaruma and changes, sounding over an eternal obligato. In England, one

great movement of this symphony (or cacophony) has yet to be recorded.

Within this movement are many themea, only partly reconciled.

 ....

At the beginning we hear of Diatributism and of Industrial Guilda. Soon

the tune ia of credit reform and the Kibbo Kift Kindred, of Scottish

nationalism, Neo-Oorporatiam, the Workere' Art League, the revival of

agriculture, anti-rearmament, the Greenshirts, the League of the King-

dom of God and the avant-garde of the Leisure State. l At ita edges,

thh movement mergea with the waves of Liberal1sm which had prec:.edèd~

it, and which turned now, almost in despair, to Marxism, to pacifism, ta

the Spanish Oivil War, or to all at once. Nevertheless, it can be to

some extent iaolated as a aingle phenomenon, nameless,inchoate, but

always aelf-sustaining~ Oertain namel recur throughout, though not at

equal levels. There are the active politellectuala like O. M. Grieve

(UHugh MacDiarmid Il) and John Hargrave. There are theorists like

Hilderic Ooulens, J. M. Murry, Max Plowman, O. E. M. Bechhofer Roberts, ·

the Ohandos Group, W. T. Symons, and Philip Mairet. At their head are

figures worthy of more serious study, ex-Fabians like A. R. Orage, A. J.

Penty, M. B. Reckitt, and V. A. Demant.

Such a history, though it is not written, would provide the

best contemporary background to Eliot'e political ideas. The,best writ-

ings of Penty and Demant, emerging above the general noiae, found their

way into the quiet pages of the Oriterion. But it would be foolish to

link that journal too clasely with the causes of Guild arganization,

monetary reform, or even Ohristian .oeiology. For the nine hundred

readers of the Oriterian, whaever theyllV'e, were not the politellectuala.

lIn the hope that a comprehensive history of this phaseaf

the 'politelligentaia' may some day be written, l have appended a
preliminary and tentative bibliography.
They were a much smaller group; the articles they read dealt with a

far longer perspective of time.

Here it is perhape best to follow Eliot, and distinguish

the "underworld of the intellectuals'I from the 1I0varworld of latters ."1

This latter group is smaller still -- a good deal smaller from Eliot1e

point of view, eince he would apparently excluda aIl those authors whose

concern ie rather for markets than for words. It was in thie group that

Eliot'e political ideas had authority and significance, Bnd the group

is not a large one. But a much larger audience than that of the Oriterion

listened eagerly for hie dry pronunciamentos: his Waste Land alone, we

remember, has been described by someone as' a IIbattle-hymn of the post-

war intellectual republic. n2 We need not view the liT. S. Eliot Myth"

with the fear and dismay of Professor Robbins, in order to see that

Eliot has inepirad a speciee of belief among younger intellectuals, and

won a reepect which i8 rarely accorded to authors in their own day.

It cannot of course be demonetrated that the intellectuals are

of much importance to Europeen political theory to-dey. Increaeingly,

UlCV\. rf
however, as our religion wanee, the cause we live for, ... the wars we

fight, 1s iubeumed under the name of our "civilization," our "culture,"

or our "human achievemente." To many the significant achievements of

our civilization are those which are "scientific" rather than narrowly

lUA Oommentary," Oriterion III. 9 (Oct. 1924) pp. 1-5 (p. ~).
The "overworld of lettere," to which Eliot can so much more profitably
be compared, will be diecussed in the next chapter.

2R• E. G. George deecribei Eliot as "the idol of a generation

who8e etandards were revolutionary." "The Return of the Native,"
Bookman, LXXV., 5 (Sept. 19~2) pp. 42,-4,1 (p. 42,.)
Uc~ltural.· l believe, however, that a greater number are beginning

to attach importance to that "rare, difficult, and precious thing, Il

which Arnold 100 years ago iaw threatened by an oncoming wave of

vulgarity.l 1I0 ulture" to-day is diecuesed and planned by Ministriee,

International Organizations, iocial scientiste, and men of lattera alike.

It is a iubject on which Eliot, it will be conceded, can speak with some

authority. And it aeems to be recognizad that the needs of "culture"

and the ideals of "democracyll are not always harmonious, and need some

kind of mutual adjustment. l think it is in the fields of religion,

education, and culture, ae they relate to the atated objectives of our

IIdemocraciei,1I that Eliot must be listened to moat seriously; and it ia

with these questions that our theeis finally ends.

Meanwhile, however, we must examine his critique of our own

civilization, and more specifically his critique of "Liberaliem." This

analysie, needless to say, will return to the problems of this introduction:

to the modern worldls separation of the intellect and the emotions, and

to the "dissolution of thought" whereby Eliot and the political ecientist

can now hardly hear each other. The pragmatist may grow impatient with

so much emphaeis on the errore of a etate of mind, and 80 little concen-

tration on matters of practical reform. But it will not be difficult to

show that the "mind l1 of Europe was disturbed; and here, if nowhere else,

the application of "intelligence" may help us. The doubta cast on the

future of our civilizetion by the "men of culture" in the 19th Century,

have since become a commonplece, aven among the politicel thaorists

lArnold, Lettera, 1. 4
 · l
of the universities. Eliot 1s often associated with these predictions

of a new Dark Age, but for the last twenty-five years his voice has spoken

against the growing fataliam and defeatism of the period, and attempted to

talk on lI t. he possible points of immediate action, as well as on first

principlea. 2

In this theais l may seem to have attached too much importance

to the qualities of erudition, wiadom, and native intelligence. Cer-

tainly, they are not what makes the world go round. But l do confesa

that in respect to these qualities, the political milieu of T. S. Eliot

and his aS90ciates has alwaya appeared to me to be inconteatably superior,

superior in fact to the worka of any contemporary aaaigned for reading

through my entire oollege career. Indeed, it was easy at the age of

twenty-four to feel like a Hegelian hero of thought. If the error was

not wholly one 1 s own,then it wu tempting to find personal solaoe in

Eliot'e bitter assuranoes that it was our civilization (suffering from

a Liberal atate of mind) that was falling apart at the seams.

1 .
Three isolated quotations make only the barest sketoh of a
pattern, viz.: 1) "We conclude our review in no spirit of pesaimism
about the state of our society. If it be true that periods of social
dissolution are preceded by cynical opportun1sm and the ebaence of
coherent faiths, then our civilization ia not in danger of impending
dissolution. Il Prof. Lewis Rockow, Contemporary Po1itica1 Thought in
England (New York, 192) p. 294.
2) urs Oivi11zation to-dayin decadence before an oncoming
Dark Age1 Or ia it et some turn in the spiral cycle?" Prof. Geor ~ e
Catlin, St or of the Po1itical Philoso hers, (New York, 19)9) p.14g
, IIIt requires no great .eer or prophet to discern tc-day
the signs of decadence that are everywhere manife.t. Only the most stub-
born and obtuse would venture optimistic predictions for the future of
the world and its civilization." Prof. J. H. Hal1owel1, Main Currents
in Modern Political Thought, (New York, 1950) p. 521

2e. g. E.A.M., p. 1,8

 2.,

But even if one becomes convinced that, with idees as with

all else, the best is always the rarest, one need not necesserily share

the sentiment of gloomy isolation which has depreseed so many contemp-

orary intellectuels, notably Paul Valéry. That the Criterion will never

be widely read, l now have no further doubt. l Its exemple of intelli-

gence will endure; but its observations are not of the order which filter

throu~h an entire culture, like smog, with appropriate time-lag. Like

the other magazines to which Eliot usually contributed, its function is

fulfilled even when ite audience ie very small. At the seme time, it

now seems more clear to me that erudition has its own limitations and

dangers, that a brilliant prose style like Eliot 1 s is too easily avail-

able for any idea, including even the capricious and absurd, that in-

telligence, finally, can look after iteelf, but, by itself, is never

enough.

All of thie muet be said clearly. The thesis may seem to show

a enobisml0f intellect; however, l would ask that these intellectual

criteria he applied only to those whose own pretensions are intellectual.

One mi~ht conclude that to believe in the value of this research was to

cast aspersions upon all contemporary political the ory that i8 taught in

the univereities. That ie a conclusion l wish to guard againet. l do not

wish to euggeet that a teacher like Harold Laeki has not his own claims

lIt will never be widely reada that ie not to deny that it

will eome day be more widely renowned than now. Hietory adjuete Buet
delicate mattere in her own time; and it ie the intellectuals, after
all, who have the longest memory. Fox had a large audience; he has
ceded to Paine, . .l'ith a more intelligent one. And nO"l the politicel
theorist must deal with altogether new names, like Schlegel, Novalis,
Ooleridge, which riae more and more steadily into view.
 11

to intelligence; the best of Laski's work lies in fields outside our

present subject. This thesis need not resolve the merits of the "men

of science" and the "men of culture." Yet l do think that somehow time

should be found for the further study of the latter theorists as well:

notably Babbitt, Hulme, and Eliot. The lends' of our society, the

problems of 'culture', seem to be problems of the present and still more

of the future; perhaps they are even the problems with which 'intelligence'

should be most vitally concerned. It is here that the views of Profes-

sors Laski and Lasswell concerning our "civilization" should not be

allowed a monopoly, even if we see no good reason why they should not

be "Indexed," or burned.
 CHAPTER l

BACKGROUND 1 THE LITERARY TRADITION

"Who would go to a learned theologian, as

auch, in a practical religious difficultyj
to a system of aeathetic for suggeationa
on the handling of an artiatic themej ••••
to a political philosopher in practical
politics'l"
F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studiea

T. S. Eliot1s political ideas may at the outset aeem almost

as inaccessible as a high mountain of the Himalayas, especially to a

dweller in the warmer plains of what Eliot has called 'liberalism'.

We may have to cover much ground before we gain even the dimmest of

perspectives. In the distance all things seem one, even Itradition-

alists' and 'authoritarians'. But we feel that Professor Robert

Hutchins is rather too far from his subject when he tells us that
~cl
"in po1itics~(.Eliot is ta..~: direct deacendant ofl'.BurkejM1 to aee these

two authors in line, one must cross over the vaney to another look-out

point, that of Tom Paine. Professor Coker has looked harder, and given

us a glimpae of the uncharted zone -- but only behind the shoulders of

more close-at-hand American criticB of liberalisma Reinhold Niebuhr,

2
Professor Hallowell, and Professor de Grazia. True, this is to stand

1R• M. Hutchins, liT. S. Eliot on Education," Measure, I. 1

(Winter, 1950) pp. 1-8 (p. 7). Frosini underlines the futility of
comparing two authors who differed so violently on everything from the
ro1e of reason to the relation of church and etate. (Vittorio Frosini,
IIChiesa e Stato nel Pensiero di T. S. Eliot," Occidente, Rivista Bimestra1e
di Studi Politici, VIII. 3-4 (l<iay-August 1952) pp. 191-224 (p. 197)

211Some Present-Day Critics of Liberalism, Il American Political

Science Review, XLVII. l (Mar. 1953) pp. 1-27. Prof. Coker, un1ike Prof.
Spitz, has the liberal virtue of faithful and dispassionate analysia.
But one wonders about this catalogue of Eliot among the "theorists,"
whether Coker does not still share the aseumption of Prof. Sorokin, that
(next page)
a good deal closer than Professor Spitz, who draws for us, with pains-

taking care, a map of analogies between Eliot and Bishop Sheen. l

But none of this will do if we wish to learn more about our author than

that he criticized democracy, or had word" to say about "the ideas of

authority, of hierarchy, of discipline and order. u2 Ve must draw closer.

And speaking for a moment as if l knew all the secrets of the Mountains,

l would suggest that the liberal who enters this region will catch his

first glimpse of the tall grey mountain over the greener slopes of the

writings of Matthew Arnold.'

Throughout this chapter, throughout this entire thesis, will

pervade the echoes of what Lionel Trilling has well described as Eliot's

(footnote continued)
all ideas, being 'objective', can be sorted, like suita, into appropriate
public shapes and sizes. Elaewhere Prof. Coker has reported of Eliot
and Babbitt: liNo systematic resume of the political doctrines of this
group of critics can be given. The writers do not attempt to set forth
their ideas in any logically articulated form." (Recent Political Thought,
p. J95) Perhaps he might have taken his own warning more seriously. It
might even be asked whether, in admitting this impasse, the would-be
Isy&Jtematiser" does not remind us of the modern neurologist: who, as
long as he pricks and teases the lower surfaces of the brain, can induce
all manner of delightful reactions, but who meets an area of zero re&Jponse
as he approaches the myeterious zone of the intelligence.

lDavid Spitz, Patterns of Anti-Democratic Thought, (New York,

195') pp. 196-197. Prof. Spitz is, l th1nk, what Eliot would call a
'radical'; unlike Prof. Coker, he shows a very clear and present knowledge
of what constitutes 'democratic', as well as 'anti-democratic' thought.

2E • A•M., p. 122

~ot mentioned by Frosini, who writes as a C~tholic rather

than a liberal, and reaches his mountain by the way of Thibet. Frosini
compares Eliot to the 19th Century Italian dramatist Manzoni. (lac. cit.
p. 22')
"l ong if recalcitrant discipleship to Matthew Arnold." 1 The liberal

of course will be chiefly aware of their common attacks on individualism,

laisser-faire, and utilitarianism, in which the language of Eliot

often closely echoea that of Culture and Anarchy. But the true common

element between Eliot and Arnold ia at once greater and less than this.

We are reminded by Professora Barker and Gettell that the slogans of

the Mancheater School have had short shrift from almost aIl English

llliterary" theorists of the last hundred years, even from authors so

alien to Eliot's sensibilitiea aa Kingsley or Carlyle. 2 It ia eaay

to generalize about "anti-liberal l or lI anti-democratic" thought, and to

suspect ita authors of violence against a way of life we love. But it is

important to remember that on this darkling plain, the voicea of Arnold

and Eliot emerge as voices of moderation rather than extremism. They

share the same violent discontents against the press, the ministry, the

conduct of electoral campaigne in their day; yet the object of their

attack ie not any eet of institutions, but a state of mind. And before

we return to examine what ia thie analysis of a state of mind, we firat

explore Eliot's more general debt to the 'literary' tradition of poli-

tical the ory over the last hundred and fifty years.

ILionel Tril1ing, "Elements that are Wanted, Il Partisan Review

(Sept.-Oct. 1940) pp. )67-379 (p. 368)

211The great writers of Eng1ish literature during the mid-century ••••

agreed in opposing the anarchy of individualism and laisseE-faire, and
urged the need of guidance at the hands of the wise and of an ordered
and regulated society." R. G. Gettell, History of Politica1 Thought,
(New York, 1924) p.,82. cf. Barker, Political Thought in England 1848-1914
(London, 1915) p. 18)
 The man who firet drew Eliotla attention to the authore of

this tradition seemB to have been his Harvard Professor/lrving Babbitt.

Babbitt seems to have given impetus to Eliotla powerful nisus towards

cosmopolitanism, hia obvious end continuing fascination with Oulture as

a IIpursuit of perfection. 1I i'/hen, like Eliot, Babbitt, or Babbittls

colleague Paul Elmer More, one ia born into an American middle-west home

overshadowed by heavy religiou8 convictions, and Iit.hen such a childhood

is relieved by the remDsnts of 19th Oentury 01assical education, then

one i9 1ikely to find powerfu1 and concurrent reasons for turning to

IIthe best of aIl times and a11 ages." In the case of Eliot, aa with

Ezra Pound, these reasons were powerful enough to keep him across the

8ea. One need herdly add that this early IIpursuit of perfection,"

leading as it did to a divorce from onela native organic community, did

much to ahape Eliotls later religious aa weIl as political thinking.

Babbitt may have been responsible for turning Eliot to the

actua1 writings aa well aa the tradition of Arnold. But the coamopolitan-

ism for which Babbitt etood wae eeaentially French rether than Engliah,

in the anti-Romantic tradition atemming from Arnoldle French counter-

pert, Ste.-Beuve. It waa Babbittls course on the French critica1 tradi-

tion which firet aroused Eliotls intereat in the criticism of Ste.-

Beuve, Bruneti~re, Henri Massis (as UAgathon U ) and Oharles Maurras. 1

But his appetite for their idees wae still further whetted by the year

which he spent in Peris, 1910-1911, as soon as he had received hia

Harvard A.M.
 The "anti-Romantic" tradition of French criticism was, like

the Romantic, notorious for its political implications. It attacked

the influence of Descartes together with that of Rousseau, the rationaliam

of the 18th Oentury no less than the emotionalism of the early 19th.

Both of these were said to exhibit the sarne faith of man in himself, the

same "orgueil personnel et grande estime de soL III What were a. seriea
~

of critical observations in Ste.-Beauve and Bruneti~re became elaborate

systems of anti-Romanticism in the writings of Lasserre, Lema!tre, and

Baron Seilliêre, and the writinga of these two last were still further

systematized in the writinga of Irving Babbitt. It is eaay to see how

Buch literary criticism rapidly became political. To attack the romantic

faith in man was to criticize democracy and the French revolution. To

assert manIa inability either to live without religious authority, or

to create one of hia own, was to re-examine the claims upon us of a

dogmatic Oatholicism, especially when one emphasized the importance of

conformity to t~aditional habit and behaviour. And BO a Brunetière might

base politics upon ethics, and ethics upon theology, and fulfil the

positivism of a Oomte or Renan by an abrupt entry into the Roman Oatholic

Ohurcn. It became possible to be Oatholique. mais non pas croyantl to

participate in Oatholic ritual, not for the aesthetic reasons of the late

romantica, not even, like Bruneti~re, for avowedly positivist or prag-

matist reasons,but because of a vague understanding that in a civilized

community Ohristian belief was of necessity something far more complex

than a liimple affirmation of the hé art..

1Faguet, Quoted in Hugo Friedrich, Das anti-r.omantische Denken

im _odernen Frankreich; (München, 1935). p. l cite Faguet, as he
waB the only important member of this tradition who was politically a
liberal, or religioualy not inclined to Oatholicism.
 The anti-romanticsmllied behind the slogans of civilization,

classicism, intelligence. To the later anti-romantics, less eclectic

than Ste.-Beuve, Icivilization l acquired a more and more definite and

partisan meaning: affirming the traditions of authority, discipline,

moeurs and p'olitesse, attacking the romantic excrescences of spontaneity,

personality, and freedom to follow onels own impulse. Among these critics,

to defend 'civilization l was to uphold traditions which could no longer

be found in the government of the Third Republic. The Dreyfus case saw

many of them organize politically for the first time in the defence of

tradition and authority. After Dreyfus, ta talk of classicism and the

defence of civilizetion came more end more to mean the repudiation of

the existing Idemocratic l government and the campaign for some alternative.

The chief of these figures was Oharles Maurras, who, more than any other,

linked e clessicism in literature, end whet one might call an atheistic

Oatholicism in religion to a royalism in politics.

Oharles Maurras will some day, l suspect, be regarded as one

of the foremost political theorists of this century,emerging head and

shoulders above the whole erew of his catchword-cropping colleagues.

His immoderate violence of thought, his intolerance, his hatred of Jews

and democracy, have hitherto rendered him unsuitable for adequete treat-

ment by our universities; even though none of these quelities continues

to impede the study of Marx (a writer to whom, in many ways, he can be

1
fruitfullyeompared). But his book LIAvenir de 11 intelligence (Paria,

1
For exemple, it may turn out thet our own age has been as
blind to the historie significance of that futile,unpleasant and slightly
ridiculous Action franiaise, 88 the 19th Oentury wa8 to the Firat
International.
1904) was a compe11ing ana1ysis of modern libera1 democracy as a

shield for the unrestrained exercise of real economic power by the in-

dustrial and financial intereats of the nation, triumphing over the

old 1anded classes. Ai the tit1e indicatea, the book attempted to analyse
the future in such a society of the intelligence, or intelligentsia,

borrowing this strange word from the Russian . at least ten years before
1
ita appearance in English. Briefly, he contended that in a bourgeois

society, the intelligentsia had been reduced to the statua of proletarien

wage-earnera, dependent for their 1ivelihood either upon satisfying the

uncritical appetites of a large audience, like Zola; or worse, by being

reduced to journalism and the production to order of propagande for the

bourgeois presa. In any case, the author had lost the ability to

survive by satisfying a sma1l, but critical and cultured audience. The

claes-structure had disappeared which had once given him statua in the

community; in a world where money meant everything, his art tended to

mean nothing. Maurras argued that on1y a united force behind a monarchy

could reatore the balance of power against the bourgeois intereets, and

that only in thia restoration of equilibrium cou1d the future independence

of the intelligentsia be guaranteed. The obscure etrugglee between

parliamentary partiea did nothing to affect the real location of power.

Eliot firet read Maurras in Paris, in 1910, with lasting

effect upon both his criticism and his po1itical thinking. His later

references to Ste.-Beuve and Bru~re (to say nothing of Faguet) have

1Around 1914, through Oonstance Garnett's translations of the

novele of Dostoievski. According to Maurras, the Russian revolutionaries
referred to themselves as le parti de l'intelligence.
 1
been on the whole derogatory; but he has frequently referred to the

informative effect on his thinking of L'Avenir de l'intelligence. 2

From Maurras, moreover, Eliot learned to approve the astringent ob-

servations about human nature and progress, the conjoint argument for

spiritual and political authority, to be found in Bonald and especially

de Maistre.

Thus it would be tempting to seek the origins of Eliot'e

political thought, along with his principles of literary critieism,

in the established tradition of French anti-Romanticism. This thesis

would be confirmed, not weakened, by the admission of Eliot's debt to

other French critics. He refers, for example, to Julien Benda, (himself

a Jew) whose book Belphégor (1919) detected Jewieh origins behind the

primitivism and intuitionism which threatened French civilisation.'

And he refers also to Maritain's Réflexions Bur l'intelligence, another

of the continuing attempts to balance the roles of reason, emotion,

intellect, intuition, and sense, in the civilised sensibility. (~e

IBrunet.ière's thinking shows lia bias, a prejudice, almost to

the point of propaganda." "Criticism in England, Il Athenaeum 4650
(June 1), 1919) pp. 456-457 (p. 457). l drag this quotation out of it.
context to correct the very interesting lecture of Prof. E. M. Tillyard
to the Oxford University Poetry Society, (May 1952) once which traced
Eliot'e anti-romanticism back through Hulme and Babbitt to Brunetière.
This lecture was the inspiration for the present thesis: its value 1ying
rather in its suggestiveness than in its information.
For Brunetiere's influence on Babbitt, see L. J. A. Bondy,
Le classicisme de Ferdinand Brunetière.

2Lettre d'Angleterre. (III)." Nouvelle Revue Franiaise, XI.

122 (Nov. 1, 192;) pp. 619-625.
"The Idea of a Literary Review." Criterion, IV. 1 (Jan. 1926)
pp. 1...6 (p.~)

'A theme, l must make clear, which Eliot nowhere developa,

although he once refers to Marx as a 'Jewish economist', and finds the
seneibilityof Bergson 'not quite French'.
might in this respect have cited Henri Massiri, or Oharles Mauron, both

of whom he translated for the Oriterion.) One need not here review the

web of political connexi~ns and divisions which unite and divide Maurras,

Mas.is, Maritain, Benda, along with other French II reactionaries Il such

as Valéry, whom Eliot admired. The point 19 that all these people were

anti-romantics, denigrators of manls natural rationality and of his

natural sentiments, men who preferred the critical intellect of Pascal

(as re-discovered by Ste.-Beuve and Proudhon ' ) to the shallow rational-

ism and the shallow emotionalism which they ascribed to Descartes and
1
Rousseau. And when we come to treat of the early and important influ-

ence on Eliot of both Babbitt and T. E. Hulme, bath libidinous bor-

rowers from Lema~tre, Seilli~re, and from Pierre Lasserre, then a pat-

tern of genealogical filiation 8eems to be complete.

But how useless such filiations are~ The history of 'ideas'

is, at its best, but the fOBsilized record of the world of thinking.

And even here the genealogical model applies only to those (and they are

of course the majority of writers) whose intellectual parents were only

two or so, end whose inheritence thoroughly outweighed their originelity.

Only then can we indulge, like John Stuert Mill, in such horrible

words as 'Benthamite', or 'Ooleridgeen ' , words which suggest the

classifications of crustacea.

lVd. Henri Messis, "La victoire de Pescal," in Jugements,

Vol. I. The importance of Pascal was cited also by Bergson, and hence
by Sorel and T. E. Hulme. But Bergson never developed like these two
disciples through to the Pascalien idea of dogmatic commitment, to a
supernetural source of veluesjand Eliot came ta attack Bergson, while
neming bath Sorel end Hulme as antecedent 'classicista'
 Eliot was simply too weIl read, too supp1e and continuous a

borrower. We must be content if we can trace a single context, a name,

or even a happy phrase, for (here Eliot and G. D. H. Oole at 1ast agree)

the .ty1e as we1l as the content is the thought of the man. 1

Againet thie anti-Romantic French tradition we must offset

a second pattern of eimi1arity, between Eliot'e po1itical ideas and

those of English authora of the last century. ~aradoxically, such com-

parison is moat ana10gous and fruitful with thoae men of lettera who

are collective1y known to the political theoriits as "organicht&, Il

but whom the less esoteric public usually recognize as Romantics. The

moat arresting analogy is, as has been noted, with Ooleridge, not only

in his moral critique of naked industrialism which was destroying th~

traditions and life of the organtc and hierarchic community; but also

for his relationship ofmetaphysics to religion, the importance of the

Ohurch-state relat1onship, and the effect of th1s pn education. Eliot'.

attack on the English Romantics was chiefly a queation of poetryl its

importance has been exaggerated, and as polemic it is but a pale echo

to that of his French contemporaries. Nor can it conceal the very real

and obvious debt of his literary criticiem to that of the Biographia

Lit~': t'aria (one not yet fully explored): a debt which leada us to ask

et whet age Eliot had read the po1itical writings of Ooleridge.

The &imilarities extend to the bulk of the 'Ooleridgeans' in

the 19th Oentury. (This classification, incidenta11y, includes the great

majority of the 'literary', as opposed to the .cientific or humanitarian,

l~" j ot. i7 • "The

Man of Latters and the Future of Europe,N Sewanee
Review, LIlI. ~ (Summer 1945) pp. ~~~-~42 (p. ~~~) cf. G.D.R. Oole,
Politici and Literature (London, 1929)
 1)

theorists of politica) Eliot'a critique of Liberalism reminde us in

meny ways of Oardinal Newman's, and the debt of Newman to Ooleridge is

not to be forgotten. His remarks about the moral deficiencies of con-

temporary economics recall Ruskin's strictures against the 'dismal

science' (though not Oarlyle's). And his work for a Ohristian common-

wealth, necessitating a redistribution of wealth, power, and leisure, can

even be associated with the Ohristian Socialiem of Frederick Denison

Maurice (though not of Kingsley).

We aIl know that Eliot called himself a classicist; and in

his early days he attributed the exceases of democracy to the excesses

of romanticism. He has frequently acknowledged his interest in de Maistre,

Maurras, and T. E. Hulme; he has never approved the writers of the last

paragraph. l And unlike Babbitt he was not especially interested in what

must have appeared to him a. the rather worldly and Whig Eraetianism of

Burke: a point worth stressing in these modern days of "New Oonserva-

For E~iot sought among English writers, not coneervative, but

Tory antecedents: men whose the ory wes baeed on a rigid principle

concerning Ohurch and State. Under the influence of his friend, the

royeliat critic Charles Whibley, he we. moved for e while to expres8 a

preference for Bolingbroke over Burke, presumably for his atricturea

upon such Whig compromises as 'occasional conformity'. ' But Eliot

lIt ie true, as we ahall see, that he once aaid of economics

that 'we need another Ruskin'. But elaewhere he attacks Ruskin on the
eaay ground of his romantic aspirations concerning the true nature and
possibilitiea of man and society. "Po1itica1 Theorists," Oriterion,
VI. l (Ju1y 1927) pp. 69-7~ (p. 69). liA Oommentary" Oriterion, x. ~8
(Oct. 19~O) pp. 1-4
 ~l

fastened his especial attention upon the ideas and sentiments of

roya1ist England in the mid-17th Century, the time of Bishops John

Bramha1l and Lancelot Andrewes, and above a11 of uChar1es, King and

Martyr. Il A later chapter will suggest that, as Eliotls aoquaintance

with the history of political ideas derived from a philosophical rather

than a historical training, his knowledge concerning what he once ca1led

the Inoble faith l of Divine Right was slight, and misinformed. We hope

to show that Eliot later abandoned the precepte of this Inoble faith l ,

bath in practice and in theory; although he did not cease to draw in-

spiration from the devotional oommunity of Little Gidding and their

monarch.

Thua l have attempted to den ote three distinct groups (or

what Professor Toynbee would calI Istrands ' ) of historica11y local ante-

cedents. There are those writers which he undoubtedly read and was im-

pressed by et an early age: the French Anti-Romantice. There are those

to whioh hie writings exhibit an almost involuntary conformitya the

English Romantios. And there are those whioh his writings apparently

aspire, but fail, to assimilatea the Tory Royalists of the Stuart era.

As we refuse to take seriously Eliot's professions about

Idivine right l , we are left with a pretty paradoxl a man who is heir

to the traditions of Frenoh Anti-Romantlclam end English Romanticism

both at onoe. Indeed, of such marriages are dynasties seourely grown.

But we all know how the conservative Romanticism of de Stael and

1
Chateaubriand triumphed in England; and how the radical Romanticism

'Romanticism was defined by de Musset as "a reactionary move-

ment deting from the Restoration of the Bourbons, a sentimental revival
of medieeval Catholicism u Quoted in Wyndham Lewis, Men Without Art
(London, 19)4) p. 185
of Shelley and Byron triumphed in Francà. The French Romantics were

alienated fram their monarch by the events leading to 18,0; from their

Church by the excommunication of Lamennais. The English romantics,

more fortunate in their monarchs and in their Church, attac~d a statu@

qyp which showed a libertarian, rather than the dogmatic frame of mind.

Thus, the movement which was associated in France with Le G~nie du

Christianisme became in England one of the main sources of the Oxford

Movement. In both countries Romanticism wes in e sence Irevolutionaryl

in that sense associated with the sociel eccentricity of intellectuels.

In England, however, the protest of the Romentics wes directed against

the Middle C1ass Militant of the Industrial Revolution, and the Middle

C1ass Trmumphant of Mancusianism, chi1d-1abour, the Black Country, Mr.

Gradgrind, the who1e empire of that reasonable goddess who with a hidden

hand had drawn smoke and misery over industrial England, and her sister,

immortal Liberty of contract.

In France the capitali~t wes more distinctively financial

then industrial: his stink was that of Panama or of Stavisky, rather

th an the steady belching of Lancashire factory smoke. 1 But in both

countries they furthered ideas of 'civilization' and of 'progresa'

in primarily material terms; and theee terms in both countriee were re-

pulsive, not only to religious but to literary sensibilities. In their

critique of capitalism and of materialism, in the name of older and more

IThis does much to exp1ain the recurrence of anti-Semitism

among French anti-Romantice. Similarly, their openly revolutionary and
violent qualities are to be ascribed to the special course of French
hiatory.
noble ideals of 'civilization l , the English romantic, and the French

anti-Romantic, were baaically at one.

To such people, as to Eliot, the democratic socialists (and

later the Oommunists) appeared basically to accept the capitalist or

economic definitions of human Iwants l , its criteria of the Istandard

of living l • When it came to a choice of ends, rather than a simple

struggle against unwarranted privilege, socialism offered no revolutionj

but was ae Eliot and his aS80ciatea put it, "more capitalistic than

capitalism".

Throughout the laet years of the 19th Oentury (which can be

eaid to have ended in 1914) disgust with capitalism and its secular

philanthropy, and disgust with the liberal democracies which served its

ends so weIl, gained ground among the more intelligent of the intelli-
l
gentsia. It seemed clear that their various arts were not so much

furthered as threatened by the popular conceptions of civilization and

of progressj less and less could the artist derive any value fram hi.

citizenship in Philistia . One could withdraw into a world of lily

maids, tapestries, and hand-carved chairs; one might outrage society

Ifor the sake of art l ; but in the name of art and of culture, one could

not set onele approval to the Iprogressl of industrialism and the mass

lIn England, to be sure, where government institutions had

evolved more organically, capitalism could not be so arbitrarily
associeted with the establishment of liberal democracy as in France.
Perhaps the firet English intellectual who explicitly attacked the
liberal democratic m~ntality, not in the interest of the working class,
but in the interest of civilization, order, and tradition, was T. E. Hulme.
Hia introduction and translation of Sorel's Refle<tlons on Violence
appeared in 1915: an important event for the background of thia thesis.
society. Throughout this period, such intellectuals were socially

isolated. The only other groups whose way of life waB similarly in

immediate danger of decay, were the landed classes, the peasantry, and

the church. And these were in recent tradition the least 'intellectual'

of all classes.

But, as we shall see, the dissent of these minority classes

became more wideBpread end immediate, after the disastrous d~nouement

of the First World War. Talk of decedence succeeded in the newspapers

to talk of progress. Concern for the preservation of our civilization,

or for its overthrow, became a chief talking point of the intellectuals.

And there was Dada, surrealism, Gertrude Stein, to preserve the splendid

isolation of the petit intellectuel, which derived lergely from his

hatred for the petit bourgeois -- son semblable, son fr~re. Among the

English and French literary intelligentsia the idealB of liberal democ-

recy seemed almost universally discredited. It was in BUCh e milieu

that Eliot began to talk of a ·so-called democracy which produces fewer

and fewer individuals," of a "future •••• very likely •••• of the barbarians. u1

It ia easy for the Marxist to comfort himself that such idees

were spread for the defence of d1scredited classes; i.e., were Ifascist l •

And it 1s undoubtedly true thet, on the continent, just as the little

intelligentsia contributed to the rise of totelitarianism, so many indi-

viduals, most notably Maurras, ended by co-operating with a movement

whose ambitions and purposes were to them disgusting. But this fact

cannot establish the identity of fascist theory with that of the

1
cf. infra, p. Il''
 " .~

defenders of civilization and of order; any more than we can identify

Communism with the the ory of Spanish anarchism.

Assuming that, in 1920, many intellectuals had reacted against

liberal democracy; we can still distinguish sharply, in theory, between

those who reacted in the name of culture, and those who reacted in the

name of barbarism,l between les civilisé., and les primitifs. Both

groups concentrated on the obvious deficienciea of the statue quo,

so that they held many catchwords in common, such as tradition, order,

discipline, and ethical leadership. But an Aryan folk-religion of

Wotan-worship is not the same kind of tradition as the poUte manners of

le grand 8i~clel these calI for considerably different manners of

thinking, and hence of behaviour. Nor is the "order" of a well-drilled

and centralized police-state the seme ae that idealized in organic re-

gional communities. Finally, the respect and affiliation demanded by a

Mussolini with his marching battalions, and that of a legitimate chur ch-

going monarch, are as different, in theory, as the 'traditions' which

they claim to represent. It is not merely a question of the different

class-origins and 'cultures' of a Führer and of a monarch. It ie the

difference between using, and affronting, our intelligence; between

participating in, and being determined by, our social environment.

For some classee fine distinctions concerning 'intelligence' would seem

to have little political significance; but, it must be agreed, here

Il say "sharply," but there are a1waye individuals who defy

definitions -- euch as Sorel, and Proudhonian royalists such as Henri
Lagrange.
 .,.,

are the important distinctions in determining the behaviour of the

so-called 'intelligentsia,.l

"Notre age," &laid Benda, "est proprement l'age du po1itique."

In the 19th Oentury we were revo1utionized by industry; to-day, a

perfected etate machinery can more than ever manipulate and control these

new techno1ogical powers. It ie inevitable that our civilization;

including our manners, art, etc., must follow suita more and more it

becomes a political question, what parts of our past are worth preserving,

and for what reasons. 2 We can evaluate the presence of our past in the

form of our traditional morality, in the form of our traditional religion,

and in the form of our traditional culture. The chi1dren of the En-

lightenment still live who believe that we can gradually provide positive

replacementa for a11 three, who believe and are inspired, not by our past,

1
As a symbol of these "equa l and opposite ll reactions against
democracy, we can take the attitude of Thomas Mann, and ofo Oharles Maurras,
towards NiLtzsche. Nietzache loved to stress the opposing values of bar-
barism and of civilization, "the German as oppoeed to the French." This
distinction was taken up by Thomas Mann, whom we can treat as the.most
civilized of the primitives, the most intelligent of the anti-intellectuals.
In his Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (Berlin, 1917) he considered
democracy and liberty to be the French sources of weaknes8 in Germany,
which had been a healthy and great nation until she became politisiert,
constitutionalized. Her greatest enemy was the Zivilisationliterat
who prated continually of such values. One can contrast this fruitfully
with the admiration for Nietzsche which we find in Maurras. But for
Maurras the democracy and liberalism which bedevilled the civilisation
of France were the foreign effusions of a Romantic, and Teutonic, belief
in man. Thus can the proponents of primitivism and of civilization be
compared and opposed.

~o one has done more to make us aware of these choices than

Dr. Mannheim, whose "Planning for Freedom" became a starting point for
discussion by Eliot, Dawson, and The Ohristian Socio1ogists.
but by our future. It ie these people who talk of Eliotls Itradi-

tionalism' and withdrawal.

They must underetand, however, this vital distinction among

those whom they call 'traditionaliste' or 'reactionaries l • There are

those who would limit the encroachments of the central state power

and ite social re-organization by, and for the sake of, an organic

tradition and social order; and there are those who would manipulate

tradition and social order by, and for the sake of social organization
1
and the central state power. Only from failure to understand such a

fundamental antithesis can Eliot be called a fascist. And if we fail

to understand it, we fail to see how deep is Eliotls objection to fas-

cisml "that it ie pagan. Il From the point of view of the specialized

political theorist, it may he difficult to agree that more is at stake

than a difference of 'political theories l • But from the point of view

of an orthodox Christian, the question at issue is the relative primacy

of religion and politics, of our spiritual and of our social life. And

the seme, analogously, is true of the man of letters, concerned for the

preservation of our culture, and not just of certain political institu-

tion ...

lNor is the lencroachment l feared by the former that which

would limit the economic activities of private capital. In our press,
'the encroachments of the state power' are usually referred to in con-
junction with 'the defence of free enterprise ' ; but from the point of
view of thoee who would preserve a traditional social order, such
particular encroachments should in some ways be increased.
 ., ..
1.

More simply, the liberal must distinguish among his critics:

between those 'authoritarians' who believe in the social necessity

of that religion and culture which has created us, and those who believe

in redressing our present deficiency of 'authority', with one of their

l
own creating. Then he will be able to deal with Eliot's main challenge

to liberalism and its attempt to maintain a society without due tradi-

tional authority, and specifically, without due Ohristian authority. The

only possible terminatian of such liberation, Eliot has argued, is in

totali tarianism.

When we come to criticize our society on such a level, we have

advanced considerably beyond the aesthetic objections of the post-war

intelligentsia, yearning for the delights of an old culture or of a new

barbarism. l hope to show a similar development in Eliot's own political

thinking: that what began as a narrowly 'cultural' concern with politics

became more and more fundamental; just as, if you will, his conception of

'c~lture' became more and more universal. To Eliot in 1920, 'culturel

was the concern of that rare persan, the civilized person, the individual;

or what England since 1915 had begun ta calI the 'highbrow,.2 As he

11 say 'Eliot's' here for the sake of simplicity; the criticism

will be found more fully expanded in the writings of Ohristian Sociologists
such as Reckitt and Demant, and in the writings of English Roman Oatholics
such as Ohristopher Dawson.

2To the man of culture, the 'highbrow' should mean only the
man (and l quota the New Statasman) "who prefers good books to bad ones,"
and the bad will always outnumber the goad. To a Laski or Lasswell,
however, the highbrow's 'snobbery' 1s a treason ta democracy. l can
observe only that Eliot helped establish the highbrow's appreciation of
Music Hall variety, through his numerous reviews of such fi~ures, other-
wise unremembered, as Marie Lloyd, Nellie Wallace, or Little Tich.
became more and more definitely associated with the Ohurch, he also

became more and more concerned with the determination of our culture by

our patterns of social and religious organizationj and hence, with poli-

tics. We must go back to these original probleme to understand the whole

orientation of Eliotte political thinking.

For the time being, l have said enough of Eliotte background,

though we must examine, in more detail, the influence of Irving Babbitt

and of T. E. Hulme, of the cultural theories of Matthew Arnold, and of

the philosophy of F. ~. Bradley. But having considered the local determi-

nation of his thinking, we must not forget that there is also the uni-

versal. Eliot is not merely a critic of liberalism; he is also one who

has attempted to reaffirm, in our own day, the importance of the timeless

in religion and philosophy, especially for our political thinking. Like

his teacher, Irving Babbitt, Eliot has given names to the nameless,

and mapped out the position of the infinite, by using a language of

symbols common to Buddhist, Greek, and Ohristian philosophy. And he bas,

implicitly et least, affirmed the importance of this philosophia perennis

for political thinking in our daYI we must understand our daily situa-

tion in the light of these common explorations of our spiritual experience.

l say this lest l be interpreted as heving attempted to sub-

merge Eliotts thinking in that of a class or a tradition, and hence to

make him pert of the past, rather th an of the present. Like any person

who has thought and read enough to write as an individual, the only

tradition by which he can be defined is that of his civilization as a

whole, in both its religious and its secular aspects. And of th1s l am
sure: few men of our generation can claim with Eliot to have been 80

thoroughly, 80 variously well-read, or for this to have sa deeply affected

their whole being. (This universal nature of his personal life, also,

seems ta have been a consequence of his having been born in St. Louis.)

Few men of our generation can claim to have had discourse (with a ISUS-
wi1k
pension of belief and disbeliefl)Aso ~any points of view. And that is

why it is so significant that, as we shall see, he has led us back again

to one. A thorough grounding in modern philosophy has led him back to

Aristotle and to Aquinas, and to the importance of reinterpreting them

for our own time. And so Eliot is no more a Maurrassian than he ia an

Aristoteleanl the problem, as Professor Babbitt used to say, la that of

relating the universal and the particular, "the one and the many.1I Like

Babbitt, he feela that modern society has failed in this respect, leading

to our temporal parochialism, an over-evaluation of the importance of

our own t ime •

My intention has not been ta show Eliot as a Ispokesman l or

Irepresentative' of a tradition or class-interest; but ta present the

social and historic milieu, which we may roughly describe as that of the

post-war European intelligentsia, against which his remarks must be in-

terpreted. Only then will we be able to see which of his remarks were hie
l
own, and which were the commonplaces of the environment in which he moved.

lperhaps this will alao persuade the political theorist that

comparisons with Prof. de Grazia or Bishop Sheen are not really very
helpful.
 ..,

l hope to persuade the reader that many of the opinions with which Eliot

ie most commonly associated, his misgivings about democracy, liberalism,

and contemporary culture, were not, in this sense, Ihis own l •

*******••••
Having said aIl this, l must now endeavour to dissociete Eliot

from what Barker calls the "literaryll tradition of political theory. His

approach to political theory may not be " sc ientific"j but neither, let

is be elearly said, wes it II poetic." Like Jacques Riviére, he considered

poetry da superior emusement •••• an amusement pour distraire les honnêtes

~"1 As part dlf his 1 classicism l , he rebuked J. M.Murry for consid-

ering poetry the deepest philosophy of life, and Paul Elmer More (and

later Arnold) for considering it the deepest criticism of life. 2 There-

fore Eliotls political thinking eschewed the self-consciously "literary"

style of Romantics like Carlyle, Kingsley, or Ruskin. He aspired to be

lt. o.t
critical -- "finding fa ct nowhere and approximation always ...... --; and "the

seme time philosophie -- returning ta the search for first principles.

To be sure, the eritical and the philosophie traditions seem almost con-

tradictory in the way they approach "the mysterious Goddess" Truth.

Therefore we must study the equipoise with which Eliot balances Matthew

Arnold with F. H. Bradley, Irving Babbitt with T. E. Hulme.

18. W., (-2"\<1-:: ~ .\ p. lIi;i .

211Mr. Middleton Murry1a Syntheais" Criterion, VI. 4 (Oct. 1927)

pp. 340-347; S.W., p. 4;; The Use of Poetry, p. Ill. He attributes the
popularity of Nietzsche to his continuing confusion between the proper1y
philosophie and the proper1y poetic. (A Review of) uThe Philosophy of
Nietzsehe ll International Journal of Ethies, XXVI. 3 (Apr. 1916) pp. 426-427.

3cf. infra, p. 5b.

 We must remember that Eliotls treatment of Arnold ia almost
~c..""
continuous ly condescending -- as ~a propagandist for criticism !' ~... _ .: ..; "

th an a critic, a popularizer rather than a creator of ideas. Ml Often,

indeed, it is easier to forgive onels enemiea than onela neighboUTs; and

Eliot had good reaaons not to forgive at all. But in narrowly politlcal

matters, Eliot can only be construed as the heir to the weapons of Arnold,

againat all the dire intellectual forces which threatened the innocence

of the new democracy. Often indeed, when we think we are llstening to

Eliot, (especially the younger Eliot) it 19 Arnold that we really hear.

His attack on the "faith in machinery" of Smith and Ricardo, for exemple,

is only Arnoldls attack on the "faith in machinery" of Mr. Bright: both

faiths are attacked for the seme heresy -- they tempt us ta ignore moral
2
and spiritual problems for the social and mechanical. To the extreme

form of this heresy, Eliot, like Arnold, gives the neme of Jacobinism:

"Yiolent indignation with the past, abstract

systems of renovation applied wholesale, a new doct-
rine drawn up in black and white for elaborating down
to the very smallest details a rational society for the
future."'

To the abatract phrases of the "system-makers," they both oppose the seme

"eternal opponent," culture. And though they both are full of rebukelil

for "the great middle-class Liberalism, Il they are still more worried

l
S.W., p. 1

~liot, "Pol1tical Theorists, Il Oriterion, YI. l (July, 1927)

pp. 69-73 (p. 69). Arnold, Oulture and Anarchy, (Oambridge, 1946)pp. ~~b5

'Arnold, op. cit., pp. 65-66. cf. Eliot, N.D.O., p. 10,. Here
indeed Arnold echoea Burke (as well as Ooleridge); and Eliot quotes him.,l
by the "naw" end "wholly different force," whose note is uof extremity end

never of the mean." For it is to this Unew " force thet the greet and

endurin~ middle-cless Liberalism perpetually threatens to give place. 1

In short, a good deal of what some liberals find so offensive

in Eliotls writings turns out to be the battle of Arnold fought all over

again. It is important to remember, however, that the battle has shifted

ground. The disorder and confusion that Arnold faced wes practical end

immediatej as F. Dover Wilson reminds us in his excellent introduction,

Oulture and Anarchy was inspired by the series of Hyde Park Riots which

led to the Second Act of Reform. Hence we should not be surprised if the
SO~
"clue to~sound order and euthority" which Arnold looked for was likewise

straightforward end immedietel the answer was culture, and culture for
2
aIl. Educate the working-classes and they will behave better: such a

simple remedy needs no apology, for Arnoldls school system has eccomplished

much that it set out to do. When Eliot turns to attack Arnold, and sug-

gests that "culture, after all, is not enough M) it is clear that he is

concerned about more than common sacular decencyj for in no age hes England

behaved so well as in the liberelly-educated present.

The anarchy which Eliot faces might be called "intellectuel"

rether than social, long-range rather than immediate. It is revealed not

by menls behaviour in public meeting-places, but by the Ideologies which

are spoken there,by the explanations which the crowd can or cannot give

1Arnold, op. cit., pp. 62, 6;. Eliot, liA Oommentary," Oriterion
III. 9 (Oct. 1924) pp. 1-5 (p. 4)

2 0p • cit., p. l~
)S.E., p. 449.
for themselves, end the look of vacancy or determination which fills

their eyes. By Buch leaa tangible phenomena, Eliot waa convinced that

we have, in some respecta, gone wrong on first principles; later, in the

increasing violence which led to the Second World War, Eliot saw proof of

this fundamental error in Europels ideological sickness:

tilt does not appear unreasonable to suggest that

if there had been an adequate capital of philosophy
twenty-five years ato, the present catastrophe need
not have occurred."

In the fight againat intellectuel confusion, Arnold, who was

admi ttedly "a plain, unaystematic writer, without a philosophyll2 is not

of much help.~ In fact, in hia confusion of religion and morality,

Arnold has only added to the religious confusion which, according to

Eliot, underliea all our difficulties. When Arnol d 1e goddess of Oulture

begins to prophesy, and tells ua that do~ma ia unimporta.nt to Christ-

ianity, or that religion ie "morality tinged with emotion tl ; then Eliot

turns upon Arnold with still more asperity than he later showed age.inst

Babbitt:

UThe total effect of Arnold 1s philosophy is to

set up Oulture in the place of Religion, and to leave
Religion to be laid waete by the anarchy of feeling. 1I4

lUA Oommentary,1I New English Weekly, XY. 25 (Oct. 5,1939)

pp. 331-332 (p. 331)
2
op. cit., p. 98

~IIWe realise now that Arnold was neither thorough enough, nor
comprehensive enough •••• he failed to ascend to tirst principlesi his
thought lacks the logical rigour of his mester Newman." (liA Oommentary,1I
Oriterion, III. 10 (Jan. 1925) pp. 161-163 (p. 162). cf. S.E., pp. 395~396,
412.
411Arnold and Pater,1I S.E. p. 398. Eliot argues convincingly that
the religions moralism of Arnold had led, not only to the a-religious
humanism of Babbitt, but also the religious aestheticism of Walter Pater.
Later, the ill effects of Literature and Dogma are traced not only to
J. M.Murry but to Julian Hux·cey!
 Hence to the more liquid effusions of Arnold, Eliot preferred

the sharper intellectual weapons of F. H. Bradley, upon whose Critical

Idealism Eliot's own formaI philosophy waB essentially based. l To Eliot,

as a philosopher, it seemed evident (and l do not see how one can disagree)

that Bradley's attack on Mill's Utilitarianism was utterly final, leav-

ing nothing further to be said,

"The Ethieal Studies are not merely a demolition

of the Utilitarian the ory of conduet but an attack upon
the whole Utilitarian mind. For Utilitarianism was, as
every reader of Arnold knows, a great temple in Philistia.
And of this temple Arnold haeked at the ornaments and
cast down the images, and his best phrases remain for
ever gibing and scolding in our memory. But Bradley, in
his philosophieal critique of Utilitarianism, undermined
the foundations. The spiritual descendante of Bentham
have built anew, as they always will; but at least, in
building another temple for the same worship, they have had
to apply a different style of architecture."2

One might conelude thatEliot preferred Bradley's philosophy

for its demonstrably superior intellectual virtuosity, its ability to

win an argument over Bentham or Nill. But this would be unfair to E~iotl

he admires Bradley's philosophy not for the thoroughness and consistency

with whieh it is worked out, but because it "is fundamentally a philosophy

of common sense."; Its best quality lies in its limitations of humility

and wisdom, a wisdom which "consists largely of seepticism and uncynical

disillusion. "4

1
"If the two men fought with the same weapons -- and fundamentally,
in spite of Bradley's assault upon Arnold, for the same causes -- the
weapons of Bradley had behind them a heavier force and a e10aer precision."
"Francis Herbert Bradley," S.E., p. 410.

2'b'd
l:....L.

;loc. cit., p. 416.

4S •E., pp. 411-412

 So it beeomes clear that to the systematie exposition of the

text of Appearance and Reality., Eliot mueh prefers the doubts and hesi-

tations expressed in Bradley's various prefaces. l Eliot might have used

this as a critique of Bradley's philosophy, that Bradley's purportedly

exhaustive disquisition on the nature of thought, knowledge, doubt and

truth, has no plaee in it for its ultimate and most important doubts and

truths. To go so far would be to initiate a much deeper critique of a1l

modern philosophy in its relation to theology. We know that Eliot made

this critique; apparently he does not admit how far it was an attack upon
2
Bradley's own opinioni. But in his early philosophieal writings, he doe.

suggest that I1Bradley's Absolute dissolves at a touch into its consti-

tuents •••• Just as Leibniz's pluralism is ultimately based on faith, so

oradley's universe, actual only in finite centres, is only by an act of

faith unified."' This ultimate faith, he suggests, is ineluctable; 80

that the progress of a later philosophy likeBradley's over an ear1ier

philosophy like Leibniz's is a progress in technical elaboration mere1y.

111Philosophy without wisdom is vain •••• It is easy to unàer-

estimate Hegel, but it ia easy to over2astimate Bradley's debt to
Hegel; in a philosophy like Bradley's the points at which he stops
are always important points." S.E. pp. 416-417

2 cf. for exemple Bradley, Appearance and Reality,p. 4, where

he approves the isolation of philosophie inquiry from the "dogmatic
superstition l1 of orthodox theology.

'"Leibniz's Monads and Bradleyls Finite Oenters," Moniat,

XXVI. 4 (Oct. 1916) pp. 566-576 (pp. 56AtS11)
 3'5

The nisue after Q)\Udt.iQ~ truth cannot philosophically be satisfied.

l

The hints contained in this article are mere shadows of the

ideas in Eliotls monumental but unpublished doctoral dissertation. 2

This thesis refuted, among other things, the flaim of all Idealist philo-

sophy to the possession of Absolute Truthj and yet was received by Professor

Royce as "the work of an expert.") One would wish a chapter, one can find

only a page, to suggest the gulf it describes between appearance and

reality. Explanation, or the relation between these two, is always

a "felt identity," and this "is a fragile and insecure thing. n4 The

function of Il consciousness" in bridging this gulf ia to Eliot a hypo-

statizationj yet we are faced with a necessary "1eap which science

cannot take, and which metaphysicB must take."5 This leap

lloc. cit., p. 576, Bradley1s philosophy is in sorne ways an

advance on Leibniz's. "Its technical excellence is impeccable. It
unquestionably presents clearness where in Leibniz we find confusion.
l am not sure that the ultimate puzzle is any more frankly faced, or that
divine intervention plays any smaller part."
Again, "Mr. Bradley is a much more skilful, a much more fin-
ished philosopher then Leibniz. He has the melencholy grace, the languid
mastery, of the late product. He has expounded one type of philosophy
with such consummate ability that it will probably not survive him.
In Leibniz there are possibilities. He has the permanence of the pre-
Socratics, of all imperfect things."

211Experience and the Obje~ts of Knowledge in the Philosophy

of F. H. Bradley." (Houghton Library Collection). This erratic and dog-
eared manuscript, hastily composed, atrociously typed, with its last
climactic page now missing, has done more to shape my own opinions con-
cerning philosophy th an any other contemporary work l can think of. One
other persan has said the same: Eliot's undergraduete friend and fellow-
poet, Conrad Aiken. cf. Ushant (New York, 1951)

)Unpublished letter from Prof. James H. Woods toTo S. Eliot,

June 2), 1916.

4Thesie, op. cit., pp. 208, 209.

5 op • cit., p. 210, cf. p. 196

Il involves an interpretation, a transmigration from one world to another,

and such a pilgrimage involves an act of faith. n - In this way Eliot's

epistemology explores the abyss which splits open the high and wide

terrasse of truth, mind, and ideas. It is his conclusion that the only

safe and sure ground for vision is that of the critic, rather than the-

speculative philosopher. l

And we think we see Eliot standing at the crossroads of his

own career, when he turns from the truths of the Speculative to those

of the Oritical Tradition. The necessary ingredient of faith

II should (show) us why the notion of truth, -- literaI

truth, he.s so little direct application to philosophie
theory. A philosophy can and must be worked out with the
greatest rigour and discipline in the details, but can
ultimately be founded on nothing but faith: and this is
the reason, l suspect, why the novelties in philoaophy are
only in elaboration, and never in fundamentals •••• And of
course the only real truth is the whole truth ••• We aIl
recognize the world as the same 'thet' j it is when we
attempt to describe it thet our worlds fall apart. 1I
Similarly, IIwe feel that there are truths valid for this
world, though we do not know what these truths arei and
it is with this sort that the refined and subtilised
common sense which is Oritical Taste occupies itself. The
true critic is a scrupulous avoider of formulae; he refrains
from statements which pretend to be literally truej he finds
fa ct nowhere and approximation always. His truths are
truths of experience rather than of calcu(1)ation."2

The young man who wrote these words had clearly been reading

his Joubert, Ste. 3euve, and de Gourmont, as weIl as his Aristotle,

Bradley, and Bergson. We see him already as the future author of the

lliFrom the critic's standpoint the metaphysician's world may

be real only as the child's bogey is rea1 •••• The question can a1ways be
asked of the c1osest-woven theoryl is this the reality of my world of
appeerance? and if l do not recognize the identity, then it is not •••• For
a metaphysics to be accepted, good-will is essential. 1I op.cit., p. 217

2op • cit., pp. 211-212. cf. Matthew Arnold, Essaya in Oriticism,

pp. vii-viii.
Sacred Wood and "The Perfect Critic. 1I Retrospectively, it seems inevit-

able that the gifted philosopher with a brilliant university career

ahead of him should turn wholly to poetry, criticism, and even perhaps to

religion. The esprit de finesse has already whispered its terrible and

embarrassing questions; and the esprit de geometrie is henceforth rebuked

into silence.

By this, of course, l mean that Eliot never himself collaborated

in the writing of the fundamental political philosophy which he believed

wa. such a great need of contemporary Europe. Later he had better thing.

to say about Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, and of course Bradley him-

self. But Eliot remained a critic among philosophers as weIl as a phil-

osopher among critics. He might rebuke Arnold or Babbitt for their lack

of philosophic background; but he also rebuked Jacques Maritain for show-

ing more faith in the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, then had St.
l
Thomas himself. Eliot 1 s reaemblances to Maritain might be strangest in

the field of political philosophYi but,even before the latter had dis-

covered his voracious American public, Eliot could take issue with him.

For Maritainls Gallic mind was slightly alien to the Anglo-Saxon, having

"in a way which is not exactly ours, found truth. u2 Similarly, as we

2 11Mr • Read and M. Fernandez, Il Cri terian, ri. 4 (Oct. 1926)

pp. 751-757 (p. 75 4). Nevertheless, Eliot was one of the firet non-
Catholic philosophie writers in England to give notice to the new Neo-
Thomist movement (International Journal of Ethics, XXVIII. l (Oct. 1917)
pp. 1)7-138) Maritain is reported to have been his persona1 friand as weIl
as associatei and Eliot obtained and trans1ated an article of Maritainls
for the Criterion.
shall see, Eliot's sympathies wlth Maurras extended to the latter's be-

lief in critical taste, rather than his belief in Oomtian politlcal .cience.

l believe that the world might have been the richer if Eliot

had expanded his critique of Bradley into a critique of all modern phil-

osophy, after the fashion of T. E. Hulme or Jacques Maritain. l As it is,

we should at least conclude that Eliot cannot be located in the speculative

tradition of Bradley any more than in the critical tradition of Arnold.

Bradley's refutation of Mill's Utilitarianism ls perhaps not so likely to

prove of historie consequence as Eliot suggested. For the wisdom of a

philosopher cannot by itself be expected to do the work of Arnold, and

the work of Arnold, Eliot admits, must be done again in every generation. 2

This is why Eliot' s bitter objections to the intellectual "Cloud-Cuckooland '1

in Literature and Dogma should not blind us to his debt to Culture and

Anarch~. For it is the labour whicb that book attempts, still more than

occasional echoes of style, phrases, and thought, which should link tbe

names of Eliot and Arnold. Arnold had writtenc

"We have not won our politicai battles, we have

not carried our main points, we have not stopped our
adversaries' advance, we have not marched victoriously
with the modern world; but we have told silently upon
the mind of the country, we have prepared currents of
feeling which aal' : our adversaries' position when it
OUA
8eems gained~ we have kept up ourhcommunicationa with
the future. 11/

1perhaps he might have found the energy for this task, if his
contact with the writings of Hulme and Maritain had not been delayed unti1
many years Iater. Despite the respect which his brilliant philosophic
career had earned him, Eliot's scattered philosophie writings are thos6
of a very lonely individual.

2cf • S.E., p. 411

~ Arnold Culture and Anarchy, p. 62. Quoted in Eliot Il A Comment-
ary," Criterion, III. 10 (Jan. 1925) pp. 161-16, (p. 162).
 "This (says Eliot) ia the Arnold who ia capable
of being a perpetual inspiration. His 'party' has no
name, and ls always, everywhere and inevitably, in the
minority. Were he alive to-dey he would find Populace
and Barbarians more philiatinised, and Philistia more
barbarie and proletarianised. than'''his own time. The
greatest, the only possible victory for Arnold and his
disciples is ta continue to 'keep ur the communications'
with the future and with the past."
 OHAPTER II

HUVuWISMl BABBITT AND HU1J.tIE

"Now, of philosophers some were dogmatic,

and others were inclined to suspend their
opinions •••• And the former class have left
many memorials of themselves, but the others
have never written a line."

Diogenes Laertius, Lives

When Eliot links himself in a vague way with the disciples

of Arnold, we feel that the true influence expressing itself ia that of

hie Harvard teacher Irving Babbitt. Eliotls criticism of the New Human-

iam of Irvin~ Babbit (1865-1933) and Paul Elmer More (1864-1937) ia

very similar to, though more sympathetic than, his attack on the

Imorality tinged with emotion l of Arnold. lt ehould not let us forget

that he considered Babbitt and More "the two wisest men that l have

known,u l and that if their influence in America was small, and unrepre-

sentative, that was "because anything in America that there was to be

represented could only have been represented by sma1ler men."2

It ie easy to see why these men were an inspiration to Eliot.

Like him, they had been born into militantly Protestant families of the

111Paul Elmer More," Princeton Alumni Week1y, XXXVII. 17

(Feb. 17, 1937) p. 374

2 11A Oommentary," Oriterion, XIII. 50 (Oct. 1933) pp. 115-120

American middle-west. Their early classical studies had led them east

to study at Harvard. Babbitt studied a year at the Sorbonne, More at

Oxford, while Eliot, a generation later, 'lias to do both. Finally

Babbitt and More met at Harvard in 1892, where they formed the entire

body of the Sanskrit and Pa l i class under Professor Lanman; Babbitt in-

spired Eliot to take the same classes t'lient y years later. l But Eliot

shared considerably more with these men than their cultural rejection of

their Protestant and Middle-western nativity.

A systematic analysis of Babbitt's New Humanism might have been

the best introduction to this thesis. The battle fought by Arnold may

seem remote; that fought by Babbitt is a live issue in America to-day,

and not just in the field of education. Those whom he nemed as the enemy

exist all around us; and they are EIiot's enemy too. From the enemy's

viewpoint, however, the so-celled 'battle' will appear to be with a

phantom, a fantasy, mere flatus vocis. For Babbitt's first struggle was

to gain possession, not of a Parliement, or even of a university, but

merely of a word. The word which he wished to claim for himself was

'Humanism. 1

'Humanism', whatever it i9, is a term terribly in vogue among

all those who think, and read, and write, and teach to-day. ~et the word

(at least in English) dates only from the I9th Century: its original

connotation 'lias not so much cultural (a Iater link was with the 'humanists'

of the Renaissance) as religiousi "the religion of humanity,11 or

IMore, On Being Humen. L. J. A. Mercier is incorrect in sug-

gesting that Babbitt only returned to Harvard in 1894: The Challenge of
Humanism, p. 16.
 ....

modern alternative to theism. Feuerbach contemplated using 'humanism'

to name his own version of this religion; Renan of couree did SOi and

the ward in Englieh was used of Comtianism, as early as 1876. The des-

cendants of these men to-day will be found lesa in Europe than in America.

In countless professors' homes, the works of Dewey, Krutch, Muller, Lamont,

C. F. Patter, and J. A. C. Fagginger Auer stand on the mantelpieee,

having replaeed the works of Emerson, Channing, and, in many ca.es, the

Bible. The enemy of Babbitt was this 'humanism' in its most efflorescent

piety, seeking apparently to conserve aIl of the emotions of Christian

1
faith and none of the thought. Equality, brotherhood, and above aIl

democracy become the goals of the humanists' honest and unquestioning

faith, and hope, and charity: the forces of good and evil, in the worka

of Dewey and Lamont, become those who are in favour of democracy, and

those who are against it.

1
This faith transfers ite abject from God to Man and hie majeatic
worka, especially Science. The great aeh-tree which separates heaven and
earth has been eut away; and heaven haa fallen to lie with man on the
terreetrial landscape.
This humanism which placea so much faith in science, as might
be expected, tlrecognizes scholasticism as its arch-enemyll (George Sarton,
The New Humanism, p. 31) Hence it is confueing 'to find Maritain and hii
cohorts also mustering the Catholic Church behind the same slogan, becauas
they are optimists, and set lino a priori limits to the deacent of the
divine into man. Il (Meritain, The Twilight of CiviUaation,1I p. l~). Pope
Pius has recently endoraed Catholic humanism in its struggle against the
pessimistic existential philosophies which iee mania destiny aa one of
Geworfenaein, or d~laissement. (In Enrico Castelli, Umanesimo e Scienza
Politica, p. )4)
At this point we have only to add that the Existentialists too
have made their claims to Humanism, and the picture is complete. (vd.
Martin Heidegger, Über den Humaniamus, pp. ~l S8.; Jean-Paul Sartre,
L'Existentialisme est-il un humanisme?) This battle for a word, which
Babbitt anticipated 80 long ago, is a11 around us to-day.
 Such exuberant conviction, like the Protestantism which gave it

birth, is, implicitly at least, anti-intellectual, discouraging too close

a criticism or dispassion concerning democracy and the rights of men.

This humanism, therefore, is perhaps better described as a 'faith' than

es e 'philo~hy'; unless we choose to define 'philosophy' es en activity

l
which, like voting, is open to everybody. But if we do use terms in

this fashion, it ia hard not to agree with Professor Lamont, that 'human-

ism l , scientific humanism, "already is the functioning philoaophy of

millions upon millions!~

Like other isolated Americans, correspondents of Matthew Arnold

like Henry Adams, or Charles Eliot Norton, Bebbitt feared this philosophy

of the millions -- especially when it began reshaping the American educa-

tional system to suit its own pleasures. Scientific humanism might conaider

itself the fruit of the Renaissance; nevertheless, it believed that only

IThis, understandably, is the practice of the humanists them-

selvesl

liA philosophy repreaents what man thinks about

things. Each age has a prevailing philoaophy. Every
man has a philoaophy of some aort. What we think about
the world to-day, and about the Atlantic Oharter and what
it stands for is our contemporary philosophy."

Oliver Reiser and Blodwen Davies, Planetary Democracy, p. 57.

2corliss Lamont, Humanism as a Philosophy, p. ,9. It is for thia
reason that l seem to fasten on the humanism of Professora Dewey and Lamontl
because of ita representative character. l am aware that more 'intellectual'
apokesmen might be found for the seme cause: notably Joseph Wood Krutch
or Walter Lippman. But such men are elreedy to some degree critical of
popular faiths; for this theais, the only aignificent thing about 'human-
iam' ia ite ebove-noted populerity, and conaequent respectability.
 ..."

those with an antiquarian predilection should be required to study Latin

and Greek. Seeing the curriculum, even at Harvard, being reformed by

practicel and democretic men like President O. F. Eliot, Babbitt was con-

vinced that such 'humanism' was threatening the persistence of all that he

believed 'best' in ,our 'culture,.l Yet he did not wish to sound like a

reactionary, for he considered himself a "thoroughgoing individualist,

writing for those who are, like myself, irrevocably committed to the
2
modern experiment." Therefore, wiahing to stand in the true line of

inheritance to the Renaissance tradition, Babbitt, as early as 189',

sounded the call of battle for the "New Humanism. lI '

lThis outspoken antipathy to the educational ideals of President

Eliot may or may not he1p exp1ain whyBabbitt could never obtain the chair
in the 01assic& Department of Harvard which he reportedly desired.
2
Democracy and Leadership, p. 14,
'In a lecture, subsequent1y reprinted in Literature and the
American Oollege. The ideas of Babbitt and More subsequently became the
slogan of a amal1 but vigoroua movement, composed chiefly of American
Professora of English and literary critics, which reached. its peak at the
end of the twenties. Norman Foerster, G. R. E1liott, Stuart Sherman,
Gorham Munaon, F. J. Matherl these are only a few of the names which will
be {ound in periodicals such as the Forum (whose self-construed appeal wei
tothe rather considerable leaven of intelligent people who cannot view
with indifference the general decay of standards and the resu1tant chaos
into which our intellectual and moral life has been plunged l1 ) the Bookman,
and later the American Review.
One suspecta that the audden demiss of this movement was hastened
by Eliot's aharp criticisms of it; its survivors minglsd with the follow-
ers of the southern IlFugitives l1 John Crowe Rensom and Allen Tate to form
what has been called the right ... wing tradition of the New Oriticism.
Anyone interested in the political views of these men should
glance at the pages of the American Review, the Catholic distributist
journal of Seward Collins, which unfortunately ceme a cropper over the war
in Spain. For~informative and critical survey of their political ideas,
see R. G. Davis, "The New Criticism and the Democratic Tradition," The
American Scholar, XIX. l (Winter 1949~50).
 Babbitt's main resource in his claim ta stand in the Humenist

and classical tradition was philolo~ical. The seme conflict between

faith in humanity, and cultivation of the humanities, between egalitarianism

and culture, had existed under the Roman Empire. On this subject Babbitt

recalled the observations of Aulus Gellius:

IIHumanitas, says GEilius, is incorrectly used to

den ote a 'promiscuous benevolence, what the Greeks
calI philanthropy', whereas the word really implies
doctrine and discipline, and is applicable not to men
in general but only to a select few, -- it is, in short,
aristocratie and not democratic in its impli cation. Ul

The humanist attitude towards man, therefore, is different from that of

indiscriminate love or respect: it is a "disciplined and selective sym-

pathy." It is opposed to what is usually called humanism:

"A person who has sympathy for mankind in the

lump, faith in its future progress, and desire to
serve the great ceuse of this progress, should be
called not a humanist, but a humanitarian." 2

To Babbitt, the distinction between humanist and humanitarian

wes between more than alternatives of meaning. These words stood for op-

posing approaches ta solutions of the worldls problems. The former was a

reaction against the increasing 'politicalism' of the world, for the humanist

"as opposed to the humanitarian, is interested

in the perfecting of the individual rather than in
schemesfor the elevation of mankind as a whole.")

lBabbitt, Literature and the American Oollege, p. 6, quoting

Gellius, Noctee Atticae, xiii, 17. Babbittls translation of (scientiae)
cura et disciplina is perhaps too easily capable of being stretched
beyond its strictly intellectual implications.

2 op. Cl' t . , pp. 8 • 7 •

)ibid, f' ~ .
 The New Humanism, therefore, cannot be construed as another

authoritarian ideology. Indeed, it decries the proliferation of ideolo-

gies; it relies rather on the maintenance of certain cultural standards

within the universities, to offset the political turmoil outside. Accord-

ing to Carlyle, the great significance of Rousseau had been to substitute

social reform for self-reform. l Babbitt's ambition was to reverse this

substitution; under the guidance of the French anti-Romantics, his

political ideas became increasingly a refutation of everything he believed

Rousseau to stand for.

His first book, however, merely stressed the importance of a

cultural education in inducing a well-behaved and responsible democracy

aware of its own limitations. It was a defence of the virtues of urbanity

over those of self-expression)of what Babbitt calls frein vital over the

current élan vital. 2 However, as self-restraint was nothing natural to

man, but only the fruit of long and careful habituation, then the central

importance of education must not be forgotten. Under the leade~ship of

men like President Eliot, Babbitt believed, ecientific training for every-

body was replacing the education of character which was once provided to

all those destined to rule. The institutions of democracy need not be

lWhat makes Rousseau so modern, it is generally agreed, is hie

professed discovery that "tout tenait radicalement à la politique."
Oonfessions, live ix, quoted in Alfred Oobba~"New Light on the Political
Thought of Rousseau" Political Science Q,uarterly, LXVI, 2 (June 1951)
pp. 272-284 (p. 280).

Gro the modern Il expaneionist Il Ethics and the cult of origina l i ty

and pereonality, we must oppose the classical
attendant virtues will ~e those of the Ethica
absolute but of the mean. " 'Nothing too much 1
of a11 genuine humaniste, ancient and modern ll
Humanism and America, p. 26.
ideal of moderation: Il The
Nicomachea, virtues not
ls indeed the central maxim
Babbitt, in Foerster (ad.)
argued with; but they should not blind us to the need of what More called

a "natural aristocracy." Those who have faith in man's natural goodneas

will expect this aristoc~acy to spring forward of itaelf; Babbitt and

More believed that it could only be created through a long, and arduous,

humanist education. At the centre of this must be the wisdom of the

01a6sics, centering around Latin ~nd Greek -- partly becauae they underlie

our whole heritage, partly because they endow ua with a historic sense,

~nd partly because they themselves teach us the IIlaw of order and of

right subordination." 1

Babbitt's early books, in other words, were not political.

Indeed, he sounds very mueh like Julien Benda in his disapprobation of

Maurras:

(Vnlike the FrenchJ'we do not mix" q.wes\..·oW\ "'P \W\ ~t"

~~üon with religion an~ politics (and herein
we are their superiora).d

More and more, however, Babbitt and More came to feel that the proponents

of democracy were encouraging certain final conceptions about human nature,

reason, and goodness, which were not only humanitarian, but wrong, and

perbicious. These children of the Renaissance who encouraged man to

believe in his goodness and omniscience, were dangerous; for they blinded

us to "the savagery underlying civilization", "The animal is not dead

within ua, but only asleep."' Belief in natural reason hes g1ven riae

~ore, Aristocracy and Justice, p. 61.

~asters of Modern French Criticism, p. ,85.
'\.
l-wre, op. Cl't . , pp. 212-21'. Il In the words of Rivaro l, barbarism
is always as close t®the most refined civiliEation as rust is to the
most highly polished steel." Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership, p. 229.
both to faith in science and to rationalism, haunted alwaye by the

"Demon of the Absolute, Il ending ultimately in ite mirror images of

irrationalism and lIabsolute relativism ll -- aU these can only he refuted

by a development of one's critical sense through culture. Belief in

human goodness (on this point Babbitt sometimes sounds as if Rousseau

hed single-handed led an entire civilization into error) has given rise

to a century of romanticism in literaturc, whose slogans of self-expression,

and whose impatience with restreint, must inevitably endanger the moral

health of those who read them. All of these symptoms, Babbitt felt,

ShOWAd a deep sociel sickneee. In both practical phenomena like the

Wœld War and in intellectual phenomena like Nietzscheanism, Bergsonism,

and toe cult of ~lan vital, he detected the same decline in discipline,

th~ same luxury, the same liberation of 'expansive lusts', that marked

the last days of the Roman Empire. Therefore the moderation and urbanity

which were essential to humanism could no longer dictate tolerance: the

media via did not lose itself in the zone èf the trimmers. l And so Babbitt

too ended by discussing political theory. And the tact and measure and

restraint of the critical spirit were suspended as he turned to matters

which, like Burke's Revolution, were too fundamental for any mediation:

"Between the man who puts his main emphas ls on

the inner life of the individual and the man who puts
this emphasis on something else -- for exemple, the
progress and service of humanity -- the opposition
le one of first principles. The question l raiee,
therefore, is not whether one should be a moderate

lnOne may fancy oneself urbane when in reality one is in

danger of being numbered with the immense multitude that Dante saw in
the vestibule of Hell -- the multitude of those who are equally 'dis-
pleasing to God and to the enemies of God'," Democracy and Leadership,
p. 25.
 h~anitarian, but whether one should be a humanitarian
at all. In general l commit myself to the position
that we are living in a world that in certain important
respects has gone wrong on first principles; which will
be found to be only another wey of saying that we are
living in a world that has been betrayed by its leaders. MI

So ends the introduction to Babbitt's only work in 'political

theory' simple. This book appeared in 1924, long after Eliot's thought

had begun to advance b,yond that of his erstwhile master; but it reflects

the wisdom of the mind which had taught Eliot fifteen years earlier. With

its narrowly 'political' conclusions we are not here concerned. Babbitt,

like Eliot, believed that for a civilization "to be genuine, it must have

men of leisure in the full Aristotelean sense •••• an aristocratie or

leading class (which is) in some degree exemplary.K2 But in Babbitt'a

case these observations trail off rather shakily into fears for the future

of railway shares and private property rights; while in the latter half

of the book, Samuel Gompers "and his kind ll rise up as the forces of cul-

tural Antichrist} 'Nith such conclusions, l repeat, Eliot' s ideas have

nothing to do; his fear is rather thet in our civilizetion the owners of

reilwey shares are alreedy only too powerful.

Eliot's most obvious affinities to Babbitt lie in their common

warnings against any morality based on the "unselective sympathy" of

humanitarianism, blinding us to the true nature and needa of humanity.

Both critics write as moralists; both are interesting for the inter play

between their critical sense, (which warns them of the limitations of

1
Democracy and Leadership, p. 26

2 op • cit., p. 20~

~op. cit., pp. 206, 232,307.

reason, and of the intangibility of absolutes) and of the first principle.

which their critical sense finds ineluctable. Babbitt suggests that

des pite the limitations of reason, we cen be aware of the objective facts

of morality: the presence within ourselves of a 'true t or 'higher self',

our participation in an invisible end non-naturel ethical order. The

faculty tells us these facts about ourselves is our imagination. Here

of course, Babbitt claims that we can distinguish between the disciplined

and the undisciplined or Romantic imaginat~on.l Behind the disciplined

imagination, the intellect end the emotions are united, not oppo.ed. It

is not irrational, but supra-rational. Here Babbitt i8 at pis best in

pointing to the self-estrangement which lies at the heart o~ Romanticismj

nevertheless, it ia hard to be convinced of the absolute distinction which

he drawa between the 'moral imagination' of Burke and the Romantic imagin-
2
ation of Rousseau.

lUThe final contrast is not between reason or judgment and mere

illusion, but between the imagination what is disciplined to what abides
in the midst of the changeful and the illusory, and the imagination that
is more or less free to wander wild in some 'empire of chimeras'.·
op.cit., p. 147

2Thws distinction, like so mueh of Bebbitt's argument, tende to

be conatructed largely from quotations. Burke ssks us to follow "nature,
which ia wisdom without reflection and above it"j whereas, says Babbitt,
Uthe wisdom thè.tRouneàu proclaimed was not above reflection but below
it" op. cit., p. 107. Babbitt does not deal with the extent to which
Burke identified hie imaginative faculty indiscriminately with our "in-
stincts," or our "passions u (ReflectionB, (Dent) pp. ,2, 77) Rousseau,
on the other hand, could be ~enuinely concerned with the problem of self-
limitation (Social Oontract, l, 8j (Nelson) p. 20).
l think that what Babbitt really distinguishea are not so much
Burke and Rousseau in themselves, as their reputations which survive in
England and France (like Bradley's Julius Caesar) to this day. The
Rousseau of Vaughan (in whom Babbitt could not believe) or the Burke of
Novalis, would present a very different picture.
 fi

Babbitt may not have settled our minds about Burke; but he

clearly depicts the task which the diaciplined imagination muat set for

itself. It ia

"the task of mediating between the permanent and

the fluctuating element in life, the Platonic art,
as one may aay, of seeing the One in the Many.nl

The intellectus sibi permisaus by itself can never resolve the fundemental

paradox of the One in the Many: the central problem "on which all the

other main aspects of our thought finally converge. M2 To grasp this paradox

we must conceive of the imaginative world-picture which ia Common to Plato

and Aristot1e, and which ia exemplified in the fundamental dualism, the

'higher l and 'lower l self, of human nature.~ Ezra Pound found this seme

world-picture in his adaptation of Oonfucianism; Babbitt found it above

all exemplified in the undogmetic principles of Hinayana or primitive

Buddhism. And of course, it is the same world-picture which permeates

Eliotls poetry, above al1 hia Four Quartets; and we shal1 find it in his

prose aa well. In Eliot it aeems to derive eaaential1y from three con-

joint aources: Babbitt1a and Lanman's Buddhism, Brad1ey'a Aristoteleanism,

and Ohristian orthodoxy. 4 For in Eliot the three traditio~ the critical,

lop. cit. pp. 105-106. For the world is "a oneneas that ia
a1ways changing," (p. 146)

~aste~s of Modern French Oriticism, p. xi.

~;an ia a creature of the transient flux, but nevertheless there
is something in him that is "set above the flux, /1 and participates in the
Eternel, or One!' (In Humanism and America, loc.cit., p. 32)

4Later, we shall inquire whether such a wor1d-picture is not

considered by Eliot ta be a Common element to all higher religions, so
that he can ta1k of an lorthodoxy of sensibi1ity' which ia detached from
our actual beliefs.
the philosophie, and the religious, reinforce and illumiuate one

another.

In Babbitt, this unity doea not present itself. But he is in-

teresting as a critic who goes part way towards the construction of a

positive philosophie morality; and then recognizes the similarity of this

to a religion -- even one which hovers distantly, like a Muse, in far-off

space and time. From a political perspective, it is most interesting that

Babbitt, a notorious sceptie, should have struggled to divert our atten-

tion from the external and peripheral manifestations of political life

1
IIto the inner lUe of the individual."

Babbitt remained to his death an atheist: like many Americans

he eould not extend to the religion of his Ohio background the sympathy

which he showed for the distant creads of the Orient. 2 Therefore, in his

eearch for the first principle of the linner life l ; he endeavoured to

make the Ipositive and critical l spirit of humanism supply the foundations

of morality which had once been provided by religion. This is a diffi-

cult position; for he insists that the future of our threatened civiliza-

tion will depend on how efficiently the variou8 traditional institutions

of society can continue ta IIchain up the beast in man."~

lDemocracy and Leadership, p. 20, cf. p. 136. It is for this

reason that Babbitt could no longer follow his own advice about avoiding
politics. Today, IIdiecrimination of the humanistic type is eapeeially
needed in the field of political theory and praetiee." (pp. 278-279)

~ore tells the revealing story of theironce walking together

and p6ssing a small church near Harvard University. Babbitt paueed,
pointed with a gesture of contempt, and said, "There ie the enemy~ There
is the thing I hate~" (On Being Human, p. 37; cf., however, pp. 40-42.)

~Rousaeau ~nd Romanticism, p. 367 S8.

And, he admits, "Of these, the chief is no doubt the Church~ Nevertheless,

even the church itaelf has largely succumbed to naturalism and humanitar-

ianisma "The leadership of the Occident is no lon·;er here" Babbitt will

not quarrel with those who still accept a dogmatic Christian dispensation,

and "cling to the principle of outer authority." In Babbitt l s view, how-

ever, the only lasting hope is the individualist and humanist one of sub-

stituting inner for outer authority: nothing else can survive the inevit-

able fatal message of Voltaire. To this, the self-restraint of the 'inner

check' is the only answer of the modern; else, "The emancipation fram

credulous belief leads to an anarchie individualism that tends in turn to

destroy civilization. Ml

But from a philosophie point of view, as Eliot points out, "The

inner eheck looks very much like the 'best self' of Matthew Arnold; and

though supported by wider erudition and closer reasoning, is perhaps open

to the same objections.,,2 In SUIn, it is impossible to Bee what criterion

libido Babbitt ascribes this 'inner check', divorced from all

dogme, to the teachings of Buddhe. Indeed, at Babbitt's deft toueh,
Buddha emerges as no prophet at all, but the first New Humanista he "wa&
very critical; he had a sense of the flux end evanescence of all things
and so of universal illusion keener by far than thet of Anatole France;
at the seme time he had ethical standards even sterner then those of Dr.
Johnson ••• " (~. 0 .. ,,310)
In Revelation (ed.~U'e, pp. 2l-2~) Eliot has written a brilliant
critique of Babbitt's "refined abstraction" of Buddhism. He suggests that
it is not quite right to offer historic texts as an alternative to a living
religion; and that Babbi tt' s Buddhism is essential1y artificiala "_- not
only purified but canned; separated from aIl the traditional ways of be-
having and feeling which went to make it a living religion inits own en-
vironments, which made it a religion possible for every level of intelli-
gence and sensibility from the highest to the lowest." Such a refinement
is too intellectual to play the social role which Babbitt apparently ex-
pacts of it.

211Francis Herbert Bradley," S.E., p~ 414. Eliot's argument 1&

developad infra,\lp. t 1 1-2..1i.
Babbitt has established between "true insight" (~pparently his ow) and

"the endless tricks of the Arcadian imagination." Yet without such a

criterion we cannot distinguish between self-limitation proposed by

himself and that of Rousseau; between the "true individualism" of the New

Humanists, and the "anarchie individual1sm" of the world at large.

Hugh l'Anson Fausset (who is in ma~ ways a disciple of Arnold's)

has in his defence of modern Romanticism caught Babbitt's problem very

nea.tly'

"(Babbitt) admits that modern man is sick because

he has ceased to humble his individua1ity to a who1e
~ is greater than.. .p.im~elf. But a11 that he can supp1y
in the place of th~~<'I'd'îV"ine will' is a set of ethica1
and humanistic standards, derived, indeed, from a critica1
study of the p8&t but organi.ed in fact by the ve~
j

intellect which i~ lS necessary to ~ubordinate. To

humble 'iQr:self to such standards i.e in real1ty an imposai-
bility. ~:'or the conscious 9gb cannot humble itself to
standards which it has itseIf' conscious1y formu1at9d and
imposed. III i

Eliot' s "classicist" cr'iticism of Babbitt' s New Humanism was

fundamentaI1y the samer namely, it cou1d not supp1y any schematic founda-

tion of morality "in the place of the' divine will' Il, "I cannot under-

stand a system of morals which seems to be founded on nothing but itse1f." 2

Babbitt's Humanism was of interest as long as it was critice11 it wes a

fa11acy, however, to attempt to make it into a positive philosophy or

IFeusset, The Proving of Psyche (London, 1929) pp. ;0;-;04.

Here Fausset shows himse1f a good deal shrewder than his Romantic associate
J. M. Murry. In 1920 Murry had been inspired by Babbitt's "master1y"
description of the internaI l'veto power" (Aspects of Literature (LoBdon,
1920) p. 167); but by 19;0 Murry weB quoting Fausset's refutation with
approva1 (Criterion, IX. ;5 (Jan. 19;0) p. ;49).
2
"Second Thoughts about Humanism, Il S.E., p. 447
substitute for religion. Eliot considered that this attempt was still

more conspicuous in the writings of Babbitt's followers, notably Norman

Foerster, among whom the attack on Christian dogma became still more

evident. To such people, Eliot dedicated a brief memorandum, "to dis-

tingui8~ the functions of true Humanism from those imposed upon it by

zea lots: Il

"I. The function of humanism is not to provide

dogmas, or philosophicsl theories. Humanism, because
it is general culture, is not concerned with philosophieal
foundations; it is 1ess concerned with 'reason' than with
common sense. When it proceeds to exact definitions it
becomes something other than itself ••••
uIV. It is not the business of humanism to refute
anything. Its business ie to persuade, according to its
unformulab1e axiome of culture and good sense. It does
not, for instance, overthrow the arguments of fallacies
like Behaviourism: it operates by taste, by sensibility
trained by culture. It is critical rather than constructive.
It is necessary for the criticism of social life and
social theories, political life and po1itical theories.
"V. Humanism can have no positive theories about
philosophy or theo1ogy ••••
"VIII. Humanism, finally, is vaUd for a very small
minority of individuals. But it is culture, not any
subscription to a common programme or platform, which
binds these individua1s together. Such an 'inte11ectual
aristocracy' haB not the economic bonds which unite the
individuals of an 'aristocracy of birth'."1

When Eliot reminds the New Humahism that its business is

"cr itica1 rather than constructive," according to the "unformulable axiome

of culture and good sense," he has criticized not only Norman Foereter

but Babbitt himself, who is too often redueed to the mere quotation of

01assioa1 maxims and home1y verses. He has re-aseerted the esprit de

finesse, the search for truths of teste and tact rather than logica1

110e • cit., pp. 450-451

 -,-

argumentation, which form the best of what we can learn from the exemples

of Arnold and Ste. Beuve. But Eliot has recognized also, more clearly

th an Arnold ever did, that "culture," efter all, ie not enough, even

though nothing ls enough without culture:,l

These criticisms of Bebbitt were written shortly efter 1927,

when Eliot wes received as e communicant into the Anglo-Catholic Church.

They reflect the seme intellectuel considerations by which More, a1so,

finelly became an Episcopalian, progressing by stages from 8 classical

2
to a Christian Platonisme

The intellectual inedequacies of Humanism for the individual,

however, are ,nothing compared to its inedequacies for society as a whole.

Hare it i8 still more foolish to talk of humanism as a substitute for

religion, religion is a habit of a people as a whole, while humanism can

only be an attitude of the most cultured fewl

"The religious habits of the race are still very

strong, in aIl places, at aIl times, and for aIl
people. There is no humanistic habit: humanism is,
l think, merely the state of mind of a few persans in
a few places at a few times. To exist at aIl, it is
dependent upon some other attitude, for it is essentially
critical -- l would even say parasitical. It has been,
and can still be, of great value; but it will never
provide showers of partridges or abundance of manna for
the mhosen peoples."'

1
loc. cit., p. 449. cf. "Religion without Humanism," in
Foerster (ed.) Humanism and America, p. 110.

2Eliot l s personal friendship for More, whom he first met in

1928, did not deter him from criticizing Morels "rather personal end
individualistic" fai th) for its inadequate theology, and its lIinadequate
conception of the divine nature of the Church as the Living Body of Ohrist."
(IiAn Anglican Platonist, The Conversion of Elmer More, Il Times Literary
Supplement, 1865 (Oct. ,0, 19'7) p. 792)

'"The Humanism of Irving Babbitt," S.E., p. 4,5.

 lt should not be forgotten that Eliot made one final peace-

offering to the New Humanism, by contributing to Norman Foerster's

anthology, Humanism and America. In this article Eliot described the

equal dangers of a social religion uncriticrizèl by the "sceptic -- even

the pyrrhonist, but particularly the humanist -- sceptic, Il and of an

individual humanism without a social matrix of religious orthodozy ageinst

which to strive. "Orthodoxy," wrote Eliot, "must be traditional, heter-

l
odoxy must he original." But thie was only to save a more definite shake

of the heed to the question he had 8sked earliera

"le it (humeniem), in the end, a view of life that

will work by itself, or ie it a derivative of religion
which will work only for a short time in history, and
only for a few highly cultivated persone like Mr. Babbitt
whose ancestral traditions, furthermore, are Christian,2
and who is, like many people, et the distance of a gener-
ation or so from definite Christian belief? ls it, in
other words, durable beyond one or two generations?·~

lnReligion without Humanism," in Humanism and America, ed.

Foerster, pp. 105-106.

~liot does not make this point nearly so vigorous1y a& Wyndham
),ewb; for whom Il it was fairly easy to show that (Babbitt' s) 'inner check' •••
wes there in his head al1 right, for the simple reeson that his good mother
put it there when she taught him to pray et night before going to bed as
a small middle-west Puritan pullet. H Men without Art, p. 209. Lewi. goes
on to argue, like Eliot, that "An ethical system must, to have any mean-
ing today, be tied to a theo1ogical system." (p. 209); and that an ethical
system based who1ly on itself is absurde

'S.E., p. 4,4. We fee1 that Miss Nott has not begun to struggle
with Eliot's argument if she really confuses Babbitt's humanism with
morality as a whole. But how else could she have turned the question
last quoted into the "fear that moral capital may be exhausted •••• ' in one
or two generations'."? (Kathleen Nott, The Emperor's Clothes, p. '9.)
 Such criticism ie important, for we see more clearly than

ever the carefully-defined approbation which Eliot gave to the critical

tradition of Arnold and Babbitt. He neither accepted nor rejected; he

saw this tradition aa playing an important but limited part in a wider

organization, both within the individual and within society.

The strength of Eliotle position ie thet he, too, can reprove.

even Babbitt for being II not critical enough. 1I And Eliot 1 s Ohrietianity

enebles him to epprove whole-heertedly of the Pascalian esprit de finesse,

which ia more then the naturel imegination, becauae of ita participation

l
in grace. In other worda, from whera we now look out, we can give due

credit to the extent to which the observations, prejudices, and aven

phrases of Bebbitt are scattered through Eliotls own writings. 2 But having

done so, we ~uat see Eliot in a new perspective, associating him with one

who was not only a philosopher but a much closer disciple of Pascal. That

person was T. E. Hulma.

************

lBabbitt recognized thet Pascal distinguished his esprit de

finesse from IIthe deceits of the imagination"; and says, in affect, IIS0
much the worse for Pascal", IIpascal seems to get his insight only by
flouting ordinary good sense. He identifies this insight with a type of
theologicel dogma of which good sense was determined to be rid; and so it
tended to get rid of the insight along with the dogma. 11 Rousseau and
Romenticism, p. 29.
Perhaps Babbitt wes in a dangerous century to be writing that
good sense IIwas determined to be rid ll of Pascal.

2Qn this point, one can hardly disegree with G. R. Elliott,

liT. S. Eliot and Irving Babbitt,tI American Review, VII. 4 (~f>-+'
19,6) pp. 4~Z. - 4 53 .
 "

American commentators like G. R. Elliott make much of Eliot'e

debt to Babbitt; in Europe, however, Eliot's anti-romantic filiations, and

distrust of the liberal democratic mentality, are usually traced to T. E.

Hulme, ' (188~-19l7).1 In abstract, however, it is more pretty to compare

the two influences together. Babbitt was a critic who returned to phil-

osophic first principlesj Hulme was a speculative philosopher with a keen

critical sense. But while Babbitt hoped to redeem the word 'Humanism',

Hulme attacked the word with all the strength of his pugilistic style.

Unfortunately, however, Eliot had never met T. E. Hulme. 2 Never-

theless, Eliot had felt the impress of this powerful and somewhat aggres-

sive personality, long before the publication of his posthumous Specula-

tions in 1924. Having been sent down from Cambridge in 1904 for his

rowdines8, Hulme continued his philosophieal studies independently in

Europe. Here he made contacts whieh authorized him to be the official

English translator of works of Bergson and Sorel.~ Settling in London,

1e.g. Hans Hà~ermann, liT. S. EBots religioee Entwicklung,·

Englische Studien, LXIX. ~ (19;4-19;5), p. ~7~. Hëusermann refers con-
tinuously to Hulme, but makes no reference at all to either Babbitt or
More personally; he refers once en passant to Elietls "recurring attacke
on the American.and French New Humanism" (p. ;85) Dr. Beer, on the other
band, whose work is most valuable for its examination of Eliot'e antece-
dents, pays equal attention to both Babbitt and Hulmet Beer, op.cit.,
pp. 17-~1, 101-117.
2F. O. Matthiesssn, The Achievement of T. S. Eliot, (New York,
1947) p. 70 ~

~Bergson endeavoured to reconcile the Cambridge authorities to

Hulme with a most commendatory letter: "Ou je me trompe beaucoup, ou il
est destiné a produire des oeuvres intéressantes et importantes dans la
domaine de la philosophie en g~n~ral, et plus particuli~rement peut-être
dans celui de la philosophie de llart." (Quoted in Hulme, Speculations,
(Introduction by Herbert Read) p. x)
about 1907, Hu1me contributed philosophical and critical notices to A. R.

Oragels literery and Guild Socieliet week1y, The New Age. His chief in-

fluence, however, wes over the dinner table, upon e emall circle of poete

later known as the Il Imagistes, Il of whom the second-in-commend wee c learly

Ezra pound. 1 The young philosopher Eliot firet came to Pound with his

unpublished Prufrock on Sept. 22nd, 1914; three months later Hulme, lia

militarist by faith" had left for the French front, where, in Sept. 1917,
2
he waa to be blown to pieces.

Fortunetely, though hie femous conversations will never be re-

ported, his notebooks and privete manuscripts were edited for publication

by Herbert Read in 1924. By now, due largely to the attention given them

by Eliot and the IINew Oriticism ll in general, these Speculations have achieved

some fame: chiefly for their attack on Humanism and Romanticism, their

pungent and concise definition of Classicism, and their intereating at-

tempt to refine the Bergsonian philosophy. Eliot also had showed an early

interest in the Bergsonian philosophy, and has approved Hulmels critique

of Bergson: a critique which iasued as a new IITheory of Diacontinuity.lI}

Bergson ia familiar for his absolute distinction between the

meehanie and organie orders of existence, or what Hulme calla the worlds
4
of Extensive (or atomic) and Intensive (or organic) Manifolds. By th!.

lThough Hulme himself was not primarily a poet, his 1I0 ompl ete
Poetical Works u (amounting in a11 to }} lines) have been frequently reprinted
as prototypes of Imagist poetry. He was furthermore responsible for intro-
ducing Pound and the Imagists (and hence Eliot) to the theories of deGour-
mont, being Utile first Englishman to ponder" the Problème du Style {R. Taupin,
Oriterion, X.4l (July, 19}1) p. 61~.)
2
At Nieuport, in the trenches, a few hundred yards from that very
comparable personality Wyndham Lewis.

}E.A.M., p. 167

\u1me, Speculations, pp. l71ss. '

distinction, Bergson and Hulme assert that the phenomena of life, con-

sciousness, and spirit, can never be wholly analysed by the Intellect,

whose only procedure is to explicate, to separate out the components of

atomic manifolds in space. Only by Intuition can we have understanding of

our own psychic experience. What this understanding is, the Intellect

cannot define for us; but our Intuition can tell us of the error of all

mater ia l i sm 1 the attempts (such as Behaviourism, or any strict determi-

l
nism) to analyse psychic phenomena as if they were phyaical.

The great vogue of Intuitioniam, which Bergson did so much to

unleash, wea anti-intellectual by implication rather than by necessity.

For example, though few things can be seid to unite the philosophera

p6guy, Sorel, and Maritain, they aIl ahow their debt to the course they

once attended together, of lectures by Bergson. True, at the handa of

Edouard Leroy, his pontifical successor in the chair at the Collège de

France, Bergsonism became more and more closely identified with a senti-

mental vitalism, aestheticism, and cult of the élan vital. But Bergson

also gave great impetus to the rediacovery of Pascal, and the esprit de

finesse which he had opposed to the esprit de g6ometrie. Le coeur a ses

raisons que la raison ne connert point: this became at the beginning of

the century a common alogan uniting aIl who opposed theCartesian ration-

aliet tradition; and Bergson himself announced that Pascal had been the

lThis 'intuition l reminds us immediately of Babbitt and Morels

'imagination l , especially when Hulme also refers us to the exemple of
Burke (op.Cit., p. 175). Still more than in Babbi'tts case, however, it
reminds us of the esprit de finesse which Pescel opposed to the esprit
de géometrie.
first modern philoaopher of Intuition. l Thus it became a theme of French

intellectual debate, to discuss whether the Intuition of Pascal was anti-

rational (Dieu sensible au coeur, etc.) or supra-rational, etemming

from a religion in which reason and faith were somehow reconciled. 2

And more orthodox Catholics had at least good reason for doubting whether

the debate over the Pens~es would be won by the forces of orthodoxy.~

Hulme, on the other hand, sought to enlist the Bergsonian phil-

osophy in the fight for a 'higher reason', byenlarging it in the light

of the Pascalian Weltanschauung. \'1here Bergson distinguishes only two

discontinuous orders of reality (material and the vital) Pascal had dis-

tinguished three: the order of nature, the order of mind, and the order

of charity. And this Pascalian hierarchy (with its capital extension of

the Bergsonian) is echoed by Hulme:

1 11A Pascal se rattachent les doctrines modernes qui font passer

en premi~re ligne la connaissance imm~diate s , l'intuition, la vie int~r­
ieure." La science franiaise (Pa~is, 1915) l, p. 17. cf. Babbitt,
Democracy and Leadership, p. ~22
This tradition was equally approved by Sorel: "Gr.ce en partie
à ~L Bergson, Pascal tend à devenir le grand directeur du siècle. Il Quoted
in Henri Massilil, "La Victoire de Pascal," Jugements, l, p. 286. cf. abo
Dorothy Eastwood, The Revivai of Pascal (Oxford, 19~6)
2
To Sorel's fel1ow-syndicalist Edouard Berth, for exemple,
Pascal was clearly an exponent of.a 'higher reaaon': IIQue signifie cette
victoire de Pascal sur Descartes? Elle signifie la victoire d'un ration-
alisme vrai sur un rationalisme postiche. Il Quoted in Massis, op.cit.,
l, p. 282. Because of their false enlightenment, Berth (like Sorel)
denounced Les m~faits des intellectuels, (Paris, 1914), a decade before
the publication of La trahison des clercs.

~ As Henri lviassis observed of certain modern Pascalians: Il La

victoire de Pascal, à leurs yeux, c'est la victoire de l'irrationnel;
c'est en outre, la victoire du pessimisme, d'une conception path~tique et
romantique du monde. Et la victoire de Pascal, co~e ils l'entendent,
c'est la victoire du syndicalisme, du divin, de l'inquiétude, de l'intuition,
de la violence, que sais-je encore~ bref, c'est la victoire de Bergson,
de W. James, de Proudhon et de Sorel." op.cit., p. 285.
 "Let us assume that reality is divided into
three regions, separated from one another byabsolute
divisions, by real discontinuities. (1) The inorganic
world, èfiitathèmatical and physical science, (2) the
organic world, dealt with by biolo~y, psychology and
histor~l and (,) the world of ethical and religiou8
values.

For Hulme, the most important things about these three worlds

are the absolute discontinuities or chasms which separate them from each

other. (In simpler terms, values do not in any way lemerge l or levolve l ,

from either the phenomena of physical nature or those of life.) Hence

the great importance of 'vitalism l , of the philosophies of Nietzsche,

Dilthey, and Bergson, was to have IIrecognised the cha sm between the two

worlds of life and matter .112 But the greet fallacy 0:Z' vitali3!1l ...,as to

heve ignored the second great discontinuity, to have confused Ivitalityl

and value, the will to live and spirit, biology and religion. Such an

error is understandable, for this second discontinuity can only be recog-

nized by abandoning "the whole Renaissance tradition," the tradition, in

a word, of Ihumanism l :

'IThere is an absolute, and not a relative, dif-

ference between humanism (which we can take to be the highest
expression of the vital), and the religioua spirit. The
divine is not life at its intensest. It contains in a
way an almost anti-vital element; quite different of
course from the non-vital character of the •••• physical
region."'

Yet the first and third worlda are alike in their absolute

character, so that IIknowledge about them can legitimately be called ab-

1I 4 In this respect they must be distinguished from the
solute knowledge.

1
Hulme, oE·cit., p. 5·
2
OE·cit., p. 7.
, °E·Cl.'t ., p. 8

4 0}2.C1't ., p. 6
 If"'"

intermediate, "relative, Il II muddy mixed zone Il of life, which can only be

dealt with IIby loose sciences like biology, psychology and history.Kl

In fact, Hulme attributes aIl of the intellectual sins of the present

age -- "Romanticism in literature, Relativism in ethics, Idealism in

philosophy, and lvlodernism in religion ll to the one fundamentel error of

Humanism: "the attempt to explain the absolute of religious and ethical

values in terms of the categories appropriate to the essentially relative

and non-absolute vital zone." 2 Therefore this "a bsolute discontinuity

between vital and religious things" (Hulmels phrase for the tradition of

Christian dualism) must be clearly re-asserted, in the speech of manifestol

II not only to destroy a11 these bastard phenomena,

but also to recover the real significance of many
things which it seems absolutely impossible for the
Imodern l mind to understand. lI '

Of all these Ibastard phenomenal, that which interests us most

is what Hulme, inspired by Sorel, describes as IIthe democratic idology.1I4

lOne consequence for Hulme of the absolute, anti-vital quality

of values, was the justification of religious values such as asceticism
and chastity, for which no humanitarian morality could provide an ex-
planation. Another was a bias in favour of geometric formalism in art,
leading to his conception of Olassicism and to hia approval of auch
developments as Oubism, and the art of Gaudier-Brzeska. Here his natural
ally, both in practice and theory, was Wyndham Lewisl to Lewis, as we
shall see, IIDeadness is the first condition of art. 1I (!!!:.r, p. '0')
But Lewis, like Babbitt,considered Bergson to be one of the
diabolical forces working against our civilization today (The Diabolical
Principle, pp. 99ss.); end so Hulme, despite the sentences just quoted,
is indicted for showing too much ~lan vital. (Men itithout Art, p. 207)

2 op.c~"t ., p. 10

, "t ., p. 11
op.c~

4
Hulme, Introduction to Reflections on Violence, in §pecul§-
tiQna, pp. 249-260, (p. 254).
Hulme's translation of Sorel's Reflections on Violence appeared in
l
1914, prefaced by an Introduction which, l should like to think, may

some day even survive its celebrated text. 2 For it is, l believe, the

firet attempt in English to criticize liberal democracy, not for its

alleged materialism, profiteering, or inhumenity, but purely for the

repugnance of Hs Il ideology ."~ With a11 of the vigour of Sorel and the

French anti-romentic tradition, Hulme himself attacka this 'ideology'

Il pacifist, rationalist, end hedonist Il -- as a slig;htly anachronistic

legacy of the romantic movement: lia muddy romanticism that has in

reality come through a very long pipe." 4

lFor some reason, Herbert Read says 1916, op.cit., p. xi.

2
At present, however, Hulme seems to have been wholly ignored
by all the usual 'political theorists' except Reinhold Niebuhr. Indeed,
the Introduction WBS dropped from a later impression, while Prof. Edward
Shils, (who prefaced the new edition of Hulme's translation (amended by
J. Rotb)in 1950) treats it as if it never appeared in any edition at all.
But this is nonsense.

~The first appearance in English, l believe, of the Sorelian

or generalized use of this Marxist term, applying not merely to a reaction-
ary but to any complex of ideas, treated as a social phenomenon. The
history of the word 'ideology', traced back.th~oygh Die deutsche Ideologie,
through Napoleon's celebrated dictum about "crazed enthusiaets,1I to the
simple associates of Destutt de Tracy, would make a fascinating essaYe
Ite eignificance might best be illustrated in the company of a second 6eeay,
in which the word Weltanschauung would be traced from Hitler, and Husserl,
back to the crieis in Idealist philoeophy as it was formulated by Dilthey.
But l do not believe one could write euch essaya without attach-
ing great importance to the 'Critique of Satisfactions' of T. E. Hulme:
by this l do not merely mean that in this Critique the word Weltanschauung,
also, may have made its first English appearance.

40p.Cit., pp. 254, 255.

 Oould we obtain Oroce's Introduction to the Italian edition

of the Reflections on Violence, l am sure we would find depicted the Sorel

whom we aIl reco~nize: the pragmatist, activist, and belligeeent anti-

intellectual who not only inspired but saluted Mussolini. Hulme's Sorel

is certainly very different, and at first glance less familiar:

lia revolutionary who is anti-democratic, an

absolutist in ethics, rejecting aIl rationalism and
relativism, who values the mystical element in reli-
gion 'which will never disappear,' speaks contemptu-
ously of modernism and progress, and uses a concept like
honour with no sense of unreality."l

There is no doubt between Oroce and Hulme, however, that 'democracy' was

what Sorel attacked. Sorel had tried to dissociate the working-class

movement from the 'democratic', 'liberal' 'progressive' or what we might

calI 'Fabian' ideology that went with it. This ideology to Sorel and

Hulme is wrong for both religious and practical reesons; it is not only

based on the romentic f'allecy, it corrupts ethically, and, corrupting the

individuel, it "will be fatel to the movement."

According to Hulme, the II s imple-minded democrat" can only be

confounded by a critique which is at once "revolutionary" and II reac tionary."

For he is apt to have thought of democracy II not as one possible ideology

amongst others, but as an inevitable way of thinking."

IIIt i8 this which makes him think Sorells anti-

democretic position and views unnetural or perverse.
He has not yet thought of democracy as a system at
aIl, but only as a natural and inevitable equipment
of the emancipated and instructed man. ~he ideas
which underlie it appear to him to have the necessary
character of categories. In reality, they are, of
course, nothing of the kind."2

10p.Cit., p. 250. Neither is wholly inaccurate; but l am not sure

that Hulme has not portrayed the better Sorel, the Sorel who had learned
(through Bergson) to admire Pascal.
2op.cit., pp. 250-252: "He cannot take the anti-democratic view
seriously. He feels just as if som~one had denied one of the laws of
thought, or asserted that two and t~o are five."
 71

This exp1ains why Sore1's attitude 1s attributed lita mysticism, to neo-

roya1ism, or to some confused and sentimental reaction against Reason";

~ven though this one reactionary can hard1y be written off as e pub1icist

for "the interests of wea1th. Ü

Heving been warned of the presence about us of a corrosive

and fatal ideology, we are disappointed not to find its symptams more

close1y described for us. 2 But perhaps this was inevitablel ideology is

as Hulme points out a mixture of doctrine and sentiments, which, being

essential~y uncritical, are universal, and below the leve1 of precise

definition. It is the comfortable costume of the "emancipatedll intellect,

whose feith in itself and in 1ts environment has not yet been (and perheps

never will be) questioned. In a word, it is the same faith which Babbitt

had called Ihumanitarianism l •

Hulme examines, not the ideo1ogy, but the 1 pseudo-categories'

throu,~h which, as through a pair of blue spectacles, the democrat allegedly

views the world. Unfortunate1y, one's pseudo-categories are not so easily

removed, lying lias it were, 1 behind the eye III; we can only strip ourselvelil

1 op.c~"t ., p. 251

2ii;xcept negativelya IIDemocracy -- the word is not used here ••••

in its widest sense as indicating opposition to all aristocratie, oli-
garchic or class government, but in a narrower sense, to recall which l
have always put the word in italics. Liberal might have been a better
word, were it not that Socialists, while proc1aiming their difference from
1iberalism in policy, at the seme time adopt the whole liberal ideology.1I
( op. c i t ., p. 250)
Though this is hardly satiefactory, we shou1d remember that in
1915, eepecially in England, the meaning of 'democracy' wes still a good
des1 more specific than it is today.
of them gradually by detecting, investigeting and anelysing their historie

origins, so es "to bring them to the surfece of the mind. ul

~nd the historie antecedents of the democratic ideology (as

we hed anticipeted) lie in the romantic movement: IILiberal Socielism 18

still living on the remains of middle-class thought of the lest century. Il

And what is this unexpressed romantic major premiss? At this point Hulme

becomes elmost excessively explicit, sounding less like Sorel then like

Pierre Lasserrel

"Putting the matter with the artificial s1mplicity

of a diagram for the sake of clearness, we might say
that romanticism and classical pessimism differ in
their antithetical conception of the nature of man.
For the one, man is by nature good, and for the other,
by nature bad.
IIAll Romanticism springs from Rousseau, and the
key to it ean be found even in the first sentence of
the Social Contract -- 111-1an is born free, and he finda
himself everywhere in chains. 1I In other words, man is
by nature something wonderful, of unlimited powers,
and if hitherto he has not eppeared so, it is because
of externel obstacles and fetters, which it should be
the main business of social politics ta remove.
"What is et the root of the contrasted system of
ideas you find in Sorel, the clessical, pessimistic,
or, es its opponents would heve it, the reactionary
ideology? This system springs from the exectly contrery
conception of men; the conviction thet men ia by nature
bed or limited, and cen consequently only accomplish
anything of velue by disciplines, ethical, heroic, or
political. In other words, it believes in Original Sin.

lop.c it., p. 25) 1 "Their hidden influence on our opinions

then et once disappears, for they have lost their status es categories.
This i8 a violent operation, and the mind ia never quite the same after-
wards. It hes lost ,a certein virginity.1I Hulme reflects his readii:g of
de Gourmont, as did Eliot: infra, p. t,,,
In this, says, Hulme, the economic interpretation of certain
ideas can oe especielly helpful, as for exemple in Sorel's Les Illusions
du progr~s.
 We may define Romantics, then, as all who do not
believe in the Fall of Man. It is this opposition
which in reality lies at the root of most of the
other divisions -in social and political thought." 1

Elsewhere, Hulme explicitly admits his debt to "Maurras,

Lasserre, and all the group connected with L'Action Franîaiselll and

concerning their political activism he shows approval where Babbitt had

shown disgust. 2 Like them, his Classicism extends into an attack on

"that bastard thing Persona lit y,"' and recognizes "the tragic signi-
4
ficance of life," the impossibility of progresse In fact, belief in

"Progress Il is to Hulme "the modern substitute for re ligion" (as 'person-

ality', presumably, is for the soul). For it is essential to man's nature

that he must believe in something&

"You donlt believe in a God, so you begin to

believe that man is a gode You donlt believe in
Heaven, so you begin ta believe in a heaven on earth.

1Op.Cl"t . , pp. 255-256. cf. p. 116

2He gives a revealing comment on a recent lecture in the Odeon

on Racine, during which the lecturer "made some disparaging remarks about
his dullness, lack of invention and the rest of it. This caused an
immediate riot: fights took place all over the house; several people
were arrested and imprisoned, and the rest of the series of lectures
took place with hundreds of gendarmes and detectives scattered all over
the place •••• That ls what l cell a reel vitel interest in litereture."
op.cit., pp. 114-115

'op.cit., p. ,,: "We place Perfection where it should not

be -- on this humen plenee As we are painfu1ly awere that nothing
actual can be perfect, we imagine the perfection ta be not where we are"
but merely somewhere else on "the plane of actual existence."

40p.Cit., p. ,41 "Such a realisation has formed the basis of

all the great religions, and is most conveniently remembered by the symbol
of the wheel. This symbol of the futility of existence ls absolutely
lost ta the modern world •••• "
Goethe's famous retort, liNo, it is not a circle, lt is a spiral,"
he1ped establish a "lasting and devastating stupidityll (pp. ,4-'5)
 '10

In other words, you get romanticism. The concepts

that are right and proper in their own sphere are
spread over, and so mess up, falsify and blur the
clear outlinea of human experience. It is like
pouring a pot of treacle over the dinner table.
Romanticism then, and this is the best definition
l can give of it, is spilt religion. ul

Later we shall deal with the objections of those whom Eliot

calls 'Liberals l , who wish to isolate politics from either Ispilt ' or

any other religion. It is clear at least that we have found a most

concise expression of the viewpoint which Eliot later upheld as Olas-

aicism. Eliot, moreover, has frequently acknowledged his debt ta the

Speculations; but l suspect that he had also reed Hulmela Introduction

ta Sorel when it appeared in 1915-16. 2

Despite their obvious differences of style, Hulmels remarks

have, of course, much in common with Babbittls -- in the seme relation

that Pierre Lasserre holds to Baron Ernest Seillière. But ta us they

are more interesting. For Babbittls observations on ethics and politics

had led us only heltingly beck to religion -- to the feint abstraction

of Buddha IS "critical spirit. Il But Hulme is not frightened to link a

1
op.cit., pp. '5, 118.
2Twice in 1916 Eliot described the political ideas of Paul
Elmer More in what occasionally sounds like the dialect of T. E. Hulme.
He describes Morels pessi.ism; his attack on tldemocracyU as, like
romanticism, "the expression of impatience against all restraint."
("An American Oritic," New Statesman, VII. 168 (June 24, 1916) p. 284;
cf. "Mr. Leacock Serioue," New Statesman, VII. 17' (July 29, 1916)
pp. 404-405 (p. 405). Such phrases seem ta define Eliot himself
slight1y better than they do Paul Elmer More, who took pains ta dissociate
himself from an attack on something sa fervently believed in as 'democracyl.
po1itica1 state of mind direct1y with the acceptance or rejection of a

fundamenta1 Christian dogma. For Romanticism and Classicism are but

the reilpective fruits of the conflicting attitudes we examined earliert

the Humenist and the Religious. (And here Hu1me goes beyond Sorel, also,

for the importance of the Re1igioua Attitude to Hulme li e s not in ita

myth but in ita inte11ectua1 dogma~:

The Religious Attitude begins from IIthe impossibility l dis-

cussed ear1ier, of expressing the abso1ute values of religion and ethica

in terms of the essential1y relative categories of life",

IIIn the 1ight of these abso1ute values, man

himse1f is judged to be easentia11y 1imited and
imperfect. He is endowed with Original Sin. While
he can occasional1y accomp1ish acts which parteke
of perfection, he can never himself be perfecto
Certain secondary results in regard to ordinary
human action in society fo110w from this. A man ia
essentia11y bad, he can on1y accomplish anything of
value by discipline -- ethical end political. Order
is thus not mere1y negative, but creative and 1iber-
ating. Institutions are necessary.l Il

This can never be reconciled with the Humanist Attitude, Ile

refusa1 to believe any longer in the radical imperfection of ei ther ~ian

or Nature. 1I

"This develops logically into the belief that

1ife is the source and measure of a11 values, and
that man is fundamenta11y good •••• The prob1em of
evi1 disappears, the conception of sin loses a11
meaning. l,ian may be that bastard thing, 'a har-
monious charecter'. Under idea1 conditions, every-
thing of value will spring spontaneously from free
'personalities'. If nothing good seems to appear
spontaneously now, that is because of external re-
strictions and obstacles. Our political ideal should
be the removal of everything that checks the 'spontaneous
growth of personality'. Progress is thua possible, and
order ia a merely negative concept ion. 112

lop.Cit., p. 47.Quoted by Eliot, S.E., p. ,92.

20p.cit., pp. 47-48. Quoted by Eliot (incorrectly) againat the

younger disciples of the New Humanism, such as Norman Foerster. (S.E.,p. 452)
 According to Hu1me, this Humanist We1tanschauqng has under1ain

aIl European thought since the Renaissance, except for iso1ated and

antagoniatic individua1s (and "the greatest examp1e of such an individual

is, of course, Pascal. Il)1 In contrast, the Religious Attitude has not

been inte11ectua11y dominant since the Middle Ages; indeed, it is so far

outside the contemporary current that "even Hegel and Oondorcet are one,

from this point of view. u2 Neverthe1es8, Hu1me fee1s "that humanism is

breaking up, and that a new period ls commencing," with a return to

the Pasca1ian view of 1ife. Our curiosity is not satisfied as to this

new periode

IIr do not in the least imagine that humanism

is breaking up mere1y to make place for a new
mediaeva1ism. The on1y thing the new period will
have in common with mediaevalism will be the subordi-
nation of man to certain abso1ute va1ues."~

A11 thls talk of 'discipline' and 'subordination' certainly

soundl,a1itt1e ominous, if not prophetic. It reminds us of Sorel, defi-

nite1y, and of Wyndham Lewis too;4 and we remember uncomfortably the

praises with which Sorel turned to a young pro1etarian leader ca11ed

Mussolini, and Lewis to an obscure rhetorician ca11ed Hitler. Hulme, of

1 0p • Cit ., pp. 51, 56e "Everything that l s~~l1 say 1ater in

thes8 notes is to be regarded mere1y as a pro1egomen~~~o the reading of
Pascal, as an attempt to remove the difficu1ties of comprehension en-
gendered in us by the humanism of our period. Il (pp. 56-57)

2op •cit ., p. 257n. cf. pp. 54-56.

~op.Cit., p. 57

4whose post-war magazine Tyro a1so announced a second Renais-

sancel "We are at the beginning of a new epoch, fresh to it, the
babes of a new, and certain1y a better, day.1I Tyro, 1 (1922) p. 2.
course, never survived into a period of such commitments. 'Ile know that

he was militarist and anti-pacifist, and quoted Proudhon on the ethical

1
quelity of war. On the other hend, Hulme admitted that certain values

must be approved in the humanist legacy es well, such as "an honesty in

science, and a certain conception of freedom of thought and action which

2
will remain. 11

V/hich set of values would have predominated, if Hulme had lived

to judge the new totalitarianism? l anticipate my thesis now, and sug-

gest that to answer this question, we should have to know mo~e about

Hulme1s own "religious attitude"; whether, in particular, his talk of

Original Sin was 1nspired by love of God, or contempt of his fellow men.

Oertainly Hulmels writings leave us in doubt on this score; just as he

could talk of humility with arrogance, so he never sounds more heretical

than when he is pounding the table for dogme.'

l would suggest that Hulmels Ohristianity is perhaps not very

interesting, but that his philosophic approach to it is, for the free-

thinker, fascinating. Nor can we ignore it here, for it casts light on

INevertheless, l must object when }.Illss Nott caricatures Hulme

as an anti-intellectual mystic of the Nazi order, II redolent •••• of blood
and soil, Il "yearning for death. Il ( "Mr. Hulme 1s Sloppy Dregs, Il The
Emperorls Clothes, p. 94.)

2op.Cit., p. 58. This ambiguity is only reflected in his eval-

uation of Sorell IIThere are many who begin to be disillusioned with
liberal and pacifist democracy, while shrinking from the opposed ideology
on account of its reactionary associetions. To these people Sorel, a
revolutionary in economics, but classicel in ethics, may prove an emanci-
pator. 1I (oP.cit., p. 260)

'''Very few since the Renaissance have reelly understood the

dogme, certainly very few inside the Churches of recent yeers •••• They
all chatter about matters which are in comperison with this, quite secondary
notions -- God, Freedom, and Immortality. Il (op.cit., p. 71.)
problems of truth and certainty, which are as apparent to us in the

writings of Babbitt and Eliot, as they are in those of Hulme. Babbitt

leaves us somewhat unsatisfied when his argument for continuous moderation

and critical detachment (in his earlier books) is somehow eupplanted by

the urgent manifesto of firet principlee. Hulme, too, ie at first blance

confusing. He sounda like a complete relativist when he reminde us of

the "pseudo-categoriealt -- the fruit of our historic environment which

inevitably colour the humanists l view of the world as a whole. By what

preeumption, then, can he exempt his own "religious attitude" as the one

outlook whoee categories are not "pseudo," but real?l

Such "absolute lrnowledge" would presumably be of less interest

to us moderns if it proceeded from a vision of Christ on the mount. But

its sources are the philosophical gospels of modern epistemological rela-

2
tivism; and Hulme himself is an inte11ectually-1apsed relativist. He who1ly

accepts the distinction between Iscientific l , or technica1ly-verifiable, or

Itobjective" philosophy, and onels ultimate Weltanschauung a the distinction

by which Dilthey had drained all religious Idealiam of ita supposed objectivity.;

1 11 l hold, quite coldly and intellectually as it were, that the way of

thinking about the world and man, the conception of sin, and the categories
which make up the religious attitude, are the true categories and the right way
of thinking." op.cit., p. 70.

21oc.cit., p. 41

;Giving ferm te the crlS1S in non-empirical philesophy sinee

Hegela "Die Relativitat jeder Art von menschlicher Auffassung ist das
letzte Wort der historischen Weltanschauung, alles im ~ozess f11easend,
nichts b1eibend." Di1they, quoted in Bochenski, Europaische Philosophie
der Gegenwart, p. 129. cf. Bergson.
Aa Hulme points out, his distinction between "Scientific philo-
SOphy" and "Weltanschauung!! was more c10sely suggested by the phenomenolo-
gical approach of Edmund Husserl ("Philosophie als strenge \'iissenschaft, n
(next page)
Weltanschauung is for Hulme quite independent of ordinary philosophie

certainty; nevertheless, onele Weltanschauung ia not only ineluctable,

but an urgent field of speculation, for it deals II with a11 those questions,

the answers to which used to be designated as lfisdom. lIl Since the Renailil-

sance, however, philosophy has warred only over its technical eomponents;

and this is a scandal, for it is here that lobjectivityl should induee

agreement. Meanwhile, the last chapters of the philosophy-books reveal

the naked man, telling us of the world as he really thinks or feels it to

be. In these ultimate pictures, aIl the technical equipment of the phil-

osopher, hia armour which so impresses the layman, is of no avail: we

see him there as II naked, perfectly human." And since he has taken so much

trouble to come to it, lIyou may assume that he regards the final picture

of the world he gives ~s satisfaetory.u 2 It is in these final satisfying

pictures, says Hulme, IIthat there is a family resemblance between a11

philosophers since the Renaissance:"

IIThough the pictures are as different as can be,

yet curiously enough they are all satisfactory for
approximately the same reasons. The final pictures they
present of man's relation to the world aIl conform to
the seme probably unconscious standards or canons of what
is satisfying •••• we may say that the various systems
agree where they might have bean expected to differ --
and dissgree where they ought to have been imparsonal. u3

fn. cont' d.
Logos, 1911; cited in Hulme, loc.cit., p. 18). He also refers us to two sources
which were important ph,i losophic influences on Eliot & the Gegenstandtheorie of
Meinong, and the Werttheorie of Max Scheler (whose temporary religious interests
had not at that time become explicit). l know of no good English exposition of
all these developments, but cf. Werner Brock, An Introduction to Modern German
Philosophy, (Cambridge, 1935) Ohap. I.

l 't ., p.
op.c~ 24.
2
op.cit., pp. 79-80; cf. pp. 14, 15.

)op.cit., p. 16
 These canons of satisfaction, Hulme alleges, are quite uncon-

scious: the proof of this lies in the humanist shallowness of their

expreslilion:

IIWhen Oroce, for exemple, finishes up with the

final world-picture of the 'legitimate' mystery of
infinite progress and the infinite perfectibility of
~ -- l at once want to point out that not only ie
this not true, but, what is even more important, if
true, such a shallow conception would be quite unworthy
of the emotion he feels towards it. nl

The humanists, says Hulme, will deny the validity of this la st

critical judgment; but that is only because they have never recognized
2
their own unconscious criticism on this leveI. But the satisfactorinese

lop.Cit., p. 17. On pp. 29-)0, Hulme makes the identical

criticism of the philoeophy of Bertrand Russell: Il After the remerkably
clear exposition of the ecientific element, one expects but doea not find
a similarly clear explanation of the other element. Wh&t Mr. Russell has
to sayon the subject in liA Free 14an's Worshipll is so extremely commonplace,
and is expressed in such a painful piece of false and sickly rhetoric,
that l have not patience to deal with it here."
Even Husserl himself reflects this liIame "uncritical humanismlll
liA Weltanschauung can only spring from the highest possible development
of personality." (Quoted p. )0).
l think that any person who has endeavoured to acquire a 'his-
torie sense' must agree that the critical enquiry of Many philosophers
seems to lapse in their last chapters. As a student, l remember my own
impatience with the Principia Ethica of G. E. lo'loore. There a Most fasti-
dious and painsteking destruction of the II naturelist :fallacy" in ethics,
is followed by a sweeping exposition of aesthetieism; in which (whetaer
or not .it is painful and siekly) the following statement is at · least
historically absurd: "By far the Most valuable thinga, which we can know
or imagine, are certain states of consciousness, which may be roughly
described as the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of
beautiful objects. No one, probebly, who has esked himself the question,
has ever doubted that personal affection end the appreciation of what ia
beautiful in Art or Nature, are good in themselves." (G. E. lvloore, Principia
Ethica (Oambridge, 1929) p. 188)

2Just as 'naturalism' (or 'positivism'), when it denies the

possibility of metaphysics, is itself under the influence of an "uncon-
Bcious metaphyeic ll - - one which takes physical science as the only possible
type of real knowledget op.cit., p. 21.
as well as the truth of such final conclusions must be questioneda in

other words,

"These canons of satisfaction, which are the

results of an entirely uncritical humanism, should
be subject to a critique. This ls a special subject,
having no connection with philosophy.'Il

Concerning this Critique of Satisfactions, we have, of course,

only Hulme's manuscript notes. He hints as to their subject-matter:

"very roughly, the Sphere of Religion." Its starting point is "the kind

of discussion you find in Pascal" (citing the fragment on divertissement

and the human condition): "Always the subject is the 'Vanity of desire'

but it is not desire merely as a psychological entity.'12

About the method of such a Critique, Hulme has still less te

say: perhaps because (as Eliot once wrote of criticism) "there is no

methed except to be very intelligent."' Certainly the analogy with

literary criticism presents itselfj for whst we are asked to judge is

not so much the "truth" or "falsity " as the "unworthiness" of certain

statements.
4 This too reminds us of the formula which Eliot continuously

describes as the basis of true insight in criticism, and likewise in

wisdom, and in religion -- namely, the discipline of the intellect by the

emotions, and of the emotions by the intellect.

Clearly, the possibility of suc~lterior judgments will be

sharply contested. "The modern world," says Eliot, "separates the

l
op. cit., p. 17

2 op • cit., p. 22

'"The Perfect Oritic," s. ~'/., p. 10

40r , as we saw in the case of Russell, the painfulness and

sicklinsss.
 ,...

intellect and the emotions"; and we remember that this judgment was made

of political scientists in particular. 1 If a Oritique of Satisfactions

is possible; th en this much of the religious argument seems to have

been granted: that questions of philosophy, including political

philosophy, can no longer be divorced from the question of our reli-

gion (whatever th et may be). Indeed, becauae of the intellectual

cnaracter of this Oritique, we are returned to Eliot's contention (so

different from the same words in Bruneti~re) thet politics cen on1y

be underatood in the light of ethics, and ethics in the light of

theology.2 And this is to refute a very wide-spreed state of mind,

which Eliot calls Liberalism.

Whatever we want to think about Hulme's Ohristianity, it is

clearly to a very high degree 'intellectual' (far more so ev en than

Eliot'e). In thie it is very different from either the irrational

'mythe' of Sorel; or that aesthetic and regressive Ohristianity which

Lasserre described among the later romantics.~ What appealed to Hulme

was neither the myth of Ohristianity, nor the sentiment, but the dogma.

11 l hold the religious conception of ultimate

values ta be right, the humanist wrong. From the
nature of things, these categories are not inevitable,
like the categories of time and space, but are equally
objective. In speaking of religion, it is to this

lE.A.N., p. 121

2e.g. I.O.S., p. 6" E.A.~j ., p. 116

'liOn essayait de se faire à Paris l' ~me ingènue et ignorante

des vierges de Fra Angelico ou des moujiks de TolstoI." Pierre Las-
serre, Le romantisme franiais, (Paris, 1907) p. 542.
 level of abstraction that l wish to refer. l
have none of the feelings of nostalgia, the rev-
erence for tradition, the desire to recapture
the sentiment of Fra Angelico, which seems to
animate most modern defenders of religion. All
that seems to me to be bosh. What is important,
is what nobody seems to realise -- the dogmas like
that of Original Sin, which are the closest expres-
sion of the categories of the religious attitude.
That man ie in no sense perfect, but a wretched
creature, who can yet apprehend perfection. It is
not, then, that l put up with the dogma for the
sake of the sentiment, but that l may possible
swallow the sentiment for the sake of the dogme."l

In other words, Hulme like Pascal comes to submit his intellect in a

commitment to dogme, but this ia only as the fruit of, and not as a

den ial of, intellectual criticism and enquiry -- Rien n'est plus conforme

~ la raison gue ce d~saveu de la raison. We remember that Bertrand

Russell would have us believe that aIl dogmatic religion is unexamined,

while his own scepticism is criticell according to Hulme, things to-day

are exactly the opposite way round.

Yet, one need hardly add, Hulme also tends to write with a

style that is categorie rather than reflective. At times he sounds like

the mirror image of the humanism he detested, especially when he trumps

the badness of human nature. What Pascal had stressed was not just

the wretchedness, but the grandeur et mis~re de l'homme -- l'homme n'est

ni ange ni b~te. (Similarly, Hulme's outright rejection of Progress is

in the romantic language of a Schopenhauer, while "that bastard thing,

Peraonality" is one of the intriguing paradoxes which underlie the

entire Christian tradition.) AIl of these deficienciea can perhaps

IHulme, op.cit., p. 70-71. Quoted by Eliot (incorrectly),

S.E., pp. 452-45~.
 ,-

be summarized in a still deeper Pascalien truth: Qu'il y e loin de la

connaissance de Dieu à l'aimer. This sentence sug~ests what Eliot

has called "a great gulf fixed": we are not sure whether Hulme stands

on the bank of Pascal, or that of his disciples among the revolutionary

syndicaliste. Is Original Sin, for example, to be dogme beceuse it is

true, or true beceuse it is dogme? We suspect that Hulme wes by nature

a heretic rather than an orthodox; he merely heppened to live in an

age when 'orthodoxy' wes now humanisme

Nevertheless, I hope I can show the importance of his "6ritique

of Satisfactions," at least in the understanding of Eliot's political

thinking. The 'humanist', unreconciled, will probably ask for politicel

conclusions that are more practical and exoteric: and hère there ia the

Hulme who is quoted by Niebuhr. Michael Roberts has summarized his

message thusi

"Democracy and the democtatic process are

bound to fail if they do not rest on the religious
or tragic outlook, but within the framework of a
relig ious polity whose economy reflected the moral
principles it professed, a form of democracy would
be not only possible but also necessary, for democ-
racy is the form of government that recognizes most
openly the responsibility of the individuel and the
fact that all government rests upon the consent of
the governed. Progress towards such an end is not
impossible ."1

These observations may cast some light, not only on the politi-

cal message of T. E. Hulme, but also upon the ideas of Roberts' other

master, T. S. Eliot.

1
Michael Roberts, T. E. Hu1me, (London, 19;8) pp. 252-25;.
 'UI

OHAP'I'ER III

THE YOUNG CRITIO

"Almost half of mankind is malicious,

and that half speaks for the other, which
cannot read."
Z~lide, Portrait

The political ideas of Babbitt, More, and T. E. Hulme are

outlined in specifie essays if not in entire books, BO that the task

of summarising and presenting them is more or less atraightforward. It

will be more difficult to order and present the political ideas of T. S.

Eliot, for these must be searched for here and there through his entire

prose writings. It is true that two of his later and most famous books

deal primarily with socio-political problems: The Idea of a Ohristian

Society (1940) and Notes towards the Definition of Oulture (1948).

These, however, are so pithily written, and with such suppression of

Eliot's more entertaining qualities of eristic, that it is difficult at

first to detect the amount of serious thinking, over a period of years,

that has gone into their composition. The books, in fact, are dull.

They are apt to leave no impression on any mind, even sympathetic, that

has not previously decided to study them with care.

The saroe cannot be said for his earlier books and periodical

articles. These are always memorable, if only for his ability to shock

us, with a zest for paradox which leads him into dangers of mere eccentri-

city. The books which most concern us begin with For Lancelot Andrewes.
Essays on Style and arder. (1928), For in the preface of this book

many of Eliot's more bohemian devotees were appalled ta read, for the

first time, that his genera1 poir.t of view wes "clessicist in litereture,

royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion." l

Their horror and disappointment was only confirmed by Thoughts

after Lambeth (1931), After Strange Gods (1934), and Essays Ancient and

Modern (1936)2 Theae books described decadent tendencies in politics,

education and literature as due to the declining forces of Christianity

and the prevalence of Liberalism, individualism, and the free cult of

peraonality. But E1iot ' s two chief political books mentioned above are

not, at first 9lance, sa provocative. One detecta a laboured effort to

talk in the political vernacular, and ta deal more kindly with the popu-

lar prejudices of the day. In the end we cannat specify his political

ideas under clear and facile headings, defined solely in terms of the

acceptance or rejection of such popular catch-words as Liberalism, or

authoritarianism. The "ismsl! will not adequately describe after all,

and this ia the first indication that we may be dealing with an intelligent

politica1 thinker.'

Eerhaps the wideat reaction to Eliot's new political interests

was thet the man who was once the prophet of the "lost generation ll was

entering a state of mental decrepitude: he was now either irresponsible,

lloc. cit., pp. viii

2A new edition, with certain substitutions, of the essaya in

"For Lancelot Andrewes."

'On two occasions, Eliot has regretted his classicist-royalist-

ang1o-catholic profession as being IItoo eas11y quotable," CE.A.M. p. 135),
and Il injudicious," (After Strange Gods, p. 28.)
a fool, or a crackpot. To maintain this theory, many of Eliotls eret-

while admirers were forced to detect a sudden reversaI in his whole

point of view. This has led to a widely accepted myth (not confined

to his adversaries) that Eliot, in his work, both his poetry and his prose,

underwent a sudden volte-face about the time" in 1927, when Eliot first
l
became a communicant in the Church of England.

Eliot has amueingly dispelled such criticisms in "Thoughts after

Lambeth." 2 But if ideas breed their oppoeites, even more so do prejudices.

The myth of the voltt-face has led to the myth of an Eliot whose mental

growth was somehow fixed at the age of 22.' But E1iot l s political views

can on1y be understood in the same light as his religious or his poetical

vision: like the world they describe, they exhibit a fundamental "unitY

that is always changing." For exemple, Albert Mordell takes pa iDS to

prove that from 1916 to 1918 Eliot was a "Free-thinker" j but the texts

he cites prove only that Eliotls interest in religion wes already profound,

and that his anti-modernist reaction was already eVident. 4 They show that

lAlbert ~iordell, for examp1e, thinks he has proven that in 1916

Eliot was a "Freethinker", T. S. Eliotls Deficiencies as a Social Critic,
p. 25·
2S •E ., p. ;58
;The widespread acceptance of these two myths has, l feel,
spoilt much of the criticism of the eariier poems. "The Waste Land," in
particular, has suffered from presentation either as the apostasy of _the
lost generation, or ae a publication of the Christian gospel.
4Albert Mordell, T. S. Eliotls Deficiencies as a Social Critic,
pp. 2;-25.
 IOLf

~liot ~"1 rc:él.ù:,;

is oL.1. _ sE-v8relcr cr_~+·ic"'.L' oJ,."· t,l"~ l ·" t~v t;;' l"r.,;t""
u v -L U ,_ 'o.,~ ~. ,l, 1
U ..... .." , ' l' " Yll' 51'. ::c.1ready

he sLm:s .:;:rI interest in l'eo-'l.lhordi3Ll. 2 Dut tltouO~ ~liot' s intellectual

develo;:X;l~nt is cle.l'l~' ;Jrepotrin.': hir,l l'or a conversion, lie suspect t; :at

wha.t [ l i; L... s rCl'6rreu to ,,"s the 'uoment of cr~rstéi.llizQ.tion' Las not :,:et

occurreu. 3 ,si.lliilarl;y, lIe l'cel certain tL<:tt ":';liot '13 politic;.;.l views (ire

alr3i.id: c ini'orr.lcù by tLe llistoric<:..l perspectives 01' Lcnry AùaJ:,s, Charles

.;!J.iot Lorton, anù Irvin,t; i; ..tLitt. liut his l'art;:; expressions of :mch Cà.

pers[)ective <J.l'0 entirely piülosophiciiot1 Ol.nu abstr ... ct; tb;;~r arc painstakint:ly

unrelated to tlle problcns 01' the uuy.

1 Or the at ·~.elilpt to equüe Christianity with the precepts of

mora1ity 41S exhibite<l to t:le incliviqu..l conscience: "it folloHs almost
inevitab1y •••• that conscio.::nce \vill consist in thü usu<11 structure of
prejudices of tLe enli~;hteneu Lddc.le Cl.:l.SS0S." 'l'rue, such a religion
l'Till be "casier" to bcli0ve in: "Certain oaints ::~.vc îounü tbe follovd.nf:
ol' Clœist ver;,,- llarù, tut Lodern r:Lethods have :ù'.cilit..teù everytr.ing. Yet
l :;lk not sure, Dl'ter r u;.win!; I.lodern theolof;Y, thOi.t the pale Ga1ilean r~... s
conquereci." (iliot, La review ofil "Conscience anc. Christ If, b~T 1~..;.stint:5
fur.S{ld."ll, Internutional Journal of ...;;thics, ;-c~II. 1 (Oct. 1916) pp. 111-112,
(p. 112) ).
Lordell, Hho i~ .. fair t::xamplc oi tiit:: liOi.lùer·..an-Julius 5cIlO01 of
thou[ ht, "i.l:lpishlyll quotes tLis l<.:.s'(, éJentcnce as prool' of' Liberë.l .L' ree-
thinldn(~, loc.cit.

2 (Al'eviei./ cf) liA : ...mual oi' Loù'el'n :':;cholastic ?hilosphy. Il By

Cardinal :L.erciel' a:.nc.i Other Profes;:;ors of the lii:he:c Institute of Philosophy,
~ou-va,i,J\,.International Journal oi' LthicG, ~::.xVIII, l (Get. 1917) pp. 137-132.
" 1'40 etud~nt of contelilpOrOl,r;r i:biloso:;};.y Cél.n ... ù'ol'ci to ne,slect the neo-
schol[l~tic bover"ent since leh·." (p. 137).

3 In his revi:;;~ i of "ConsciùDce ..nu. Ghrist, Il \,loc. cit., p. 111),

he in app<!rt;ntl~' not intel'e5teù in tbe idea 01' ;.t pcrsonal God. L..tei', he
sugi.';ests it is possible tL ..t "religion, ÏlOi'ICVCr poor our lives woulu be
without it, is only one i'orm of' sa:.tisfacticn ah,On{~ otLcro, rOl.tJ.lt:r tL ...n the
cull.d.natinc: satisfaction oi' all oatisù.. ction5. Il "li.
ravie'.l 0:':') If Lens Cr<. tLtrix, Il
b~ ·.,illii.:w.,''''116i:i~;le, Intcl'n<4.tional Journ~l of Ethics, ::~VII. 4 \.July 1~17)
pp. 542-543 ,p. 543). Mu those who ar·c uware oî ..::J.iot' s l::..ter views on the
s .. cr4::~ent oi' J ; "';J'riid.[~e, ,ta Si:'y nothint; of Ifc::'vili~é.:.tion, Il will be ';.Kused by
his oLservations on tl'(;; i'olk.lu:,'s oi' the Shan è)t~tes: 1l11.ec:,::nt British Feriod-
ic ...l Literature in ithics, Il Internationéll Journal of ~thics, ::::VIII. 2 (Jan. 1918)
pp. 270-277 (p. 276).
 Therefore it is interesting to atudy the young critic of the

Sacred Wood, who had abandoned America for the house-parties given by

Bloomsbury and Lady Ottoline Morell. Indeed, we shall only understand the

reasons for what ls included in his political theory, and what ia ignored,

if we can diacover the motivations which drove this aloof, aristocratic,

and slightIy 8upercilious "highbrow" to such a tedious and practical pursuit.

To the Eliot of 1919, even to moralise aeemed a lapse of urbanity; to say

nothing of expressing a political interest. His delights were in Petronius

and Rerondas; his msster was Montaigne; while Pascal at this time ssemed

"solemn and orotund. ,,1 At this time, in short, his conception of "civiliza-

tion" wae, like that of his then intimate friend Olive Bell, French rather

than Engliah. The glittering age of Marivaux and Louis X5l wae "perhapa

not the greatest, but certainly the most civilised period of French art and

letters;" for it was one in which "moraliste are replaced by observere .,,2

Under the influence of de Gourmont~' Rivi~re, and Benda, he became far more

obseesed with the need of the critie to remain Iidisinterested," than

"moralists ll like Arnold, Babbitt, or More had ever been. More is soundly

l"Marivaux,1I Art and Letters, II. 2 (Spring, 1919) pp. 80-85

(p. ~, ). By 1929 we find Eliot admitting that Montaigne is II ra ther too
civilised for me ll (IIThe Geneais of Philosophie Prose: Bacon and Hooker,1I
Listener, l. 24 (June 26, 1929) pp. 907-908 (p. 908»

2l1Marivaux,1I loc.cit., p. 81. Olive Bell deacribed this age in

detail as one of the three most civiliJed in history, in a book which was
wide1y-read aa the testament of Bloomabury aestheticiem: Oivilization,
(London, 1928).

'De Gourmont1e insistence on hard-cut preciee vision without

comment, and the avoidance of vague literary abstraction, provided the
c1assicist leitmotifs for the ao-celled Imagiet movement, and was taken
up by Ezra Pound under the influence of T. E. Hulme.
reproved for his treatment of literature as a "criticism of life", 1 this

ia an illustration of the universal wleh to turn literature into aomething

elee. Arnold himeelf, who gave the word "dieinterested ll its firet run,

le now criticised for not being "dieinterested" enough: uArnold, in his

destruction, went for game outside of the literary preserve altogether,

much of it political game untouched and inviolable by ideas." 2

But even the authora who browae in the Sacred Wood"are ~Ol~TI~OL ~oo~)
Upolitical game ll i and the moet disintereated of critica in observing them

cannot avoid political queations altogether. Informing the whole book

(as in Benda)' is a concern for the decadence of the cultural standards in

contemporary European civilisation, and a feeling that that urare , unpopular,

and desirable" thing, seneibility, can only be developed at a distance

. 4
from the market-place. With auch a coneciousness of conflict, it is

hardly surprising that Eliot echoed the minatory tones of Arnold and

Babbitt. For the work of Arnold, Eliot aoon conceded, must be done again

1
~W., p. ~~. cf. Preface to the 1928 edition, p. ix.

2S•W., Introduction, p. xL ' . Needlese ta add, such Olympian

detachment ca lIed for a reproval of tae earlier French as well as
English critics. By "intelligent Briticism,1I aaid Eliot in 1918, III
do not mean Sainte-Beuve •••• or the political-ethical-religious writing
of Bruneti~re or the highly auperior Extension Lecturea of M. Faguet. 1I
~'observations,1I Egoist, V. 5 (May 1918) pp. 69-70 (p. 69)

::r;
/cf. ~ Belphegor:
'" essai sur l 1 esthet~gue d e la preaen
i. '" t e soc~e
. 't e'
franiaise, (Paris, 1919) Eliot: "Much of his analysie of the decadenc~
of contemporary French society could be applied to London"(S.W. p. 40)

4S• :11. p. 14.

Eliot later obaerved that "the number of persona
in any generation capable of being greatly atirredintellectually ie
always and everywhere very very small. lI (IIThoughts after Lambeth,"
S • E • p. '55).
 tO ,

in every generation: "The combat may have truces but never a peace. nl

Even at this early stage in his thinking, Eliot seems to have

become aware of that problem of "civilization" which later informs the

l\"otes towards ~ Definition of Oul ture. In 1919, to the fresh arrival

from America, "civilization" at firet seemed to be uniquely the matter of

rare individual refinement and perfection that wae described by his Blooms-

bury friend Clive Bell. 2 But his Babbitt-like conscience eeems to have

reasserted itself almost immediately -- with the awareness of an intimate

interdependence between the culture of the few and that of the many.

It was true, firstly, as Babbitt had insisted, that a decline of cultural

standards at the top would be followed by a deterioration of thinking

througp the community as a whole.' But the opposite dependence is equally

lliFrancis Herbert Bradley," S.E., p. 411

2The following sentence not only reflects, but implicitly criti-

cizes, Bell's conception of 'civilization' l "Since Rousseau, the flood
of Berbarism has left very few peaks. It ie difficult to be civilised
alone. 1I (nMarivEjux," loc.cit., p.SI.)

'UThe Greek language, and the Latin language, and therefore,

we eay, the English language, are within our lifetime passirig through
a critical periode The 01as8ics have, during the latter part of the
nineteenth century and up to the present moment, lost their place es a
pillar of the social and political system -- such as the Eateblished
Church still is. If they are to survive, to justify themselves es
litereture, es an element in the European mind, as the foundation for
the litereture we hope to create, they are very badly in need of persons
capable of Myex~Unding them. We need som~ne -- not a member of the Church
f
of Rome, anu p eferably not a member of the Chur ch of England -- to ex-
plein how vital a metter it ia, if Ariatotle may be said to have been
a moral pilot of Europe, whether we she 11 or sha11 not drop that pilot."
(S.I., pp.65:~; cf. "Oleasics in English,U Foetry (Chicago) IX. 2
(Nov. 1916) pp. 101-104)
true; for the culture of no class in society can develop in abstraction

from the culture of all the other classes; in a well-articulated and

healthy society, the culture of each class will be neither too uniform

nor too distinct. 1

Bell'e Oivilization, in contraet, was wholly individualistic;

it seemed wholly to ignore the culture of that clase whom he called the

"slaves. /12 Perhaps because of his background, Eliot could not keep up

such a patrician unconcern. Vie see a parallel to this in his protracted

debate with himself over the nature of criticism& for at times he must

admit, not only that literature ia in some sense a 'criticism of life', but

that

"The various attempts (e.g. such as in Babbitt and

~lore)to find the fundamental axiome behind both good
literature and good life are among the most inter esting
'experiments l of criticism in our time./I~

lliMarianne Moore," Dial, LXXV. 6 (Dec. 192,3) pp. 594-597 (p. 595)&
"Fine art i8 the refinement, not the antithesis, of popular art." Renee
the death of the music-hall artist Marie Lloyd was also, just like the
dropping of Aristotle, lia significant moment in English Ristory.1I
( S • E., p • 420).
2
Bell, Oivilization, p. 177. Eliot's review of his friend's book,
which tended ta isolate Icivilizatian l wholly from such more cammon and
inferior manifestations as religion and morality, was far gentler than
might have been expected. Yet he criticizes Bellis civilization for its
abstractnesa -- it ia an "empty shell, a kind of categorical imperative";
and adda that Bell "ia inclined to confound the civilisation of a race or
an epoch with that of an individual." ("Oivilisation: 1928 Model," Oriterion,
VIII. ,30 (Sept. 1928) pp. 161-164 (p. 16,3)
~IIExperiment in Oriticism, Il Boolanan, LXX. ~ (Nov. 1929) pp. 225-2~~
(p. 2,30) Even in 1922, Eliot could write that "Whatever value there may
be in Dada depends on the extent to which it ia a moral criticiam of French
literature and French life. All first-rate poetry is occupied with morality:
this i8 the lesaon of Baudelaire. More than any poet of his time, Baudelaire
was aware of what most mattered: the problem of good and evil. 1I "The
Lesson of Baudelaire,n Tyro, l (1922) p. 4
 loG,

His literary criticism, in short, came back to the individual problem of

morality, and beyond morality to religion. l

We see an analogous return from his early aloofness and idealized

intellectual detachment, towards the social and political problems of

culture. Once hie 'classicism l had seemed entirely a-political, like

that of de Gourmont or Rivière, a concern merely for "the firmnees, the

true coldness, the hard coldness of the genuine artist. 1I2 And one might

have expected this seme a-political detachment from Eliot's new journal,

the Criterion, whose function, as he ennounced it, wee "to maintain the

autonomy and dieinterestedness of literature. lI ) But hie growing con-

sciousness of the wider implications of literature led him, and the Criterion,

into the exposition of a classicism that was, just like Hulme's, explicitly

ethical, religious, and political as welle The successive Commentaries

l Until by 1935 Eliot could write that "Literary criticism should

be completed by criticism from a definite ethical and theological stand-
point." ("Religion and Literature," E.A.M., p. 92)

211American Literature," Athenaeum, 4643 (Apr. 25, 1919) pp. 236-

3 UThe Function of a Literary Review. u Criterion, l, 4 (July 1923)

p. 421. This statement wes confirmed in his Commentary of July 1924
(Oriterion, II, 8, pp. 371-5)' "There has been a growing and alerming
tendency in our time for literature to be something else; to be the ex-
pression of an attitude 'toward life', or of an attitude toward religion
or of en attitude toward society, or of various humenitarian emotions. 1I
Such stetements are not in themselvea contradictory to the notion of an
author or critic with political idees, but they do suggest that the euthor
or critic should evoid involving his criticism with his political ideas.
One recalls that Arnold himself had begun hie criticism with the rule of
IIdisinterestedness," and an attack on the prevalence of "Whig" or "Toryll
reviewe. For all his game-poeching, Arnold remeined more or less feithful
to the ideal of "disinterestedness," which by 1927 Eibiot had transcended
if not ebandoned. (' . .
play more and more eS8uredly with the notion of religious end politicel

commitment. By 1926, the ideel of detachment lS forgotten: though a

review should not present e programme, it should stand for a tendency,

and the modern tendency is 'classicism' -- as expounded, not only by

Benda (Belph6gor), but also by Sorel (Réflexions sur la violence),

Maurras (L'Avenir de l'intelligence) Hulme (Sueculations), Maritain

(RGflexions sur l'intelligence) end Bebbitt (Democrecy end Leadership).l

And so we find Eliot publishing in the Criterion such works

as "The Defence of the West," by Henri Massis, end "The Restoration of

the Reason," by Ernst Robert Curtius; as well as reviews by Catholic

intellectuels such as Ronald Knox and M. O. D'Arcy, or disciples of Hulme

such 6S Iviichael Roberts and \~. A. Thorpe. And as his literary, religious,

ethicel, and political views more steedily illuminate each other, we are

not surprised ta find the editor himself bending with his clessicist
2
detachment ta such immediate problems as slum clearance. Eliot has

been led back es inexorably as Arnold and Babbitt to the study of politics.

In the following quotation he has lost his Olympien unconcern, if not

all of the intellectuel hauteur from which such condescension wes possible:

lllThe Idee of a Literery Review," Criterion, IV. 1 (Jan. 1926)

pp. 1-6 (p.,) To this list of texts, Eliot later added lII'he Art of
Being Ruled, by Wyndham Lewis. liA Oommentary" Oriterion IV. , (June,
1926) pp. 417-420 (p. 420)
l suspect thet Eliot's professed interest in Sorel mey have been
only e tribute to his belief in T. E. Hulme. In 1924 Eliot had confused
Georges with Albert Sorel, the learned historian and brother of the syndi-
calist: liA Oommentery," Criterion, II. 7 (April, 1924) pp. 231-2,5(p.l.ll).
2
liA Commentery,U Criterion, VI. 6 (Dec. 1927) pp. 481-483 (f'.~91).
 "It is a trait of the present time that every
Iliteraryl review worth its salt has a political
intereat; indeed that only in the literary reviews,
which are not the conscientious organs of superannuated
politiCil oreeds, are their (sic) any living political
ideas."

The man of letters, we are now told,2 ia to-day compelled to study other

subjects in order ta disentangle his own. Intellectual life cannot but

be affected by developments such as the Russian Revolution, the trans-

formation of Italy, the condemnation of 11 Action Francaise. uAll of these

•
events compel us to consider the problem of Liberty and Authority, both

in politics and in the organization of speculative thought. Il Eliot con-

cludes with a note of perhaps justifiable condescension, that "politics

has become too serious a matter to he left to ... politicians.";

This long description of the genesis of Eliotts political

interests, should serve to remind us throughout this thesis that his

thinking begins with a concern for culturel the same problem with which

luA Commentary,U Criterion, V. ; (June, 1927) pp. 28;-286 (p. 28;)

Significantly, in this Oommentary Eliot firet notices a work by his
future friend and aesociate V. A. Demant: Ooall a challenge to the
national conscience (London, 1927). This pamphlet was written by seven
intellectuals of the monetary reform movement who oalled themselves uTha
Ohandos Group." At this time, apparently, Eliot knew notèJ.ing of theml
"They would seem to be a kind of Socialiet Ohristiane. Il But "Coal 18
a book which everyone ought to read, for its insistance (sic) that
economics and politics, in their most exact sense, de serve the attention
of people who believe in the necessity for a severe spiritual askesis
and the discipline and deve10pment of the soul" (~Political Theorists,"
Criterion, VI. l (July, 1927) pp. 69-7; (p. 7;)

2A Oommentary, Criterion, VI. 5 (Nov. 1927) pp. ;85-;88.

(p. ;86).
it end.. Authors like Laski have had the quite different motivation of

humanitarianism and social justice; and Eliot'e neglect of, and apparent

indifference to/such issues has seemed in their eyea a form of with-

drawal. Actually Eliot'e direction has been one not of withdrawal but

of commitmentl but the political probleme which Eliot has selected as

urgent are, needless to say, not the same as Professor Laskils. For

exemple, in 1927, almost the entire British press was aroused in protest

against the Pjudicial murder ll of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. On this

question the Criterion had nothing to say. Instead, Eliot was asking

for notice to be taken of two bills lying before the House of Oommons.

One concerned the protection of wild birdsj the other, the preservation

of certain London Squares and Enclosures. l

The Criterion was never the New Stateeman, nor tried to be.

But Eliot was discussing issues of comparable eocial importance:

such as the dangers both of nationalism and of internationalism, the

growing power of the managerial class, the disaster of economic anarchy

and the dangers of purely leconomic l planning, and the significance for

Britain of new ideological forces, oommuni sm , Fascism, and the Action

Fran'jaise.

We have seen that Eliot was worried for the future of civili-

zation, meaning by this word something considerably more complex than a

society of well-fed and well-policed individuals, living peacefully to-

gether in comfortable houses. And we have suggested that his growing

lllA Commentary," Criterion, VI. ~ (Sept. 1927) pp. 19~-196

(p. 196)
awareness of the need for political commitment developed in like pace

and manner to his need for religious commitment. This may help to explain

why certain problems received so much attention, and others were almost

ignored, in Eliot's first political "Neo-classicism."

It is more natural to take objection to what appear as the

personal rather than the political deficiencies of Eliot's early alO.of-

ness. He seems to show an anti-humanitarian bies, both in his poetry

and in his political tho,:ght; and this may aeem to derive from the cos-

mopolitan1a deficiency in love, rather than the Ihumanitarianls l defi-

ciency in intellect. Certainly, this condeacension towards his fellow

men -- "the petrified product which the public school pours into our

illimitable suburbs" l - 1&1 very llrominent in Eliot1s earlier writings;

no German Romantic ever bewailed more soundly the folly of communication,

when "imbeciles" prevail on both sides of the Atlantic. 2 l suspect that

Eliot himself must have learnt to regret euch remarke; through the period

of his conversion, his soul eeeme to have found more of its charity, and

hie intellect more of its humility. Even in 1920, however, Eliot's con-

tempt was not directed at man created in the image of God; but at the

modern degenerate middle-clsss Englishman, created in the image of a

supposedly decadent culture. Eliot showe little sympathy for the massee

about him, still le69 for the 'democracy' in which they found their

lllThe Romantic Englishman," Tyro, 1. (1922) p. 4

211London Letter," Dial, LXX. 4 (April, 1921) pp. 448-45~

(p. 448): "If these letters eucceed in being written with any com-
petence, l am almost certain to become an object of international
execration."
 "..

self-respect, and none at aIl for the middle-class culture, or

"civilization, \1 which had made them what they were.

But this disaffection for 'democracy' and bourgeois civiliza-

tion was no private whim of Eliot's. There wes an uneasy ill humour to

be felt in the England of his daYi which among his fellow 'intellectuals'

was an endemic irritat.ion. In the Britain of the ear1y 1920's, we must

remember, it wes somethin& of a journe.listic commonplace that the old

aristocratie classes, after a century of graduaI decline, had bean

1
virtually expropriated and indeed exterminated by the First World ~r.

European society, moreover, had experiemced an unprecedented upheaval,

a disorganisation in which the future of art and letters wes at least

prob1amatic. This view was not merely held by conservatives who faIt

that the core of the old society they believed in had disappeared for

ever. Labour and Fabian propaganda echoed the belief in the "death" of

the old civi1i&ation, and called upon members of all classes to collab-

orate in the "construction of a new Civilisation. H2

But faith in the "new civilisation" seemed to be confined to

the official propagandists of the 1eft, and to the inevitable homage

paid by politicians and popular press to the new status guo. From 1918

to 1926, if we are to believe Professor Joad, "the Weltanschauung of the

period was one of disi11usionment"l~ certainly we detect this disil-

1For a popular post-war &tatement of these ideas, see C.F.G.

Masterman, England after the War (London, 1922) cf. Douglas Goldring "'rhe
Nineteen-Twentie&,'1 Chap. II. '-

2vd. Manifesto of the Labour Party Conference (1920). Webb,

Beatrice and Sidney, Labour and the New Social Order.

~C. E. M. Joad i'The End of an Epoch. (1)," New Statesman and

Nation, (Dec. l, 1934) pp. 785-786 (p. 785).
lusionment in the views of writers on politics. Among the literary

intelligentsia, perhaps only the lesser Squire-archy of the London

Mercury, now mostly forgotten, really showed anY , enthusiasm for the new

Iidemocracy" which differentiated the post-war era. The great popular

writers of the pre-war era, Wells, Bennett, Shaw, Ohesterton and Belloc,

now all seemed disillusioned with the capacity of the masses to choose

the good life for themselves. Ironically, more faith in Briteinls poli-

tical future wes to be found among the Bloo~y aesthetes with their

peinted screens. l But many of the old liberals sought new political

beliefs to assuage their disappointment in Humanity. They were a11, in

one way or another, obsessed wi th":the failure of democracy to provide

leadership and value~. Wells, for example, chose ta believe in tech-

nacracy and the new leadership of men like Henry Ford or Sir Alfred Mond.

(He later called himself a "liberal fascist. lI ) As for the peripatetic

Shaw, we may not take too seriously the caricature of British democracy

wi1 ich he gives in Back ta lv~ethuselah; but he too, like Wells, ebandoned

his old Utopias to explore the possibilities of either Russian or Italian

salvation. Mussolini became for a while a symbol to many who felt the

lack of ethical leadership, including W. B. Yeats, ~ra Pound, and D. H.

Lawrence.

All of Eliot l s closest associates seem to-'have shared a common

misprision of the post-war liberal Idemocracy':

1Most of them co11aborated in the publication of Keynes 1 left-

wing Liberal Journal, The Nation. Eliot, incidentally, was invited in
192, to become literary editor of this new periodical, but was not
available at the time. Keynes also wes not altogether optimiatici
cf. infra, p.3C\4,
 "The whole of Europe is in an ungodly mess as a
result of the warj when the most superficial observer
must notice a sharp deeline in general morals and
manners, when even wealthy England is on the verge of
bankrupteyj when almost the whole life of the nation
has become commercialisedj when art and artists are in
a lamentable state of disorder and neglect." l

Wyndham Lewis 1 chief novel described the degeneracy of the modern European,

made of the "l ees of Liberalisnf~ 'l and suggested that, liA breed of mild

pervasive cabbages, has set up a wide and ereeping rot in the West of

Europe." 2 And the etteck on this rot hed long sinee coloured the poetry

as well as the prose of Ezra Poundc

"There is no organized or co-ordineted civiliza-

tion left, only individuel scettered survivore. Aris-
tocraey ie gone, its funetion was to select. "'

AlI Eliotls friends seemed to egree with J. M. Murry thet the intelli-

gentsie, reduced and deelessed in the new order to the role of unorgenised

workers, hed nothing to hope for in Lloyd George1s 'democracy,.4

Perhaps those who lived for the historie cultural tradition had

good reeeon to fear for its survivel efter World Wer I, in the fece of

what Eliot celled "the immense penorame of futili ty and enerchy which is

contemporery history."5 To Eliot, the e1ess which hed preeerved this

lRiehard Aldington, "London Letter, Il Poetry (Ohicego) ;W. 4

(Jan. 1920) pp. 226-2'0 (pp. 226-227)

2Wyndhem Lewis, Tarr, p. 428. Lewis leter endeavoured to in-

terpret Hitler in a fashion paletable to the English mind.

'Ezra Pound, Letters, edited by D. D. Paige, (London, 1951)

4J • vi. Murry, "The Problem of the Intelligentsia, Il (Dec. 1918)

Reprinted in The Evolution of an Intellectual, (London, 1920) pp. 1,6-154.

5"U1ysses, Order, and Myth," Dial, AIN. 5 (Nov. 192,) pp. 480-48,
( p. 48,).
 ... ,

cultural and moral tradition, however imperfectly, had been the aris-

tocracy, which wes now being absorbed and destroyed by the middle
1
classes. The working-classes who found their Comic Purgation in Marie

Lloyd might possess the political future; but in the cultural future

Eliot saw only the dictatorship of the bourgeoisiel

/lAt the very moment when othe middle-clsss

appears to be on the point of perdition -- beleaguered
by a Coalition Government, the Three Trades-Unions,
and the Income Tax -- at this very moment it enjoys
the triumph, in intellectual matters, of being able
to respect no other standards than its own." 2

This new mechanized, atandardized, monotonized arder of mass-

behaviour and mass-thinking -- "the so-called modern democracy which

appeara to produce fewer and fewer individuals"! -- might likely prove

fatal to itselfl Eliot predicted that the insuperable problem of such a

way of life might prove to be boredom. 4

IIlMarie Lloyd, Il S.E., p. 420

211London Letter, Il Dial LXX. 4 (April 1921) pp. 448-453 (p. 451) l
"Royal birth-day by royal birth-day, it gains more aeats in the House of
Lords; and on the other hand, if it rejects with contumely the independent
man, the free man, sll the individuals who do not conform to a world of
mass-production, the Middle Class finds itself on one side more and more
appraaching identity with whet uaed ta be called the Lower Olass. Bath
middle clsss and lower class are finding safety in Reguler Hours, Regular
Wages, Reguler Pensions, end Regular Ideas. In other words, there will
soon be only one class, and the second flood is here."

311London Letter," Dial, LXXII. 5 (l-'iay 1922) pp. 510-513 (p. 511)

411 \'lith the encroachment of the cheap and rapid-breeding cinema,

the lower classes will tend to drop into the same state of protoplasm as
the bourgeoisie •••. ln an interesting essay in the volume of Essays on the
Depopulation of Melanesia, the psychologist W. H. R. Rivers adduced evi-
dence which has led him to believe that the natives of that unfortunete
archipelago are dying out principally for the reason thet the -Civiliza-
tian' forced upon them has deprived them of all interest in life. They
ere dying from pure boredom. When every theatre has been replaced by 100
cinemas, when every musical instrument has been replaced by 100 gramo-
phones, when every horse has been replaced by 100 cheap motor-cars, when
electrical ingenuity has made it possible for every child ta hear its bedtime
staries from a loudspeaker, when applied science has done every~hin8 possible
with the materials on this earth ta make life as interesting as possible, it
will not be surprising if the:.Clp~~..tion of the entire civilized world rapidly
foUows the fete of the Melanesiens." "Narie Lloyd, Il S.E. pp. 420-421.
 10'"

Here Eliot only anticipated the fears of liberals like Lord Russell or

Gerald Heard, or mystics like Aldous Huxley, that our current social

dynamism might trickle out into a broad desert of ennui. l Later Eliot

was to argue that we could only escape such ennui by finding a purpose

for ourselves: individually and collectively, the only alternative to

boredom is Bome form of worldly or other-worldly religion. 2 But such an

alternative seemed distant in the 1920's. In an age without true moral

leaders, without new ideas, without aerioua moral decisions, Eliot detected

a universal wish not to fade the reel meaning of life, a preference for

the derivative, the marginal. This preference, he claimed

"is an aspect of the modern democracy of culture.

We say demoeracy advisedly: that meanness of spirit,
that egotism of motive, that incapacity for aurrender
or allegianee to eomething outside of oneself, ~oj'hich
is a frequent symptom of the soul of man under demoeraey.u3

In diagnosing the condition of the eommon man, Eliot could

point to nothing more specifie than a " symptom of the soul. 1I But there

were far more pressing ressons for pessimism concerning the fate of

belles lettres. The ever-increasing gap between lI cu lture ll and the

lllThe myaterious word , which first etole like a grey ehadow over
the court of le Roi Soleil, and then apread to all places where men of
taste lived beyond the struggle for meata and mates, will percolate down
from class to class till all are leisured, all are idly rich with a
wealth of time on their hands •••• " (Gerald Heard, Science in the Making,
quoted in Eliot, Revelation (ed. Baillie), p. 6)

2Ibid ., cf. liA Commentary,1I Oriterion, XII. 49 (July 1933)

pp. 642-647 (p. 644); N.D.O., p. 32 .

311A Oommentary, Il Oriterion II. 7 (April 1924) pp. 251-255

(p. 235). Here Eliot clearly recalls man's need for lI aakesia, a formula
to be imposed on him from above" whieh had aeemed to him the significant
suggestion of Kore's Aristocracy and Justice, "An American Critic,1I
loc.cit., p. 284.
"General Reedin p; Public,1I seemed to guarentee that the former would

perish in the midst of mediocrity: in the words of Paul Klee, "uns

trigt kein VOlk."l Like 3enda in Paris, Eliot could not discover

"a pojnt of view which cannot be sorted under any

known religious or political title; in fact, the hav-
ing the only thing which givee a work pretending to
literary art its justification."2

lt was true th et the middle-cless was producing its own de-

classed intelligentsia in revolt against itself, particularly among

the hordes of young college graduetes who in the 1920lS flocked to Paria

from the United States. But their influence appeard to Eliot not to

promote civilization, but to hasten its disappearance. Nothin~ could have

exhibited less historic sense than the chiliastic movements of Dadaism

or surrealism. ·- Forcing himself ta read Gertrude Stein, Eliot concluded

that if she was indicative of the future, "then the future is, as it very

likely is, of the barbarians." 3

Those whom Eliot considered the true heira of the European

tradition in moèern literature, eeemed to heve little economic hope of

survival. A little magazine like the Egoiet, which had firet printed

Ipeul Klee, "Über die moderne Kunat, Il speech in J ene, 1924.

Quoted in Herbert Read, "The Dereliction of the Artist, Il Oonfluence,
l. 4 (Dec. 1952) pp. 45-51 ~p. 50), an article which deals at length
with "the democratic attitude to the arts."
2 .
IILondon Letter," Dial, LXXII. 5 (May, 1922) pp. 510-51) (p. 511)

~1I0harleston, Hey! Hey! Il Nation and Athenaeum, XL, 17 (Jan. 29,

1927) p. 595. Though associated in the early 120's with avant-garde
movements generally, Eliot never associeted himself with modernity for
modernityls sake. Pound, also poseessed historical horse sense and a
keen literary discernment. Nevertheless he showed continuous enthusiasms
for the latest IIdevelopmenta",such as the elbowed "tone-clusters" of the
pianist-composer George Antheil.
 ''''iii

some of the major works of Eliot, Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis,

James Joyce, and many others, would be dependent in any age upon phil-

anthropy; but after the war, in a decade famous for its fortunes rapidly

accumulated and lost, no more of such philanthropy was forthcoming. But

worse -- in an age professing its belief in tolerance and self-expression

(at least where religious matters were et stake), Philistia, always mili-

tant, was, through the media of Ipublic opinion l , more powerful than ever.

The penny Press directed their attacks against the dramatic productions

of private dramatic societies, for their use of unexpurgated Elizabethan

l
texte. And, given a ministry dependent on 10't,er middle-c laes opinion,

Philistia militant could become Fhilistia triumphant.1rime after time,

Eliot objected to the suppression of literary works bythe Home Office

works of which the Home Secretary had shown no awareness until after the

complaints of Parliamentary back-benchers, on behalf of their constituents

stir~ed up by the Sunday press. 2

lllLondon Letter," Dia1, LXX. 6 (June 1921) pp. 686-691 (p. 686)
Eliot specif'ically names the Daily News and :th!3 .§tar •••• lIto my mind, the
least objectionable of the London newspaper~ .di "heir po1itical views,
but their bJianchester-School poli tics gives a strong aroma of the Ebenezer
Temperance Association to their views on art. 1I

211A Oommentary," Oriterion, VIII. ~ (Sept. 1928) pp. 1-6.

cf. IIThe New Oensorship,1I CA Letter to the Editor) Nation and Athenaeum,
XLIII. 24 (Sept. 15, 1928) p. 755; IIS1eeveless Errand" CA Letter to the
Editor) New Statesman, XXXII. 830 (Mar. 23, 1929) p. 757. We shou1d not
forget that the ministry and courts contrived to suppress many of the
most celebrated works of James Joyce, 'tlyndham Lewis, and D. H. Lawrence;
nor that Eliot, that bigot and reactionary, was in the forefront of the
fight to facilitate their publication.
 Some liberals may be surprised to learn that Eliot, to whom

IIthe Roman and Communist idea of an index of prohibited books, Il seemed

II perfectly sound in principle,ul had been so continuously involved in

what l'las, during the 1920's, a most thankless and unpopular fight for one

special. form of 'free speech'. 2 But in the struggle to maintain Christian

and orthodoxy in in the 20th Century, it l'las evidently quite possible to

run completely fouI of contemporary bourgeois 'morality'.; Before 1927,

lThe Use of Poetry ,p. l ~~

2
Eliot, even when fighting Lord Brentford, fèlt no antipathy
to the principle of censorahipl one lI ought to agree that an intelligent
censorship:woo1d be a good thing." (liA Commentary,1I Criterion, IX. ;6
(April 1930) pp. 381-385 (p. ,84) Indeed, an offence against morality
"is primarily an offence against the Church, if there is one. 1I If there
wete a real Establiahed Church, Uthe proper source of authority in the sup-
pression of immoral or ebscene books would be, not the Home Secretary, but
the Archbishop of Canterbury.1I (liA Commentary" (Sept. 1928) loc.cit., CP. 4);
cf. S.E., p. 356)
But aIl this is purely a discussion of principlel today, without
such a church, IIThe general question of censorship is, we think, a question
of expediency rather than principle." (ibid.) For example, it worka
quite weIl with the theatre, though it doee not with books. Those who
wou Id repeal the law of blasphemy lIignore the obvious practical distinction
between allowing a law to be a dead letter -- and repeeling it. To repeal
is not merely to erase: it is to put a new idea into peoplels heads."
(UA Commentary,1I (April 1930) loc.cit. (p. 38,»). Therefore Eliot cbooses
the "middle path" of expediency. He would not abolish the powers of the
Home Secretary; though Ilwe l'lere and are alarmed by the ability of the popu-
lar press to draw attention to books in such a l'lay that the Home Office is
obliged to teks action'" (ibid.) But the lIinstitution of the Censorship,"
as it wae proposed for exemple in Oatholic Ireland, l'las "patently inde-
fensible. u (liA Oommentary," Oriterion, VIII. ,1 (Dec. 1928) pp. 185-190
(p. 185); (cf. E.A.M., p. lOl). Here l'las an example of "democratic
tyranny," albeit "tyranny of religion," which would IIreduce Ireland to
barbarisme Il (ibid.)

3In 19;1, according to Eliot, IIthe only two authors, of 'rec-

ognized ability and position', officially disapproved in England," l'lere
James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence. It l'las a pit Y the Lambeth Oonference
had missed the uopportunity of dissociating themselves from the condem-
nation of these _two extremely serioua and improving writers. Il ( Il Thoughts
after Lambeth, Il S.E., p. ;56)
 11.2..

indeed, there are times when this struggle seems to have led the young

critic (and author of uThe Hippopotamus") against the actions and mentality
l
of the True Church herself. Clearly, in short, the appeal to tradition

implied no sacrifice of onels difference from the everyday world, or what

is usually known as onels individuality.

This general deterioration of standards and absence of new ideas,

was, according to Eliot, especially visible in the world of practical pol-

itics. The anti-intellectual tendency of all the political parties in

this period has been described for us by Leonard Woolf; he too suggests

that the intellectual inanity of political issues at this time was danger-

ous to the political health of the nation. 2 But his language is temperate

beside Eliotle, who considered that there had been no breath of creative

thinking in the realm of English political ideas since the time of the

Fabians. 3 By now, there was only intellectual torpor, visible above aIl

at the timë , of· e1ections:

10ne of the reasons given for interpreting uThe Waste Land U aa

a Christian poem ia ita reference (in a footnote) to a tract on The Pro-
posed Destruction of Nineteen City Churches, (London, 1921): Collected
Poems, p. 81. But here Eliotls concern wes for the Chur ch which was the
House rather than the Bride of God: in fact, the pamphlet in question
had been printed for the London County Oouncil; the demolition had been
proposed, largely for financial ressons, by the Church of England herself.
Eliot objected: uThe fact that the erection of these churches was appar-
ently paid for out of a public coal tax end their decoration probably by
the parishioners, does not seem to invAlidate the right of the True Church
to bring them to the ground." ("London Letter ll (May 1921), loc.cit., p. 691).

2 11The eolitician end the Intellectuel," New Statesman and Nation,

XX. 491 (July 20, 1940) pp. 56-57.

~IIThe Literature of Fascism," Criterion, VIII. ~l (Dec. 1928)

pp. 280-290 (p. 290)
 .....

/lWe are •••• accustomed · to seeing, from time to

time, immense numbers of people voting aIl together,
without using their reason and without enquiry.l

Given Eliotls impression of the majority of mankind -- IIlazy-

minded, incurious, ebsorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion l12 -- he had

hardly the right to be disappointed at their behaviour during elections.

And in fa ct we find his irritation directed, not egainst the people, nor

even against the suffrage extension by which "democratic government has

been watered down to nothing, Il;> but against the intellectual bankruptcy

of party speeches, literature, and spokesmen. "Once upon a time," indeed,

there had been some occasional union between politics and litereture; but

nO'fl, eccording to Eliot, none of the utterances of public men could be

received by intelligent individuels with respect. 4

But thie wes only e reflection of the ideological bankruptcy

current among aIl the political parties. Apparently there was no longer

any difference of principle between them& all parties accepted the basic

premisses of eapitaliat culture and sought to hold this together by com-

promise and expediency. The Conservative Party might once have stood for

lllA Commentary," Criterion, V. ;> (June 1927) pp. 28;>-286 (p. 286).
Ae;a~nl "Everyone who eares for civilization must dread and deplore that
waete of time, money, energy, and illusion which is called a General Elec-
tion." (liA Commentery,1I Criterion, VIII. )2 (April 1929) pp. )77-;>81
(p. )77)).

2 11The Pensbes of Pascal, Il E.A.lv1., p. 159

;>IIThe Literature of Faecism ll loc .cit., p. 287

4 11A Commentary," Criterion, VIII. )2 (April 1929) pp. ;>77-;>81

(pp. ;>77-;>78): /lAnd if we proceed from bad to worse, we arrive at 1ength
at the prose style of Mr. Winston Churchill. Beyond a certain point,
degrees of inferiority are indifferent; end in this sense there can be
nothing appreciebly worse than the style of Mr. Churchillis recent remin-
iscences in The Times newspa per f Il
 ... ""

the King, the Church, and the land;; but Eliot could detect neither

principles nor ideas behind the party of Lord Rothermere and Sir Alfred

Mond:

"Within the memory of no living man under si~ty,

has it acknowledged any contact with intelligence ••••
It has, what no other political party at present enjoys,
a complete mental vacuum: a vacancy that might be
filled with anything, even with something valuable. u1

One might expect the divisions of principle between Liberals

and Conservatives to have disappeared: a greater tragèdy to Eliot waa the

similar agreement between Capitalists and Socialists. Though Eliot re-

portedly voted Labour, he showed little sympathy to the way in which this

party picked up exactly where its predecessor had left off:

"The complicity of all parties in the race to

give the people what it wants, and to compromise on
everything, has become a comedy not yet fully enjoyed.
Thus Mr. Lansbury, hastily summoned from East London
to visit the Roman Wall, has the warmest sympathy with
both the National Preservation Trust and with Mr. Wake
whose aim is to reduce unemployment by quarrying in a
capitalist way •••• We must wheedle and coax the Dominions
to accept our goods which are almost as good as those
provided by Germany and the United States; and we must,
in the name of economy, decline to help the Crown Colo-
nies to go on producing sugar if we can get it more
cheaply elsewhere •••• We must profess Free Trade but
protect the Motor Car Industry. And this is what is
complacently worehipped as the great British instinct
for Compromise. If that is the test~the present gov-
ernment is certainly as true blue as any government
Britain has ever had." 2

lnSecond Thoughts on the Brain1ess Election." In liA Commentary,"

Criterion, VIII. 3) (July 1929) pp. 575-579 (p. 579): "Will it, during
its holiday, be inclined totake any notice of the fancies of ... men who
like to think, and do not want to hold office of any sort? We are ready
ta place a bet on the negative. 11 cf. Leonard Woolf, loc.cit.'
2
liA Commentary,1I Criterion, IX. 37 (July 1930) pp. 587-590
( pp. 589-590)
 In the midst of the depression, the limitations and defic-

iencies of liberal capitalism appeared to be more visible than ever before.

Yet the only response of the Parliamentary system in England was a 80-

called 'National' government, which annihilated the last pretence of

divisions on principle. One of Eliot's most eloquent Oommentaries re-

ported at length a speech of Lord Sankey in the lion's den -- i.e., the

British Bankers' Association -- whose amiable chatter (greeted with much

laughter and applause) almost concealed their mutual bafflement at issues

l
which now transcended party politics altogether.

We may feel less impatience at the frustrations of everyday

politics; we are aware that even in the most absolute of dictatorships

principles are not easily applied, and politics continues to be a matter

of confusion and muddling through. Aga in , it is easy to agree that Labour

Party Socialism wes in essence a 19th Oentury political theory, which made

no bones of its debts to Utilitarians like Mill, Jevons, and even Herbert

Spencer! After aIl, this mustiness of ideas had already been weIl des-

cribed by J. M. Keynes;2 but perhaps Eliot had not sufficiently considered

Keynes' further dictum, that aIl political parties by necessity "have their

origin in past idees and not in new ones ."' Neverthe1ess, the depression

111 A Oommebtary, ·Oriterion X. 41 (July 1931) pp. 709-716.

2 11The End of Laisser-Faire," Essays in Persuasion, (London, 19,1).

An interesting and historie addres6, delivered first in 1924, and expanded
in 1926.

'Quoted in Roy Harrod, John Maynard Keynes, p. ,7,. Eliot ad-

mitted that the new political theory which he ao urgently desired should
not reault in a new party, but "permeate society and eonsequently a11
parties, Il just as Fabianism had done. ("The Literature of Fasc iam,"
loc.cit., p. 290)
 ' . ~

seemed to constitute a social crisis for which, it was agreed, none of the

packaged party remedies could provide any solution. l In warning the

political parties of the bankruptcy of further compromise, Eliot spoke

for much of contemporary England -- and for nearly all of the intellectual

classl

"The danger of such a policy is that everyone

who believes in principles rather than __ compromise
will be driven in spite of himself into extremity,
either of Toryism or of Communism. It will soon be
evident that there are only two classes: those who
have in common the spirit of 'compromise', and those
who have in common the spirit of principle, in other
words, Tories and Communists •••• our present danger ia
that our public men will be divided into trimmers and
men of principlej that men of principle, men who refuse
to listen to that siren song that the true spirit of
Britain is 'the spirit of compromise', must beccme
either extreme Tories or extreme Communists, with
(no doubt) a respect for each other that they cannot
feel for the trimmers." 2

There was a wide-spread feeling that something ~ was needed, which the

traditionsl "Left ll could no longer providej or, as Eliot put itl

IIThe combat of Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Le.

Capitalism and Socialism) is not likely to lead to
any millenium. Certainly, there are many people, and
there will be more, who are seekin~~~tternatives to both.
There are many who suspect that Socialism is not radical
enough, in the sense that its roota penetrate no deeper
than the blue-book stratum of human nature. It seems to
have moral enthusiasm wïthout moral profundity. II~

IThe years 1930-1936 produced a deluge of literature proposing drastic

and revolutionary reforms of the Parliamentary system, even from those who in
retrospect appear as the most 'orthodox' defenders of liberal constitutional-
ism -- e.g. Ivor Brown, Ivor Jennings, W.G.S. Adams.

2 11A Commentary" (July 1930) loc.cit., p. 590. This prediction wes

more adequately fulfilled among the intelligentsia, cf. ~"~J"C1., ~,.J['.

;IIA Commentary,1I Criterion, X. 41 (July 19;1) pp. 709-716 (p. 715).

Or, as he said in a review of Belloc: IIthe accepted antithesis between Capital-
ism and Socialism is no more the ultimate division of po1itical philosophera
than the superannuated antithesis between Conservatism and Liberalism." «A
Review of) Essaya of e Cetholic Leymen in England, by Hilaire Belloc. Eng1iah
Review, LIlI. 2 (Ju1y 1931) pp. 245-246 (p. 246)
 Possibly so much condescension is only justified when one has

already found a superior solution: certainly l do not think that in the

1920lS Eliot had come up with any solution whatever. Throughout this

period there are only the barest hints and promises of a positive pro-

gramme without any special effort to be realisticjl nevertheles8 there ia

already the clear admission that a positive programme i8 necessary. l say

this to clear the air of the absurd charge that Eliot was politically a

defeatist or a fatalist, or advocate of "withdrawal."

The form of nwithdrawel ll with which Eliot is most popularly

associated, finds perhaps its highest expression in Julien Bendals La

Trahison des clercs, (Paris, 1927). This book regretted the descent of

the c1ericate into the political Forum, resulting in further aggravation

of romantic passions such as race, nationality and class. But though

Eliot sympathized with Bendals indictment of polite11ectuals 1ike Barr~s

and P~guy, he could not agree with Bendals own exaggerated ideal of com-

plete detachment. This wes an impossible separation of the speculative

from the practical activity, leading to "an isolation which may be itself
2
a romantic exceaa ... But the charge of defeatism or fataliam (which a11

lliA rational government would be one which acted for ltself in

matters concerning which'the peopletis too ignorant to be consulted, (and
would not pretend otherwise); which acted for the people in matters'~hich
the people does not know its own mind; which did as little governing as
possible; and which left as large a measure of individual and local liberty
as possible." (liA OommentarY'1I Oriterion, VIII. ,2 (Apr. 1929) pp. ,77-,81
(p. ,79)) Su ch an idea1, l think, ls more tautological than contentlousj
certainly it ia far too rational to be a serious alternative to democracy
in modern Britain.
2 11 The Idealism of Julien Benda," New Republic, LVII. 7,2 (pt. 2)
(Dec. 12, 1928) pp. 105-107 (p. 107). cf. S.E., p. 4","M. Julien Benda,
for instance, makes it a part of his deliberate programme to offer nothing;
he has a romantic view of critical detachment which limits his interest."
Eliot, moreover, was later more sympathetic towards "those great
Oatholic writers, such as Oharles ~guy and Leon Bloy, who have united a
fervent devotion to a passion for social justice.": Ohristian News-Letter,
No. 44 (Aug. 28, 1940)
 '''1''''

Anglo-Catholics must object to) may be suggested by the unremitting and

slightly humourless gloom of Eliotls early writings. One might even

suspect him of that same resignation to decadence which made a vo~ue of

Spengler after the First World 'Har. But Eliot followed Babbitt and Henri

Massis, who considered that faith in the determinism of Despair was only

the fruit of faith in the determinism of Progress, and like it a form of

escape. l

"'He have just received the first number of

Les Derniers Jours, a bi-monthly pamphlet edited
and at present written by two very intelligent young
men of letters, Drieu La Rochelle and Emmanuel Berl.
Their interests and their methods are right. But
The Criterion cannot altogether accept so Spengleriah
a point of view; it cannot assume as axiomatic that
tout est foutu. 'ro assume that everything has changed,
is changing, and must chan~~L according to forces which
are not human, and that al1~ person who cares about
the future must or can do is ~pt himself to the change,
is a fatalism which is unacceptable •••• lf we are to be
qualified as Ineo-classicistsl, we hope that Ineo-classicisml
may be allowed to comprise the idea that man is responsible,
morally responsible, for his present and his immediete future. 112

lFor Babbitt, Spenglerls philosophy was "an utter denial of

the quality of will in man •••• Spengler and 1 are at opposite poles of
human thought." (Democracy and Leadership, pp. 20.,.21). Our first
defence, ssid Massis, must be against the IIprophets of disaster ll :
uThe Defence of the '.'fest,1I Oriterion, IV. 2 (April 1926) p. 224

2 11A Oommentary," (June, 1927) loc.cit., p. 283. Eliot had

already indicated hie lack of interest in (sie) "Otto Spengler ll (~;assis
had referred to "Edward Spengler") and~l "such abstract philosophers
of history.1I Instead he showed continued interest in the anthropological
theories of Frazer, Lévy-Bruhl, Elliot Smith, Tylor, Robertson Smith,
l'-dss Harrison, 'f l. J. Perry, and others. «A Review of) The Growth of
Oivilization, by W. J. Perry, Oriterion, II.8 (July 1924) pp. 489-491
(p. 491)).
This commentary appeared in the sarne year as his reference to a future

"very like1y of the barbarians"; and this should only serve to remind us

that the latter phrase, like most of the more youthful apophthegms we

have dutifully reported in this chapter, reflects not so much Eliot1e

thinkin~ as his perspective, not his active and considered judgment so

much as the stiff and slightly brittle backdrop to his political ideas.

But Eliot is not usua11y condemned as a fata1ist for the un-

guarded comments which he let drop throughout his book-reviews of the

1920'e. It is for his deeper conviction by 1930, that our political

problems were ultimately moral, and our moral problems were ultimately re-

ligious; for clearly this is to view with greater detachment "the battle"

to which Professor Laski so vigorously urged us. Such a view looked at

the present with a scepticism which to the believer in progrees seemed an

unpardonable pessimisml

"Christianity, in spite of certain local appear-

ances, is not, and cannot be within measurable time,
1official 1 • The i'/orld is trying the experiment of
attempting to form a civilized but non-Ohristian
mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be
very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile re-
deeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved
alive through the dark ages bafore us; to renew and
rebuild civilization, and save the lN'orld from suicide. III

lUThoughts after Lambeth ll (1931), S.E., p. 377. Eliot1s

reference to "the dark ages before US," like his reference to classicism,
royalism, andang10-catholicism, also proved too easily quotab1e.
Later Eliot admitted that "even a trifling or commonplace figure of
speech may make mischief ••.• There is not much likeness between the
situation of Ohristianity in Merovingian times, and its situation
to-dey." (IlThe Ohurch as Action," New English Week1yVIII. 23
(lf;ar. 19, 193 6 ) p. 451)
 ........

It is perhaps this much-quoted paragraph which ie chiefly

responsible for the impression that Eliot "re jected U the present. How

one can IIreJ'ect" onels own time, l know not; though Eliot had clearly

rejected the ideas and prejudices which he believed to be current in,

end treecherous to, his own time. But in this very pessage he hed made

clear: "I do not mean that our times are particularly corrupt: a11

times are corrupt. III Nor should we be misled by Eliot 1 s continuous lack

of faith in "sc ientific progress, humenitarianism and revolutions which

improved nothing. n2 For Eliot has not, like Nietzsche, been wholly es-

tranged from his more natural sentiments. Miss Chartier, speaking fer

many who believed that salvation could only come through social science,

tells us that Eliot rejected "society and the ideel of reform.lI~ But

Eliot himself tells us ~~ r. . "'ck.."""-\""'\\.,

"Our individual problems ere the same as they

have been for others at any time -- and equally our
opportuni tiee • \ihat we cen do towerds the greetest ~~..\"\o.\
well-being of the greetest number is indeed of the
~moBt importance, but ••.• only to remove obstacles in
the way of individuel eelf-improvement. 114

libid. cf. S.E., p. 4111 "The combat may have truces but never
s pesee. If we take the widest and wiaest view of a Cause, there ia no
Buch thing as a Lost Cause because there i8 no Buch thing aa a Gained Oause.
We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may
be the preface to our successors l victory, though that victory itself will
be temporarYi we fight rather to keep eomething alive than in the expecta-
tion that enything will triumph. U
Then, the cause wae Oulturej now it is Religions "Religion can
hardly revive, because it cannot decay." (S.E., p. ~60).
2
S.E., p. ~89

~Barbara Chartier, uThe Social Role of the Literary Elite,1I

Social Forces, XXIX. 2 (Dec. 1950) pp. 179-186 (p. 182). Laakils judg-
ment is even more severel Eliot has gone into "aelf-choeen exile because
he feare the battle which is raging. 1I Faith, Reason and Oivilisation
(London, 1944) p. 106.

4 11A Commentary, Il Criterion, XII. 46 (Oct. 19,2) pp. 73-79 (p. 79)
 lé"

Schemes for the improvement of society must be approved for what they

can accomplish: whet is condemned is the degree of faith which some

people place in theml

IIOur dut y, it seems to me, .w ith regard to all

purely secular attempts to set the world right, is
to welcome them for what they are worth, when they
have any good in them, and at the same time proclaim
their limitations and the danger of expecting more of
them than such human inventions can perforn. lIl

Many versions of Protestant and Byzantine Ohristianity have

indeed preached the futility or evil of believing in man's ability to

shape hie own environment. fle even find this lire je ct ion Il among some of

Eliot's closer associates, notably Montgomery Belgion, to whom the

programmes of Emmanut.l Mounier's Personalism, aiming at radical ameliora-

tion of society and individual alike, were "open to being regarded as

blasphemies.,,2 But the whole impetus of the Ohristendom or Ohristian

Sociology movement, to which Eliot now drew cl oser and closer, was to

re-apply one's Ohristian consciousness to the amelioration of social

conditions.' We have already related how Eliot wes drawn with these men

to an analysis (followed in some cases by public protest) of such problems

as unemployment, hou~ing, and the future of agriculture. And even in

l"Oatholicism and International Order," E.A.M., p. 129

~ontgomery Belgion, "French Ohronicle," Oriterion ltVI,

(Jan. 19'7) pp. ,09-,19 (p. ,14). To Eliot, the Esprit movement of Mounier
6,
"deserved the attention of all Ohristian reformers in other countriea. Il
(Ohristian News-Letter, No. 44 (Aug. 28, 1940) n.p.)

,IIPolitical Theorists, Il loc.cit., p. 7,.

But though it was a
liberal heresy to isolate Christianity from its social implications, Eliot
warned against the opposite heresy of identifying Christianity with amy parti-
cular social programme. For example, the Ohristian Social Movement of Sir
Henry Slesser was wrong to link Christianity to socia1iam: "Before it fol-
lows Le Sillo.~, it might, as an organ of 'Oatholicism', reckon with the
Syllabus of Pius IX." (liA Oommentary," Criterion, VII. 2 (Feb. 1928)
pp. 97-99 (p. 99»). cf.~, Chap. VI.
1927 we hear Eliot tell us that

"economics and politics, in their most exact senae,

deaerve the attention of people who believe in the nec-
essity for a aevere spiritual askesis and the discipline
and development of the soul."l

But there was a danger to-day, as Benda had auggeated, of

excèssive application to economic and political problems& a danger,

indeed, of believing that man could thereby achieve his own millenium.

In the riae of political Ufaiths" -- includirig that !merican faith which

kept alive the battered mystigue of "democracy, Il Eliot aaw exemplified

what Hulme had called the "inevitability of belief." "The popular reault

of ignoring religion,1\ said Eliot, "seems to be merely that the populace

transfer their religious emotions to political theories."

"The human craving to believe in something is

pathetic, when not tragicj and always, at the same
time, comic. l still believe, however, thét religious
beliefs (including, of course, Atheism) are on a dif-
ferent plane. Some so-called religious beliefs are
really political beliefs in disguisej but many politi-
cal beliefa are aubstitutes for religioua beliefs ••••
There ia room for books which would examine the nature
of political belief: for one thing, the extent to
which it i8 a substitute for religion, and therefore a
muddle. So far aa bolshevism is a practical way of
running Russia -- if it is -- for the material content-
ment of Ruasiana, it aeems to me worthy of study. So
far aa it ia a kind of aupernatural faith it aeems to
be a humbug. The same is true ' of faacism. There ia a
form of faith which ia aolely appropriate to 8 religion;
i t should not he appropriated by politics ."2

In thia chapter l have hoped to present Eliotls earliest gibes

at democracy, not as evidence of his political Ithinking l , but as pro-

jections of a point of view when hie primary concern wes still with

something else. l have hoped also to suggeet that it reflected the

LIIPolitical Theorists," loc.cit., p. 7'

2 11The Literature of Fasciem," loc.cit., pp. 28" 282. But
cf. infra, Ohap. IX.
defensive mistrust of a beleaguered creative minority, and indeed a

universal disillusion which seemed to have infected, if not England as e

whole, at least all of its major men of letters. It would be wrong to

attribute to these remarka a methodical seriousness which their author

did not intend -- the impartial judgments he sought pertained to litera-

ture and not to polltics. We may be tempted to condemn what Eliot himself

once c&lled "the hie;h-bl'O':I e:f':'ect '.lLic\, iL EC dbiiT .3 ssing, .. 1 but that is

not a matter which concerns us here. If Eliot's remarka of this period

have any value at all for political theory,this value is propaedeutic

merely -- in serving to dissociate 'democracy' or any other political

term from eutomatic connotations of velue. But es the strength and in-

transigence of the new political 'faiths' became more apparent towarda

the end of the 1920's, Eliot admitted the danger of such facile gibesl

. /lNow it is manifest that any disparagement of

'democracy' is nowadays well received by nearly every
class of men, and any alternative to 'democracyl la
watched with great interest. This is one point on
which intellectuals .and OQ~ulace, reactionariea end
• o.1'Cl~ .... ""..."'·0_":'1 .M&~. d more ~n-
.
commun~sts, the m~llion-press~ ere more an
clined to egreej and the danger is thet when everyone
agreea, we shell all get something that ia worse
than whet we have already. l cannot share enthuaieatically
in this vigorous repudiation of Idemocracy'. When the
whole world repudiates one silly idea, there is every
chance that it will take up with enother idee juat as
silly or sillier •••• The modern question as popularly
put ls: 'democracy la dead; what is to replace it?'
whereas it should be: 'the frame of democracy has been
destroyedl 2 how can we, out of the materials at hand, build
e new structure in which democracy Can live?/I,

IS. W., p. 65
2By this Eliot apparently means the watering-down of the suffrage, ta
which at the time he attached great importance: "From the moment when the auf-
frage is ccnceived as a right insteed of as a privilege and e dut y end a res-
ponsibility, we are on the way merelyto government by an invisible ollgarchy
instead of government by a visible one ••• A real democracy is always a restricted
democracy, and can only f~rish with sorne limitation by hereditary rights and
responsibilities./I (loc.dit., p.287) Byan 'invisible oligarchy' Eliot, like
Maurras, intended the nexus of industriel end finanoial interests. At this time
Eliot showed much interest in the growth of managerial power, of which he had
read in the works of Hobson.
'loc.Oit., pp. 286-287.
 Again Eliot has spoken prophetically of the British intelli-

gentsia, members of which class turned in the 1930's to the New Party

of Sir Oswald Mosley, or found their commitment by the wearing of ihirts

which were black, red, or green. Thus in 1929 he was perturbed to see

Shaw, Wells, and Wyndham Lewis aIl inclined "in the direction of some kind

of fascism."l It might be that the present democracy was a poor form of

true self-government:

"The ordinary man will add that it is difficult

to choose between a Conservative Party which seems to
have~programme, and a Labour Party which seems to have
any number of inconsistent programmes •••• All these
reflections are comm~lace •••• lf, as we believe, the
indifference to politic8 as actually conducted is
growing, then we must prepare a state of mind towards
something other than the facile alternative of com-
munist or fascist dictatorahip."2

The alternative which Eliot had dimly in mind at this point

would be, intellectually, far more difficult to grasp. For, as the astute

liberal will have already observed, it had to steer its way between the

twin dangers of mediocrity and extremism. In the latter half of the

1920lS Eliot looked for just Buch a new political theory: it was in this

period that he looked for possible constructive ideas behind fascism,

royalism, and the Action franyaise. But his firet and most general in-

terest was in IClassicism l , the "reactionaryll and "revolutionary" alterna-

tive of T. E. Hulme.

lu A Oommentary," (April 1929) loc.cit., p. '78. "The extrema of

democracy which we have almost reached -- promises greater and greater
interferenca with private U::'ertYi but despotiam might be equally despotic."
(p. '79).
 1011

OHAPTER rv

OLASSIOISM

"Mankind is now in one of its rare moods

of~shifting its outlook •••• lt is the business
of philosophers, students, and practical men
to re-create and re-enact a vision of the world,
conservative and radical, including those ele-
ments of reverence and order without which
society lapses into a riot, a vision penetrated
throu ': h and through with rationa l i ty •••. There is
now no choice before us. either we must suc-
ceed in providing a rational co-ordination of
impulses and thoughts, or for centuries civili-
zation will sink into a mere welter of minor
excitements. u
Alfred North Whitehead

UWe must stick to one set of postuil.ates.

You cannot play Electro-l-':agnetic Golf accord-
ing to the rules of Oentrifugal Bumble-Puppy.u
Oontroller of the Western World, in Aldous Huxley
A Brave New World

We have already noticed how in 1926 Eliot definitely linked

the Oriterion with the Olassicist tendencies of Sorel, Maurras, Benda,

Maritain, Hulme and Babbitt. This profession was accompanied by a

growing interest in politics which must have surprised the readers of

the Sacred Wood; neverthelese, though Eliot1e profession of Anglo-

Oatholicism came only a yeer later, hie Olassicism had been cleerly de-

fined for the lest decade. l With a close awareness of what had been

lEliot had a1ready admitted his debt to Maurras and Benda,

in 192). \ \ ÙLettre d'Angleterre. (III)," Nouvelle Revue Franjaise,
XI. 122 (Nov. l, 1923) pp. 619-625 (p. 620)
 1 J(..

happenin~ in France, his earlier essays had contributed to a similar

revolution in the sensibility of England, treating art primarily as a

" problem of order, Il rather than of self-expression, and deriving the

significance of 'creativity' primarily from a "sense of tradition,"

rather than from self-awareness (though perhaps these alternatives were

not as mutually contradictory as he then liked to suggest).l

Perhaps Eliot's clearest atatement of the Classicist pers-

pective came in reaponse to his old associate J. M. Murry. Murry at the

time was an exuberant Romanticist; but at least, in a period when dis-

orderly armies of opinion moved everywhere, aeeking vainly for aomething

worthy to be opposed or destroyed, Eliot and Murry had something in com-

mon. Like the British two-party system in its best days, they could agree

to contest each other in the same tennis court,

"With Mr. r.1urry's formulation of Classicism and

Romanticism l cannot agree; the difference seems to
me rather the difference between the complete and the
fragmentary, the adult and the immature, the orderly
and the chaotic. But what ~lr. }'1urry does show ia that
there are at least two attitudes tm'Iard literature and
toward everything,2 and that you cannot hold both •••• 11

lcf. especially "Tradition end the Individuel Talent ll (1919),

whose celebrated phrases were quoted es the manifesto of this new revo-
lutions IIWhat happens (to the artiat) is a continual 8urrender of
himself as he is at the moment ta something which is more valuable.
The progress of an artiat is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual
extinction of personality."
"Poetry ls not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape
from emotion; it is not the expression of pereonality, but an escape
from pereonality. But, of course, only those who have personality and
emotione know what it means to want to escape frOID these things. 1I (S.E.,
pp. 17, 21) ·

2Italica mine.
 1~1

"Mr. Kurry makes his issue perfectly clear.

'Catholicism', he says, stands for the principle of
unquestioned spiritual authority outside the indivi-
dual; that is also the principle of Olassicism in
literature.' Within the orbit within which Mr. Murry's
discussion moves, this seems to me an unimpeachable definition,
though it is of course not aIl that there is to be said aoout
either Oatholicism or Olassicism. Those of us who find
ourselves supporting what Mr. Murry calls Olassicism
believe that men cannot get on without giving allegiance
to something outside themaelves. l am aware that 'out-
side' and 'inaide l are term9 which provide unlimited
opportunity for quibbling, and that no psychologist would
tolerate a discussion which shuffled such base coinage;
but l will presume that ~lr. :r.iurry and myselt' can Aeree
that for our purpose these counters are edequate, and con-
cur in disregarding the admonitions of our psychological
friends. If you find that you have to imagine it as
outside, then it is outside. If, then, a man'a interest
is political, he must, l presume, profess an allegiance
to principles, or to a form of government, or to a monarch;
and if he is interested in religion, and has one, to a
Church .111

This allegiance to principles, Murry had suggested, waa es-

sentially un-English:

UThe EngHsh wri ter, the EngHah divine, the

Eng lish statesman, inherit no rulea from their fore-
bears; they inherit only t~is, a sense that in the
last resort they must depend upon the innér voice."2

This doctrine of the Inner Voice, replied Eliot (though it

admittedly "throwa a flood of light upon Mr. Lloyd George") aounda

rather too like what had been attacked IIby an eIder critic (i.e.,

~iatthew Arnold) in the now familiar phrase of 1 doing what one likes l ."

For Eliot is not frightened to charge (even though he himself is an

Il Inner Deaf lviute") that i t ia thia very inner voice which IIbreathes the

eternal measage of vanity, fear, and luat. lI '

IIlThe Functl·on of Orl·tl·cl·sm" (0 c t • 1923) , _._.,

BE pp. 26 - 27 .
2Quoted in Eliot, ibid.

'loc.cit., pp. 27,28.

 • aIS

But Murry, of course, had not meant by the 1 Inner Voiee' the

recurring whispers of transient desire. Murry believed -- and here he

was only following Arnold before him -- that if men

"dig deep enough in their pursuit of self-

knowledge -- a piece of mining done not with the
intellect alone, but with the whole man -- they
will Come upon a self that is universal. III

But to Eliot, this process of stopping short at one' s "best

self, Il and making this the source and terminus of va lue, was a denial of

the Christian truth that perfection can only lie elsewhere. We might say

that it i8 based on what Hulme would haveealled an inferior canon of

satisfaction. It is true that the process of digging deep inside

oneself

"wes of enough interest to Catholicism for

several hendbooks to be written on its practice.
But the Catholic practitioners were, l believe,
with the possible exception of certain heretics,
not palpitating Narcissi; the Catholic did not
believe that God and himself were identical.
IThe man who truly interrogetes himself will ulti-
mately hear the voiee of God 1 , Mr. Murry says. In
theory, this leads to a form of pantheism which l
maintain is not European -- just as Mr. Murry main-
tains that 'Classicism l is not English. For its
practical results, one may refer to the verses of
Hudibras .112

With this Classicist perspective, Eliot returne to the eearch

of those principles, in politicB as in literature, for which the Inner

Voice could see no reason. Later Eliot was to define Toryism (as opposed

to the 1 temperate conservatism 1 of l-luddle Through) in terms of this

allegiance to principles. At present he merely echoes Dr. Johnson, and

lQuoted in Eliot, loc.cit., p. 27.

21oc.Cit., pp. 27-28. cf. infra,r.119.

 ... ,

suggests that the Inner Voice be given the name of "Whiggery".l

l suspect that none of this should be treated as a final defini-

tion of Eliot's attitude, either in philosophy, religion, or in politica.

Though he could sound like Bossuet on the dangers of mysticism, and criti-

cize the "rather personal and individualistic" religion of Paul Elmer

More,2 he later showed his personal awareness of mystical experience

in such authors as St. John of the Cross, who also had received inspira-

tion from their 'inner voice'. Indeed, the mystical experience described

by Eliot in Burnt Norton can be only too fruitfully compared with that

of a Romantic like William Blake.

But Eliot's definition and description of "Whiggery" is already

of direct interest to the political theoristj especially since, as we saw

in the last chapter, he had accused eachoBe of the British parties of

lacking any fundamental and enduring principle. Even if we choose to

proceed in our investigation as 'liberals', wholly ignoring the religious

and dogmatic implications of Eliot's classicism, we find that he has

something to tell us on the nature of political thinking.

It is a commonplace that politics in Europe has become in-

creasingly pre-occupied with practical problems and the solution of

immediate difficulties. The plurality of 'ideologies' on the continent,

lEliot, loc.cit., p. 29. cf. Dr. Johnson: "'AJacobite, Sir,

believes in the divine right of kings. He that believes in the divine
right of kings believes in a Divinity. A Jacobite believes in the divine
right of bishops. He that believes in the divine right of biahops,
believes in the divine authority of the Christian religion. Therefore,
Sir, a Jacobite is neither an Atheist nor a Deist. That cannot be said
of a Whig; for Whiggism is a negation of all principle. /1I Boswell, The
Life of Samuel Johnson, (Oxford, 19;4) V. l, pp. 4,0-4,1.
2
supra, p. 1'.
and the absence of serious lideas l in England, were to Eliot perhapa

the seme phenomenon, -- among the intelligentsia, they were the result

of having thought things only a little way through. The mediocrity of

English politics seemed to imply that classes would not differ on lideas l

until these were suggested to them: mean~aile, the general Pyrrhonism

showed a universal "laziness of mind." The fruit of this intellectual

torpor would be likely a plurality of extremisms, as the intellectuals of

principle became increasingly "either extreme Tories or .extreme Oom-

munists. Il

To avoid such a future, Eliot argues, it was necessary to

re-discover political ideals with greater intellectual respectability:

ideals so fundamental they were capable of re-defining our unit y as well

as our differences. For this it was necessary to return to the funda-

mentals of political philosophy: our great need was for "~alf a dozen

Aristotles working together. ul

It was for this reason that .ne devoted articles in the Ori-

terion to the study, not of the practice, but the theory, of political

ideologies on the continent, such as Fascism, Oommunism, and the doctrines

ofllAction franiaise. It iB for this reason, furthermore, that his

study concentrated so exclusively on principles and so wholly ignored

practice. But we must warn against concluding that Eliot was, at this

lllA Oommentary," Oriterion, IX. 35 (Jan. 1930) pp. 181-184

(p. 18;) In 1939, Eliot observed that England was entering the war Il in ~ s~
G.ff)t~~· intellectual bankruptcy." In the light of the west 1 s ide010-
gical turmoil, "it does not appear unreasonable to suggest that if there
had been an adequate capital of philosophy twenty-five years ago, the
present catastrophe need not have occurred."
liA Opmmentary," New English Week1y, XY. 25 (Oct. 5; 1939) pp.
331-332 (p. 331).
 • ., 1

stage, a political doctrinaire. For one thing, he denied that the

experience of one country could be simply or readily adapted to that of

another country. Again, the new political theory he desired should not

result in a new party, but should "permeate society and consequently aIl

parties," just as Fabianism had done. l An ideological party, he later

admitted, was a revolutionary party:2 what Eliot wished instead were

some revolutionary ideas.

This desire for first principles, like Babbitt's, wes always

linked with a des ire for the moderating influence of wisdom, for only by

the bridge of wisdom can philosophy properly be releted to life. A con-

cern for principles leads always to the danger of heresy: "the hum an

craving for unification which will push any theory to the extreme."' A

heresy ia never based on outright error, but on "the overemphas is of part

of the truth u4 until the statement of that truth, neglecting its nec-

essary limitations in application, becomes a falsehood. 5 As the truth

l"The Literature of Fascism, Il lac .cit., p. 290

2
I.O.S., pp. 14-15

'"Mr. Paul Elmer Morels Essays." Times Literary Supplement,

1412 (Feb. 21, 1929) p. 136.

4110iviliaation 1
pp. 161-164 (p. 164)
1928 Model" Oriterion, VIII. ,0 (Sept. 1928)

5"Second Thoughts about Humanism," S.E.p. 450: In other worda

it is not surprising that extreme ideas 1ead ta their opposites: humani-
tarianism becomes misanthropy, rationalism breeds irrationalismj just as
Eliot suggests, 1iberalism will breed tota1itarianism. Eliot has explicitly
identified this "spirit of heresy" with More' s Demon of the Absolute, fruit
of the inte1lectus sibi permis sus which has no knowledge of its own limi-
tations. We mey cell this rationalism or intellectualism, (in the sense in
which Bergsonian intuitionism is also an inte11ectualism), but it ia the
opposite of the truly retiona1 or intellectuel. It shows thet "exaggerated
faith in humen reason to which people of undiacip1ined emotiona .ere prone."
(E.A.M., pp. 124-125). Like Babbitt, More, Hulme , Maritain, etc., Eliot finds
this feith in most European philosophy since Descartes.
lies always in the mean, heresies or extreme views come always in pairsl

"where there is one possible heresy, there are always at least twoJ and

when two doctrines contradict each other, we do not elways remember that

both may b e wrong. ill

To exhibit faith in democracy was to show that same 'heretical'

disposition which he had once called 'Romantic': a heresy whose opposite

waa represented by a faith in any sort of dictatorship:

"There is a fallacy in democracy, for instance,

in assuming that a majority of natural and unregen-
erate men is likely to want the right things: there
may also be a fallacy in dictatorship in so far as it
represents a willingness of a majority to surrender
responsibility." 2

Amid the dilemmas of politics, we must always seek the via media.

"There must always be a middle way, though

sometimes a devious way when natural obstacles have
to be circumventedj and this middle way will, l think,
be found to be the way of orthodoxYj a way of mediation,
but never, in those matters which permanently matter, a
way of compromise.";

1"Catholicism and International Order," E.A.M., p. 122, "I dis-

cern two chief pitfalls. The ideas of authority, of hierarchy, of discipline
and order, applied inappropriately in the temporal sphere, may lead us
into some error of absolutism or impossible theocracy. Or the ideas of
humanity, brotherhood, equality before God, may lead us to affirm that the
Christian can only be a socialist."
2 .
loc.c~t., p. 141

;ibid. It is worth adding that Eliot's use of the term 'heresy',

though suggested by its strict theological definition, is apparently
not intended ae more than a literary metaphor. It is applied loosely,
not rigorously. For example, Eliot at one point calle Babbitt a 'heretic'
("Civilisation: 1928 Model," loc.cit., p. 164); at another point he calls
him a "genuine exception •.•• eeeentially a moet orthodox Christian."
("Why Mr. Russell is a Christian," Criterion, VI. 2 (Aug. 1927) pp. 177-179
(p. 179)) But the term is descriptive; and it has certainly caught the
attention of both 'liberal' and 'orthodox' critics.
 ..,..,

What Eliot proposes, in simple words, i6 not still another

ideology, but a more measured and distant approach to all lideologies l

the liberal and democratic as much as the totalitarian. The only way the

intellect can defend itself a~ainst heresy is through the gradual acquisi-

tion of wisdom. For wisdom it is not enough to have understood an adequate

conception of the truth: one must have examined all conceptions in order

to see the weaknesses and the acnievements of onels own. The need for

wisdom is the great bar to human progresse For wisdom cannot itself be

taught or transmittedt it is not the same thing as the accumulation of

information; still less is it the fruit of scientific specializationl

"Ultimately our views, our selection among the solutions

, offered us, will differ -- setting aside the part played
by prejudice and self-interest -- according to our
views of human nature. This i6 not a matter of science,
but of 'rlisdom; and wisdom is only gained in two ways,
and well gained only through both: a study of human
nature through history, the actions of men in the past
and the best that they have thought and written, and
a study through observation and experience of the men
and women about us as we live. "l

This of course links wisdom to culture as it was defined by

Matthew Arnold. 2 For Eliot agrees that wisdom seems to have declined with

the humanities: a humanist education is essential to produce the wisdom

necessary among our political and intellectual elites. Like the New

Humanists, Eliot considers that our educational institutions have contri-

buted ta the present crisis by losing sight of wisdom as an educational

ideal. Some will worry just what ere Eliotls practical proposals; it ia

to the field of education that they should turne

1
"Oatholicism and the International Order ll E.A.lr.., p. 120
2
liA pur suit of our total perfection by meàns of getting to know,
on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and
said in the world. '1 Q,uoted in Herbert Paul, Matthew Arnold, p. x.
 ....
,

The liberal will retort, firstly that this sounds mighty like

Whiggery, a "negation of all principle" and furthermore that this mis-

prision of ideology is perhaps the most significant achievement of 'liberal

1
democracy' itself. But the classicist Eliot had always made it clear

that wisdom and culture (as exemplified for exemple in Babbitt and Arnold)

are not enough: and the first things which they 1ack are the necessary

intellectual discipline and principles for which we are trained by philo-

sophy.2

Thus, in political matters, it is important not to identify thi&

demand for wisdom above intellectualism, this echo of Arnold, with that

doctrine, once called Whiggism and now ca11ed conservatism, which teaches

one to abandon the search for a priori political principlee, and guide

one'e policy by the experience of al1 ages as exemplified to us in history.

l"If we look at ends or aims rather than at process or method,"

says Sir Ernest Barker, Il i t i8 the ideology of democracy to have no
ideo1ogy." (The Citizen's Choiee, (Cambridge, 1937) p. 13). Eliot's
objection to such a statement, which we examine at length in Ohapters
VII-VIII, is two-fold. From one point of vie\-I, it is already too posi-
tive en ideology -- in exactly the same way that positivism is a meta-
physics, and humenism an:- unconsc.ious critique of satisfactio"!1s. From
another point of view, of course ,; is not nearly positive enough.

2E1iot's classicist quest for principles re-awakened his in-

terest in metephysicsj but this return to the philosophia perennis
ean hardly be associated with all the other Olassieists from which he
avoweàly drew inspiration. Maurras, as we shall see, wes a Oomtian posi-
tivist. Sorel was a pragmetiet: "Enou~h of metaphysics •••• Let us
descend to the level of daily lite. Il And Babbitt' s humanism wes, as
Eliot put it, lIan attempt to devise _a philosophy of life without a
metaphysic." ("The Christian Ooncert of Education," in Malvern. 1241
(Proceedings of the Archbishop of York's Conference) pp. 201-213
(p. 204).)
 Such a doctrine, to be sure, ia a cOIr!l!lonrlace oi' all British

political theory. It i8 expressed in the ~ssays of a Tory philosopher

like David Hume as clearly as in the speeches and addresses of the Whigs.

And this Whiggery seemed to Eliot to be a common characteristic of all

British parties between the wars: they

nimply that there ia no principle except Caution;

they deny that there are any fundamental moral divi-
sions in politics, on waich men are willing to fight
to the end and to suffer ana make o"trwrs sui't'er !'l

This Whiggery that l':urry had asserted was the inspiration of

aIl 0ritisa statesmen seema to be widely asaociated in the popular mind

with the name of Edmund Burke. But the true Burke ia not the Burke of

Lord Korley; when scratched deeply enough, he was discovered to uphold

certain principles on which no compromise was possible. And the same is

true with Eliot.

This interplay of absolute principles and mediating wisdom --

these two elements cannot be dissociated into ends and rueans -- makes

political philosophy extremely difficult, where either abstract reasoning

or sceptical indifference would be easy.

"The via media is of a 11 ways the most diffi-

cult to follow. It requires discipline and self-
control, it requires both imagination and hold on
reality. In a period of debility like our own, few

InA Commentarj," Criterion, x. '9 (Jan. 19'1) pp. '07-'14

(p. ?C7)1 ~The ideal is the ideal of two parties, or even three,
so far as all parties are of exactly the same practice in regard to
everything that matters; they must however differ completely on a
number of showy points that donlt matter; otherwise the newspapers would
have nothing to write leading articles about, and the public would lose
the fun of that most coatly of sports -- the Sport of Democrats -~ the
General Election. u
 men have the energy to follow the middle way in
government; for lazy or tired minds there is only
extremity or apathy: dictatorship or communism,
with enthusiasm or with indifference."l

It is easy for the rational liberal mind to point out the

extreme difficulty of this course. Eliot is attacking the present day for

having lost sight of necessary abeolute principles, and indulging in a

mediocrity of thought. At the seme time, and as part of the seme

phenomenon, he detects a prevalence of heresies, whose common character-

iatic is to build intellectual absolutes out of half-truths. In other

words, Eliot is both attacking extremes and insisting on absolutes. He

rejects mediocrity and insists on a via media; and then as a last straw

he insist, on the absolute qua lit y of thia distinction. 2

The political scientist may shrug his shoulders at such sub-

tleties. Or he may apply a positivist analysis to reveal that it is aIl,

by definition, metaphysical nonsense. But the course defined by Eliot

will be clearer to those who have, like Hulme, perceived an absolute "to

which man can never attain." A consciousness of such an absolute, though

it may not be as distinguishable from the 'Inner Voice' as Eliot suggests,

will at least show us fixed if unformulable and inexhaustible objectives.

We can direct our action towards mediation with something eternal; and

IIiJohn Bramhall,1I S.E., p. ,49. (cf. E.A.M., p. 141) Eliot

considers that Hobbes, "one of those extraordinary li ttle upstarts •••• Il
WB, because of his facile abstractions, "the most eminent exemple in his
age of a particularly lazy type of thinker." He regrets that history has
had no memory for his opponent Bramhall, whose thinking "is a perfect
example of the pursuit of the via media."

2pascal himself had pointed out the facility of following "une

voye moyenne qui est abominable devetnt Dieu." (Oeuvres, X. p. 175.)·
 , '11

not merely the lowest common denominator of our own desires. In such

metaphysical niceties will all discussions of the general good, or the

General Will, ultimately find themselves or lose themselves. We are

back again at the gates to "the problem of the One and the Many"; and we

feel still more convinced that here the esprit de g~ometrie will not
l
serve us.

To come back in this way to a reason beyond our reasoning ia

quite in keeping with the approach of the classical philosophera.Plato,

Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas : all sought, according to Gilson,

"Not to achieve a system of the world, as if

beingcould be deduced from thought, but to relate
reality as we know it to the permanent principles
in whose light a11 the changing problems of science,
of ethics and of art have to be solved."2

But to admit that such permanent principles exist is likely to lead one

towards a Olassicist attitude to life -- for it is to admit the reality

of the invisible One as well as the visible Many. Or, returning for a

moment to Eliot1s realm of discourse, it is to admit the relevance of

the divineÀtlos, of Hulmels Absolute realm, of Paacal'a higher reason

Il ùlich the reason cannot know. ,1

Thus, having endeavoured for a while to isolate Eliot'e pollti-

cal philosophy from his religious attitude, we conclude that such an

isolation is fruitless if not impossible. Viewed thus in abstract, hie

II methodologyll ls quite meaningless. His distinction between compromise

and the via media can only be maintained in relation to permanent trutha,

lEli'ot himself haa referred ua to the IIfemous diatinction be-

tween the esprit de géometrie and the esprit de finease" (E.A.M. pp~''I·165)

2EtienneGilson, The Unit y of Philosophical Experience (New York,

19'7) p. ,17.
 ' ....

truths which reason haa not created for itself, but cen only accept or

reject. The dogmatic implications of Eliot's classicism can be ignored

no longer.

The most interesting aapect of the classicist attitude "toward

everything," which Eliot opposed to Murry, ia its deliberate ambiguity

towards religion. It is religious, apparently, if one la interested in

religionj here Eliot is apparently trying to sound like Babbitt and Hulme

at once.

Shortly thereafter, Hulme's Speculations were finally published.

Though Eliot saw clearly the limitations and immaturity ofihis book, yet

it wes interesting to him as "an outline of work to be done" 1

1IIn this volume he appears as the forerunner

of a new attitude of mind, which should be the
twentieth"century mind, if the twentieth century
ie to have a mind of its own. Hulme ie classical,
reactionary, and revolutionarYj he ie the antipodes
of the eclectic, tOlerant and democratic mind of the
end of the last century. Il i
-
Here, in short, is that "reactionary and revolutionary" alternative

which Eliot had been searching for in British political thought. Not

only could Hulme oppoee the bourgeois ideal of industrialized society

more thoroughly than the socialiste had ever given signs of doing, he

had the further asaet of being a reactionary rather than a conservative.

Whitmen and Tennyson, for exemple, were

"conservative, rether than reactionary or

revolutionarYj that is to say, they believed ex-
plicitly in progress, end believed implicitly that
progross consists in things remaining very much as
theyere."2
•

lllA Oommentary," Oriterion, II. 7 (April 1924) pp. 231-235 (p.23l)

211Whitmen and Tennyson,1I Netion:_end Atheneeum, XL. 11 (Dec.

18, 1926) p. 426.
 The merit of Rulme's attack on such complacency had lain in

its elarity, its simplicity, deriving from his categorieal commitment

to the "religious attitude." Later this basic perspective of the "re-

ligious attitude" -- "recognizing a dependence of the human upon the

divine lll -- was to inform Eliot' s prose writinJ?;s as welle Instead of

expressing a general pique at the muddled habits of his age, he concen-

trated on the ridicule of the creeds by which it satisfied itself and

cheered itself up: such as the "eurious amateur religions U of H. G. Wills,

Bernard Shaw, and Bertrand Russell, all exhibiting lIintelligence at the

mercy of emotion. 1I2 Everywhere amon!?; the lower levels of the reading-

public was talk of the "Ufe-force" which Be.bbitt and Hulme had given such

a drubbing. But "the patent ju-ju of the Life-Force is a gross super-

sti tion, II~ while Russell' s "enervate gospel of happiness" wes so depres-

sing that it only served ta make elear

"what the nineteenth century had been largely

occupied in obseuring, that there ie no euch thing
as just MoralitYi but that for any man who think~
~learly, as his Faith is so will his Marals be."4

Hence even the Kew Humanism is rejected by Eliot, after the style of Hulme,

for failing to reco~nize man's dependence upon an outside supernatural

order.

l UThe Humanism of- Irving Babbitt" (1928), S.E., p. 4~6

2"The Idee of a Literary Review," Oriterion, IV. l (Jan.

1926) pp. 1-6 (p. 6)

~"lvir. Robertson and l";r. Shaw," Oriterion, IV. 2 (Apr. 1926)

pp. ~89-)90 (p. ~90)

411Thoughts after Lambeth" (1931), S.E., p. 357

 "If this aupernetural ia sup~ressed CI avoid
the ward Ispiritual l because it can mean almost any-
thing) the dualism of man and nature collapses at
once. Man is man because he can reco~nize super-
natural realities, not because he can invent them.
Either everything in man can be traced as a develop-
ment from below, or something must Come from above.
There is no avoiding that dilemma: you must be either
a naturalist or a supernaturalist. If you remove from
the word Ihuman l aIl that the belief in the super-
natural has given to man, you can view him finally as
no more than an extremely clever, adaptable, and mie-
chievous little animal."l

In other words, Eliot like Hulme saw the real intellectual

conflict of the day as one "not between one set of moral prejudices

and another, but between the theistic and the atheistic faith. 1I

"And it is all for the best, Il Eliot adds, "that the division should be
2
sharply drawn. Il

Viewed in this li~ht, the people of England, taken collectively,

were little better than their representative writers. The decay of

Protestantism had been accompanied by the general substitution of humaniet

or humanitarian preferences -- especially among meQbers of aIl political

parties. But ordinary men were like the Trimmers et the gates of Hell,

showing no especial interest in either good or evil. They were the fruit

of the nineteenth century' an epoch lI acutely time-conscious •••• busy in

keeping uJ! to date, Il which had, "for the most part, no hold on permanent

things, on permanent truths about man and God and life and death. Il)

l"Second Thoughts about Humanism ll (1929), S.E., p. 4471 "Mr. Foerster le

ethics would be much more Ireasonable l if they were those of Mr. Bertrand Rus-
sell; ae they are, they are a form which is quite untenable and meaningless
wi thout a re ligious foundat ion ••• lo~r. Foerster 1 s 1 reas on 1 8eems to me to differ
from any Greek equivalent (ÀoyoS) by being exclusively human; whereas to the
Greek there was something inexplicable abouth~yos so that it was a participa-
tion of man in the divine."
2
S.E., p. '57
311In Memoriam, Il E.A.lo'i.., p. 202
 '11 •

For a very few the modern world might be Purgatory, but for the mass it

was only Limbo -- IIdeath 1 s dream kingdom," a twilight valley of broken

idols and dying stars.

According to Eliot one of the few who had seen the horror and

the boredom of the 19th Oentury, had been Baudelaire. To Babbitt and

More, the malsain and self-indulgent Baudelaire stood for almoat the

worat in Romanticism; but to Eliot, even in 1922, Baudelaire 1 s vision was

important: "More than any poet of his time, Baudelaire was aware of what

mattered: the problem of good and eVil",l

"In the middle nineteenth century, the age which

(at its beat) Goethe had prefigured, an age of bustle,
programmes, platforms, scientific progresa, humanitar-
ianiam and revolutions which improved nothing, an age
of progressive degradation, Baudelaire perceived that
what really matters ia Sin and Redemption." 2

Here Eliot makes the point which later became the main thesia

of After Strange Goda, that compared with the spiritual indifference of

an age exceasively diverted,

"damnation itaelf is an immediate form of aalva-

tion, . of salvation from the ennui of modern life,
because it at laat givea some aignificance tO living."'

For,

"Sa far es we are human, what we do must be

either evil oe goodj sa fer as we do evil or good,
we are humanj and it ia better, in a paradoxical way,
to do evil than to do nothing: at least, we exist. 1I4

1
"The Lesson of Baudelaire," Tyra, 1 (1922) p. 4

2"Baudelaire" (19)0), S.E. p. ,89

'ibid. In this respect "M'ter Strenge Gods" represents no land-

mark in Eliot 1 s thinking: as early as 1927 he referred to "the present
generation of versifiera, ao deficient in devotion and so feeble in blasphemy"
"The Twelfth Oentt1ry " Times , Literary Supplement 1))2 (Aug. 11, 1927) p. 542 • .

40p.Cit., p. ,91
 These comments remind us of course of the desert-faced Pascal,

whose stony austerity wes apparently, to Eliot, an example of that highest

faith which issued from the highest doubta

"The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious,

absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and ij there-
fore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and
when the ordinary man calls himself a sceptic or an unbe-
liever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a dis-
inclination to think anything out to a conclusion. Pascal's
disillusioned analysis of human bondage is sometimes inter-
preted to mean that Pascal was really and finally an un-
believer, who, in his despair, was incapable of enduring
reality and enjoying the heroicsatisfaction of the free
man's worship of nothing. His despair, his disillusion,
are, however, no illustration of personal weaknessj they
are perfectly objective, because they are essential moments
in the progress of the intellectual soul; and for the type
of Pascal they are the analogue of the drought, : the dark
night, which is an essential stage in the progress of the
Ohristian mystic."l

This "perfectly objective" vision informs the whole structure

of Eliot's mature political thinking, from its central heart of darkness

or of light. Henceforward Eliot's ideal of 'cœvilization', in whose pre-

servation political theory wes necessary, involved the conservation of the

highest religious, as weIl as cultural sensibility. The highest values of

this civilization will not be the democratic "basic goal-values" of

certain American political scientists, but ideals based on asceticism and

order. If these values were being lost, Eliot was now further than ever

from being consoled by our progress in the manufacture of wonder drugs

and baths.

lllThe Fens'es of Pascal," E.A.h., pp. 159-160. Eliot could

IIthink of no Christian writer, not Newman even, more to be commended
than Pascal to thoae who doubt, but who have the mind te cenceive, and
the sensibility to feel, the disorder, the futility, the meaninglessness,
the mystery of life and suffering, and who cen only find peace througb a
satisfaction of the whole being." (p. 168).
 Here Eliot treata the Romantic Baudebire'a view of life aa a

precursor of Hulme'a, as lIan evangel to his time and to ours",

"La vraie civilisation, he wrote, n'est pas dana

le gaz, ni dans la vapeur, ni dans les tables tournantes.
Elle est dans la diminution dea traces du péch~ originel.
It is not c1ear exactly what diminution here implies, but
the tendency of his thought is c1ear, and the message ia
still accepted by but few. More than haU a century lster
T. E. Hulme left behind him a paragrsph which Baudelaire
wou1d have spproved:
'In the light of these absolute values, man himself ia
judged to be essentia1ly 1imited and imperfect. He is en-
dowed with Original Sin. Whi1e he can occasionally ac-
complish acts which partake of perfection, he can never
himself be perfecto Oertain secondary results in regard
to ordinary human action in society fo11ow from this. A
man is essentially bad, he can only accomplish anything
of value by discipline -- ethical and po1itical. Order
is thus not merely negative, but creative and liberating.
Institutions are necessary.' ."1

Nevertheless, this "perfect1y objective" vision is, of course,

not only a very special form of Ohristianity; it ia a very particular

type of Oatholicism -- one which the Ohurch has never found who11y

digestible. But to Eliot it is considerab1y more satisfying than the

oppressively healthy and optimistic Oatholicism of G. K. Ohesterton

and Hilaire Belloc. To Chestertonls "heavy-weight Peter-Pantheism,"

Eliot replies,

"r should be very glad to be joyful, but

l should not care for Bny joy to be obtained at
the priee of surrendering my lifels experience. u2

1S.E., p. 392
2nMr. Ohesterton (and Stevenson)M
(Dec. 31, 1927) p. 516. On the other hand,
Mmuch sympathy" with the "Belloc-Ohesterton
Property" ("Political Theorists," loc.cit.,
Nation and Athenaeum XLII. 3
Eliot frequently expresssd
ideal of Distributive
p. 72)
 •oP,

Neither could Eliot share the cheery faith in man which at one time

had made democracy su ch an easy prospect for Ohesterton.

On the other hand, to talk of Original Sin may indicate nothing

more than a certain wise skepticism in human matters, for what is a dogma

to a Oatholic can as easily become a metaphor for the moderniste For ex-

ample, the language of Hulme and of Paul Elmer More could hardly have been

more closely imitated than by a contemporary of Hulmels at Oambridge, who

wes like Hulme, a student of G. E. Moore!

"We were among :. , the last of the Utopians, or

meliorists as they are sometimes called, who believe
in a continuing moral progress by virtue of which the
human race already consists of reliable, rational,
decent people, influenced by truth and objective
standards, who can be safely released from the outward
restraints of convention and traditional standards and
inflexible rules of conduct, and left, from now onwards,
to their own sensible devices, pure motives, and reliable
intuitions of the good.

»1n short, we repudiated all versions of the

doctrine of original sin, of there being insane and
irrational springs of wickedness in most men. We were
not aware that civilisation was a thin and precarious
crust erected by the personality and the will of a very
few and only mainteined by rulss end conventions skil-
fully put across and guilefully preserved. \'le had no
respect for traditional wisdom or the restreints of
custom •••• As cause and consequence of our general state
of mind we completely misunderstood human nature, including
our ownl The retionality which we ettributed to it led to
8 superficiality, not only of judgment, but also of feel-
ing."

These words were written under the inspiration of Bagehot rather

than Babbitt, by a free-thinking empiricist Liberal -- to wit, John May-

nard Keynee. 1 From his pen they represent neither anti-romanticism nor

1Keynes, Two Memoire (London, 1949) pp. 98-100.

 , ..

anti-liberalism, so much as a liberal's common sense. They do not

represent part of a coherent political philosophy. Nor, we may add, did

their inscription really mark the paesing of the Utopians. And sinee

then we have seen the Utopian misanthropy of Aldous Huxley and Dean Inge;

and those who have wavered between romantic faith in man, and romantic

disillusion, like Bertrand Russell. Keynes' words indicate a sound mid-

dIe course of common sense, which does not, however, commit him to any

particular political philosophy. Unlike Keynes, Eliot seeks a precise

conception of the theological implications of the doctrine of original

sin, which help to define his political position.

These ideas are more fully explored in one of Eliot'e finest

political essays of this period, one which considers that "great writer,

and for ever a solitary figure," Ni~lo Machiavelli. 1 This essay marked

Machiavelli's centenary, at a time when many Englishmen still envisioned

the quiet Florentine in the guise of one of Webster's or Tourneur's

,
It a l ~an ' I la~ns.
v~
' 2

To refute the charge that ~1achiavelli ia a II cyn ic" concerning

human nature, Eliot contrasts him with that very different thinker,

Thomas Hobbes. Eliot traces their differing philosophies to their dif-

fering motivationsc

IIlNïcolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) Il Timea Literary Supplement

1324 (June 16, 1927) pp. 413-414. Reprinted in For Lancelot Andrewes,
pp. 47-65.

2( Of such opinions, Eliot wri tes: "Mechiavelli has been called

a cynic; but there could be no stronger inspiration to II cyn icism" th an
the history of Machiavelli's reputation. No history could illustrate
better •••• the triviality and the iy,relevance of influence. His message
has been falsified by persistent romanticism ever since his death. 1I
(p. 47)) Eliot, however, was not the first Englishman to restore Mach-
iavelli's reputation in the 20th Century. He merely echoed the conclusions
of Wyndham Lewis in The Lion and the Fox.
 "Machiavelli ie wholly devoted -- to the task of hie
own place and time; yet by surrendering himself to the
cause of hie particular State, and to the greater cause
of the united Italy which he desired, he arrives at a far
greater impereonality and detacnment than Hobbes. Hobbes
is not passionately moved by the spectacle of national
disaster; he is intereeted in his own theory; and we can
see his theory ae partlx an outcome of the weaknesses
and distortions of his own temperament." 1

Vlhen Hobbes diecusses human nature, there is "often an over-

emphasis, a touch of spleen" which "may rightly be associated with

cynicism" :

"For true cynicism is a fault of the temperament

of the observer, not a conclusion arising naturally
out of the contemplation of the abject; it is quite
the reverse of 'facing facts'. In Machiavelli there ie
no cynicism whatever. No epot of the weaknesses and
failures of his own life and character mars the clear
glass of his vision." 2

From thie exactness of vision and statement, Machiavelli, unlike Hobbes,

had no system; IIfor a system almost inevitably requires slight distort-

ions and omissions .,,;

Iloc.Cit., p. 49. cf. S.E., p. ;50. Eliot eeems to ignore

that Hobbes wrote other works besidee Leviathan, yet it is for his levia-
than that Hobbes is remembered today.

21oc.Cit., p. 50. In order to make a valuable distinction be-

tween two approaches, Eliot perhaps exaggerates the differencee, both
between Machiavelli and Hobbee and between "cynicism" and "scepticism."
(Only three monthe eariier, Eliot had referred in anaddress to the
"deliberate cyniciem" of Maehiavelli: ("Shakespeare and the Stoicism of
Seneca," S.E., p. 1;4) (In the Selected Essays, Eliot attempte rather
weakly to justify thie linguistic inconsietency by a footnote on p. 1,2).
Neverthelese the distinction ie valuable, and will perhaps help explain
(to the more optimistic) the violent dislike that Babbitt and Eliot had
for the systematic misanthropy of H. L. Mencken or Dean Inge.

'Ibid. Eliot eonsidered that the "spurious unityll of Hobbes'

thinking had aetually not a logical but an emotional basis: IIHie theory
of government has no philosophie basis: it is merely a collection of
discrete opinions, prejudices, and genuine reflections upon experience
whieh are given a spurious unit Y by a shadowy metaphysie." ( IIJ ohn Bramhall,"
S. E ., p. ;46)
 .v ,

In the following paragraph, Eliot analyses the sources of

Machiavelli1e unpopularity. But we see thereby what Eliot considers the

unhappy effects upon intellectuals of the Protestant Reformation: the

oscillations between the extreme doctrines of Oalvinism and Rousseauism;

and the substitution, on the loss of the Christian faith, of Liberal and

humanist "faiths" that will not work. 'fle see also how for Eliot as for

Hulme and Pascal the classicist Weltanschauung, "without illusions, with-

out daydreams" can only be maintained in society by what Hulme had called

"the religious attitude":

"The growth of Protestantism -- and France, as weIl

as England, was then largely a Protestant country --
created a disposition against a man who accepted in
his own fashion the orthodox view of 1: .,. original sin.
Calvin, whose view of humanity was far more extreme,
and certainly .more false, than that of l"lachiavelli, wes
never treated to such opprobrium;l but when the inevit-
able reaction against Oalvinism came out of Calvinism,
and from Geneva, in the doctrine of Rousseau, that,
too, was hostile to Machiavelli. For lvlachiavelli is a
doctor of the mean, and the mean is always insupportable
to partisans of the extreme. A fanatic can be tolerated.
The failure of a fanaticism such as Savonarolals ensures
its toleration by posterity, and even approving pat-
ronage. But Machiavelli was no fanatic; he merely told
the truth about humanity. The world of human motives
which he depicts is true that is to say, it ia human-
ity without the addition of superhuman Grace. It is
therefore tolerable only to persons who have also a
defiQite religious beliet; to the effort of the last
three centuries to supply religious belief by belief
in Humanity the creed of Machiavelli is .QfPortable.
Lord ~orlèy~ voices the usual modern hostile admiration
of Machiavelli when he intimates that Machiavelli saw
very clearly what he did see, but that he IGlvoel~ half
of the truth about human nature. What Machiavelli did
not see about human nature is the myth of human goodness
which for liberal thought replaces the belief in Divine Grace.,,2

l
A statement to be considered by those who write off Eliotls
political viewpoint as "New England Puritanism."
2
op.cit., pp. 6l-6~. For the purposes of this thesis, it ia
possible to ignore whether Eliotls own picture IImerely told the truth"
about Machiavelli.
 For Eliot as for Hulme, only the Ohristian conception of man

can allow us to accept what we cannot believe in, this acceptance

being the basis of constructive social change. And the Ohristian belief

will remain the "right way of thinking" as long as a cessation of Ohristian

belief brings only a belief in ideals which are less worthy, and a vision

of the world less realistic. According to Eliot, only the classicist and

Oatholic can continue to view the world with 6ncynical disillusionj and

the last refuge of sceptics is within the Ohurch:

"The Oatholic should have high ideals -- or

rather, l should say absolute ideals -- and moderate
expectations: the heretic, whether he calI himself
fascist, or communist, or democrat or rationalist,
always has low ideals and great expectations. For 1
say that aIl ambitions 0 an earthly paradise are
informed by low ideals." 1
The enduring element of Eliotls earlier classicism ia this

conviction that aIl earthly ideals -- an "earthly paradise," or "the

enervate gospel of haupiness'!..are ultimately "1 0w ideals ll which only a

"lazy intellect" will accepte 1 am sure he never expected such an opinion

to prevail in a liberal society against Oorliss Lamontls humanism of the

millions. His views are those of a perennially unpopular 'minority, in-

cluding the best of the prophets and the worst of the Nietzschean intel-

lectuals, whose opinions are destined always to fare badly in the free

market of idees. Nevertheless, both in his poetry and his prose, Eliotls

Weltanschauung does seern to have caught the fency of the European avant

1llOetholicism and International Order, Il E.A.~i. pp. 126-127

 , ;)-..,

garde, and to have been in tune wi th most of the other great wr i ters of

this period. On the other hand, neither the humanist faith in Progress,

nor the humanist faith in natural goodness (though they have aince been

persecuted with much scorn and abuse) have died the natural deaths which

Hulme and Keynes predicted for them.

ls there in fact any possible constructive idea which can issue

for political theorists from the endless debate on whether man is good,

or men ls evil? For any observer worth his salt will realize that these

statements, like most positive observations about human nature, are es-

sentially tlbinary,tl or tldiploid." That is, neither statement is true,

except in the mediated sense by which both are true. The dialectic of

the grandeur et mis~re de llhomme has been observed end described by

every great Christian philosopher, whether Thomist or Austinian. In

fact, the intellectuel adequacy of the dogma of original sin lies not 80

much in the dogme itself, as in the millenium and a half of careful

exegesis which has aimed at a reasoned and belanced statement of this

paredox. And though this theological exegesis has tended to lose itself

in interminable casuistries concerning sufficient and efficacious grece,

yet the result is a refinement of Weltanschauung which is catholic and

Bubtle, whereas the doctrines of human nature which we find in Rousseau

or Barth are simple and extreme. And, in such matters, what is extreme

is usually dangerous.

The positivist temperament suggests that sueh truths are mean-

ingless, in that they lack any empirical si~nificance. So indeed they

do; furthermore any single specifie statement on such matters is more

productive of misconception than of understanding. But judgments on

human nature are unfortunately an integral part of our basic ilel tan-

schauung, whatever that be: hence they are ineluctable. When the mind

la relexed from the intellectual effort and tension required to under-

stand a complex analysis of humen nature, it does not free itself from

such conceptions simply by calling them metaphysical. Instead, as Hulme

and Eliot have shown, the result is a return from the mature to the naive,

from something tlcatholic, civili~ed, and universel,tI to somcthing "crude

and raw snd provincial. 111 "\'le must oegin, v,i th metephysics, Il some body

once said; "it is the only wey not to end there."

The Oatholic dogma of original sin cannot of course be under-

stood without the concurrent notion of grace. Hence, merely to describe

man as "essentially limited and imperfect" may e.ppear incomplete: l do not

believe so. For that, to the Catholic, is what man by nature is, ll1fuo11y

natural, omne animal." However, sinee the 1920's, Eliot l'las admitted

thet l'lis c1assicist-r~yalist-englo-catholic profession was "injudicious. u2

In liters.ture, indeed, he has deliberately abandoned the clsssic-romantic

antithesis as lia pair of terms be1om;ing to literary poli tics , Il slogans

which arouse partisan passions rather than detached inquiry and observa-

tion.' But if by Romanticism we ruean the derivation of aIl values from

the fundamental value of human personality and romantics like Fausset

or Barzun insist upon this meaning -- then i t i8 sat'e to say that Eliot

continued to ettack this 'heresyl wherever he sew it. Furtherruore, lt ia

l"Francis lierbert Bradley. Il S.E., pp. 410-411

2A.S.G., p. 28. cf. E.A.M., p. 135

'What is a 01assic1 p. 9.
quite safe to say that this IRamentic l or Ihumanist ' attitude has coo-

tinued to colour the bulk of literature which has appeared in the fields

of politics and education. If we believe in the via media, then we shall

approve of Ihuman dignity' only in the consciousnes8 of human frailty,

we shall believe in freedom only in the presence of order, in human rights

only when they signify our duties, in self-expression only when based on

self-restraint. We may choose not to talk of the values of 'personalityl

at all; but if we do, we shall see these values only in the light of a

higher order, where personality finds an end outside of itself.

This, l think, is Eliot'e firet message to democracy to

beware of those partial systems and ideologies where only half of the

truth, what we heve called the visible or natural half, is expressed.

ne have seen freedom by itself as a lost catch-word in search of its own

original meaning. We have seen personality left alone to glorify itself

and to enjoy itself forever. Indeed, this self-estrangement, the great

Romantic legacy, seems to underlie most European philosophy today. Too

much of this diemal fruit can be traced to those men who poeed as the

friends and prophets of Idemocracy', who came to a newly emancipated

society, one always willing to listen-to reason, and told her her name

and what she stood for. Since then the name of democracy has endured; but

the social order to which it was given has (1 think) learnt that human

rights and human dignity, however important they may be in themselves,

are not the whole story. They are very far indeed, not only from the

whole truth which surpasses aIl understanding, but even from the best

which has been already thought and said on the matter. And this unsatis-

factoriness which aurrounds the ideals of our democracy has, l think,

some part to play in expàaining that 'rejection' of democracy which

underley the 'treeson of the intellectuels'.

Since Eliot'e call for a half-a-dozen Aristotles, meny have

suggested thet our society, whatever its neme, stands in urgent need of

a more intellectuel comprehension of itself. To some this knowledge need

only be scientifie, or sociologieal; but (as we shall see) many others

besides Eliot have insisted that this comprehension must be teleological

as well, returning to the problem of the purpose for which our society is

composed. And here, when we re-read our Locke, Bentham, and ~ill, the

feeling is ineecapeble that these genial and forward-thinking men had

been a little too precticel, thet they had left something out, and that

what they left out ia now,perhapa, as important 8S what they put in.

But even if we look for e positive purpose for society, thia

will not of itself drive us into the arms of religion, and still less to

Eliotts Christianity. Indeed, meny who recall Eliot's remarks about the

horror and the boredom, the futility of modern history, find his Christ-

ianity to be aingularly deficient, at least in Hope and in Charity. The

same people usually feel the same

..
1oI~~ s,~,
of Fascals Ailluminating experience

8eeme a rather hollow and forced justification for a long life of spiri-

tual dyspepsia. But we should remember that in Eliot's poetry the despair

and the disillusion are but "moments"; and the stage of waiting without

hope is a stage only.l It is true, however, that once we have diveeted

ourselves from faith in humanity (including faith in democracy) Eliot

seems to suggest that only faith in God c'an restore our famished soul

·in love.

lvd. "East Ooker" and IILittle Gidding."

 But that is not our present question. Eliot once said it was

an essential advantage for a poet IIto be able to see beneath both beauty

and ugliness; to see the boredom, and the horror, and the glory.ul

Sometimes we feel that this poetls vision is being foisted on aIl of us,

under the disputable attribute of lI orthodoxyli (As for exemple, when we

are told that "What faith in life is l know not; faith in death is what

matters. II )2 If this is the capacity for faith and doubt of which only a

very few are capable; then perhaps its relevancy to political theory is

to some extent diminished. And a world in which we aIl hoped for salva-

tion through democracy, the United Nations, and the public school system:

that l think might still be preferable, from a Ohristian viewpoint, to a

world in which nobody saw anything but chaos and futility.

But Eliot apparently did not desire such vision for more · than

a very few, thoee whom he lster referred to fearlessly ae "the elite."

And granted the unified sensibility of s few such reepected individuals,

Eliot would, l think, still allow us a faith in our worldly futures,

which, 'N'hen limited, could not be called 'unreasonable'. It would be

that residual liberal and democratic faith advocated by Keynes or by

Reinhold Niebuhr, stemming from a plU'edoxicel reaffirmation of lifè,

after aIl of its Iclsssicisti admissions.

Tc "systematise ll the doctrines of the classicist attitude would

be to miss their whole point. Pescal did not leave us a system; he left

lll 'r he Use of foetry, Il p. 106

2 CYi\,,,io... ,
liA Oommentary,"~XII. 47 (Jan. 1933) pp. 244-249 (p. 248)
Edwin Muir was quite right in asking what Eliot would have said to
Schopenhauerls 'Faith in death'.
an example of the courage to look fearlessly and with disillueion et

the world. The essence of the critical attitude ie the ability to look

equarely at the worst of the matter, even when looking at such sacred

matters as our system of government, or our lway of life l • Ultimetely,

we may wish not to criticize but to affirm; that, however, ia not the

business of the political theorist. The democretic vision which Professor

Rockow described in Shaw and Wells is of little use: a hollow yea-saying,

it turned out, was not enough even to cheer up themselves. Later in this

thesis, we describe liberalism as a negative rather than an affirmative

approach to life. If this is true, then its best friends among theorista

are never those who sing its praises, butthose who seek out its limita-

tions.

In the 19201S, Eliot sou~ht out and attacked Ithe spirit of

democracyl whowing more interest in the political theories of the Action

fran~aise and Neo-Thomism. l In the 1930 l s his attention turned to "the

struggle, in ~ ~or~, against Liberalism. H2 But by the end of the decade,

his interest had abandoned the exotic and doctrinaire in favour of the

domestic and prectical:

"I am far from suggesting that eny continental

lideologyl should be taken over in this country;
only that the native one should be brought more up

lAt this time Eliot described Neo-Thomism in terms very

reminiscent of his own inclinations 1 Il It represents, beyond its strictly
theological import, a reaction against such philosophies as that of
Bergson, against Romanticism in literature and against democracy in
goverrnnent. Il IIThree Reformers, Il Times Li terary Supplement, 1397 (Nov.
8, 1928) p. 818.
2
A.S.G., p. 4~
 l''.J

to date, with a more rea1ietic appreciation of the

forces at work. The term Idemocracyl must con-
tinue to be uaed, because it is sacred to the Englieh
mind. lIl

By 1940 he had made it elear that aimp1y to oppose sueh popular creede

wes vanity. \'ihat survives in his politieel writings is not hie ettaek

but his &bility to critieize, in the light of an unusually coherent,

patient, and profound point of view. Such eritieism, as we shall eee,

has often little relevanee to immediate problems. But perhaps Eliot re-

minds us of other prob1ems whieh fina11y are ineluetable, whieh, whether

there be peaee or atomie warfare, full employment or world-wide depression,

will some day, if not a1ways, have to be faced.

IliA Commentary," Criterion, XVII. 66 (Oct. 1937) pp. 81-86

(p. 83). After 1940 we find Eliot, almost as if in penance for his former
irresponsibility, paying his respects to democracy just like his ex-
assoeiate Maritain, or any eIder statesman: "We aIl agree that a democracy
ia the beet possible aim for society; and the widest definition of democ-
racy that l can find, ia a aociety in which the maximum of responeibility
ie combined with the maximum of individual liberty. Il (UThe Aime of
Education. (1)," Measure, II. 1 (Dec. 1950) pp. 3-16 (p. 11))
cf. "Leadership and Lettera," Milton Bulletin, XII. 1 (Feb. 1949)
pp. 3-16.
 :'.

OHAPTER V

FASOISM

"This for the birds of pleesure, of which

very much more might be seide My next sheII
be of birds of poiiticai use."
Izaak Walton, .The Oompleat Angler

In this chapter we examine Eliot's attitudes towards Mussolini

Fescism, the Action fran1aise, and the civil war in Spain. These opin-

ions are, l thin~, fairly remote from the centre of his mature political

interestSj nevertheless, the impression that Eliot was overtly or uncon-

6ciously a Fascist is a common one, and ought to be destroyed forever.

To be sure, the charge may be too vague and meaningless, ever to be re-

futed. In the ideological conflict of the 1930's, this word was torn

from its original Italian context, and made a symbol of the growing

mutual antagonism of left and right. From a Marxist viewpoint, merely

to ignore this struggle was itself a symptom of fascism. As Desmond Haw-

kins observed in 1937, "Everyone who is not pro-stalinist is at present

apt to be labelled 'fascist', and the word has thereby lost in distinct-
l
ivenesB what it haB gained vituperatively.N

lDesmond Hawkins, (A Book Review) Oriterion, XVII, 69 (July

1938), p. 798
 ... ,

To a lesser extent, however, what was a pejorative to the

English Left became a symbolic rallying point to other, more isolated

forces. By now we do not mean the idiosyncratic curiosity of liberals

like Shaw and Wells, or the still more idiosyncratic obliqueness of

Wyndham Lewis. Other individuals, many of them close to Eliot, were in-

trigued by Italy: not (as with Winston Ohurchill) for its clean new

customs housea and punctual trains (which won the respect of so many

visiting tourists), but for purely ideologieal considerations, sueh as

its eorporatism, its professed supersession of credit financing, or its

new Ooncordat with the Ohurch. Few like Ezra Pound studied these et

first hend; but admiration of something called Feseism attracted other

isolated Oredit Reformers. Among contributors to the Oriterion, it tinged

the Oatholic Distributism of Hoffman Niekerson, and the Ethieal Authori-

tarianism of Douglas Jerrold, both of whom, however, were far more closely

associeted with the American Review. l

Eliot himself had no part whatever of sueh enthusiasms; by

the 1930's his dislike of Fascism had already been elearly expressed

albeit in terms i':hieh were apparently inaudible through the politieal.con-

flicts of the day.2 His only avowed links with Faseism dated ~rom the

l
When the American Review foundered over the Spanish civil war,
some of its more extreme essociates contributed to e new Oonnecticut
periodical, The Examiner, which wes not frightened to call itself Ifascist'.
It carried articles by Austin Warren, Meyrick Booth, William Fitzgerald,
and at least one by Eric Gill.
2
It iB symptomatic of the confusion of this period that one
American apologist for Eliot admitted, Ult is true, of course, that of
late Eliot has been steerin~ close to fascism in his general attitude to
the problems of our time." (Philip Rahv, uA Season in Heaven," Partisan
Review, (June 1936) pp. 11-14.)
1920's -- the period of his search for a new political theory -- when

he had called for a "dispassionate examination ll of Fascist phil oa ophy , to

see II whether Fascism is a new idea, and whether it will affect cll Europe. Ml

Though this wish for detached inquiry is the highest virtue of the 80-

called Liberal atti!wlè., such IIdispassionate examination" was indeed hard

to come by in England between the wars. Among the intellectuals, the most

common group were those who had moved, like Stephen Spender, forward from

Liberalism. And among aIl the mobilized opinions of the day, there wes

little patience with the old-fashioned virtue of impartial and individual

observation, which Eliot now preached: against catchwords, slogans, and

aIl incitements to collectivized and emotionalized behaviour. But here

Eliot sounds like the true Liberal, against ~~

"heirs of liberalism, who find an emotional out let

in denouncing the iniquity of something called 'f&scism' ••••
The irresponsible 'anti-fascist', the patron of mass-
meetings and manifestoes, is a danger in several ways.
His activities •••• confuse the issues of real politics
with misplaced religious fanaticisllij and tney distract
attention from the true evi1s in their own society. '12

To-day, one WOUid like to tnink, the political environment in

which "commitment" and lIintransigence ll were the highest virtues, is some-

thing of a pre-wer memory. The intellectuels, in particular, seem to

have discovered the limitations of what Auden called "the fIat pamphlet

and the boring meeting. 1I In retrospect, the dispassion appeeled for by

Eliot and Benda seems to have been in the service of a rational moderation

IliA Commentary," Criterion, VII. 4. (June 1928) pp. 1-6 (p. ;);
"The Literature of Fascism," Criterion, VIII. ;1 (Dec. 1928) pp. 280-290
(p. 281).
2
liA Oommentary," Criterion, XVIII, 70 (Oct. 19;8) pp. 58-62
(p. 59)
 .- 1

for which we ar p. now more grateful. But at the time, Eliot was most

commonly accused of Fascism or crypto-Fascism because of the very dis-

passionatenesa of hia approach to it. l It is discouraging to realize that

these suspicions are s~ill widespr ead in America, even though Dr. ' Coker

has recently gi ven our subject (in this respect) a clean bill of health. 2

In 1949, during the celebrated literary affaire of Ezra Pound, the Satur-

day Review of Literature aga in charr;ed that Eliot's "dictatorial will ll wes

somehow leading ua towarda a "new Faacism" or "tota li tarianism. H~ And

while this charge has lon ~ been repeated from the pa6es of the Modern

Monthly, it has been recently lifted back into more general circulation

by Professor Robbins' book, The T. S. Eliot J.lwth.

It is clear that Prof. Robbins himself makes no virtue out of

dispassionate enquiry, as in his following use of one of E1iot's rare

dramatic dialogues, "On the Eveil:

"Sometimes his support of faaciat trends was forth-

right, as just before the (aie) 1925 British election
when he wrote in a dialogue: 'The best we can h0 e for,
the only thing that can save us, is a dictator'." 4
1
Prof. Robbins finds Eliot guil ty for this very reason: "Some of
Eliot's other pronouncements in favor of fascist ideas must have seemed
shocking to many Englishmen. Perhaps no outcry was raised because at the
time so few people knew about them. The circulation of hia magazine, The
Criterion, was under a thousand when he wrote in l':arch, 19~7, "But Mr. Day
Lewis Buffers from the weaknesses of most Englishmen of his belief. There
is nothing~ for these people, to be said for fascism." (Robbins, The T. S.
Eliot My th, p. 57, quoting Eliot, "A Oommentary," Criterion, XYI. 65
(Ju1y 19~7) pp. 666-670 (p. 669)

211Some Present-Day Critics of Liberalism, Il American Political

Science Review, XLVII. 1 (lYiar. 1953) pp. 1-27 (p. 24)

3Robert Hillyer, IIPoetry' s New Priesthood, Il Saturday Review of

Literature, (June 18, 1949), pp. 7-9, 38 (p. 38)
4
R. H. Robbins, op.cit., p. 184 (cf. p. 56). The quotation from
liOn the Eve, A Dialogue," Oriterion, III. 10 (Jan. 1925) pp. 278-281 (p. 280).
l have not checked Haüsermann,s dubious al1egation that Eliot once informed
him in a let ter that "On the Eve" wes not his own work (liT. S. Eliots reli-
giose Entwicklung," Eng1ische Studien, 69 (p. 381n»)
 110

We may not have heard of a British election in 1925, but we

do know t)-,.t to quote in this way from the 1l10uths of fictional cha.ract-

ers is to indict Shakespeare of the crimes of Ia[~ o. "On the i!:ve" con-

tains the empty convers.tion of a leisured circle and their servants,

and 8ugeests the vanity and futility of popular political àiscussion

in Eingland at that tirne. Alexander, the lil03t authoritative of these

Hollo\'l Len, proposes the dictator, and wins imrnedi.te a pproval. (II 'Good

old Eus solin. l , shouted Agatha. Il) " 1Dut l ,11 Alexander recognizes," la.

dictatorship is only a palliative. 111 And thus he is left brooding.

l suspect that to l!;liot at this tille, lillg1.md appeared to be

liOn the ,é;ve" of 50methil1c~ far i.lore serious, and dangerm.u8, th.m another

genera1 e1ection. This danger, as we have .. lready seen, was the extremiffiIl

which mig ht easilily prove the fruit of continuou5 unprincip1ed com-

promise: the danger that liLer ...1 democracy Ltight lead to the opposite

of itself.

This danger of totalitarianism was most evitient after the virtua1

breakdown of parliamentary methods in 1931. At a time when no parties

haà any specifie reuedies ta offer, fru~tration with the con5titutional

parties became more and 1:.ore widespread. And .i1iot, a5 we s ..w, feared

the positive fruits of this frustration even r:.ore than he àis1iked the

sy3teI:l undel' which it had a.ppcared •

.l!.ven in lj24, at the tine oi' "On the ":;ve", .:.!J.iot had been a.stute

enou8 h to 3ee "There the greatest ù ..ngers now l ..y. 'l'he KibLo Kift Kindred, for

enJap1e, was 03ten3ibly a healthy out-door hiking movement of the type tourists
 • ••

were used to in Germany, picturesque with its marching and its uniforms.

Its leader, John Hargrave,l foresaw lia golden age" of the new cult of

nature, including the folk-dance. But Eliot, back in 1924, was shrewd

enough to pereeive something else in sueh tendeneies as weIll

Il In the most boisterou8 storm, the ear of the

praetised seilor can distinguish, et a surprising dis-
tance, the peculier note of breakers on e reef. This
note is not 'the great middle-cless liberaliam,' or the
greet lower middle-class socialismj it is of euthority
not democracy, of dogmatism not tolerance, of extremity
and never of the mean." 2

It was to steer the ehip of etate past this reed of 'authority',

'dogmatism', and 'extremity', that Eliot considered an examination of the

possible constructive ideee of Faeeiem importent. His concentrated study

of Fascism and l'Action franiaise as possible alternatives to Liberalism

is packed into several articles,chiefly of the two yeers 1928-9.~ In

this exeminetion he realizes the essential difference of his approaeh from

those of the Fascists themselvesj to whom, as to the Communiets, their

creed wee not en idea but a faith. Ae such, we remember, Fascism end

Oommuniem are both "humbug ll : "There is a form of faith which ie eolely

appropriate to a religionj it should not be eppropriated by pOlities.,,4

lLater the leader of the Sociel Credit Party, or IIGreenshirts,d

in Britain. He wae already renowned not only for his affiliations to
Major Douglas but for his own idees on leadership, which won the enthusiaem
of D. H. Lawrence.

2 11A Oommentary,1I Oriterion, III. 9 (Oct. 1924) pp. 1-5 (p. 4)

'cf. especially, "The Literature of Fescisrn, Il Criterion, VIII. ~l

(Dec. 1928) pp. 280-290. IIMr. Barnes end 1-ir. Rowse. Il Oriterion VIII. ~~
(July 1929) pp. 682-691. For l'Action franiaise, cf. IIIhe 4ction Frenyaise,
M. !v;aurras and Mr. Ward. 1I Oriterion, VII. , (Mar. 1928) pp. 195-20,.
liA Reply to Mr. Ward. 1I Criterion, VII. 4 (June 1928) pp. 84-88

4 11The Literature of Fascism,1I loc.cit., p. 282.

Both fascism and communism have "unexamined enthusiasma ll ; and although

there may be an irrational element in all political philoaophy, neither

fascism and communism have shown even an attempt to analyze this irra-

tional element. l In fact, in its tendency to glorify this irrational

element, fascism is part of the contemporary revolt against reason about

which Eliot ia concerned; and incorporates such extremitt sentiments aa

the Sorelian myth of solidarité,

"The mystical belief in herd-feeling, which

had (sic) been elevated to a pseudo-science under
such names as 'social psychology', is one of the
most disquieting superstitions of the day.1I2

Eliot finds this belief equally dangerous in ~ationaliam or in

Communism, "and indeed the two do not seern very far apart. II ' And if the

two showe certain similarity in their enthusiasms, this is even more

marked in their political and economic idees," which have much in common."4

30th are inspired by the secular ideel of an earthly communal paradise,

in which a humanitcrian zeal is realized through the IIsovereignty of the

State machine."5 Both propose secular political order as a cure for

anarchy, and whether this order is Nationalist or Internationalist doea

not make much difference.

lllMr. Barnes and Mr. Rowse," loc.cit., p. 687

2"A Commentery" Criterion, XI. 44 (Apr. 1932) pp. 467-473.

Orthodox political scientiste have not heeitated to call the theoriea of
the early social peychologiets both anti-intellectualist and anti-democratic:
R. G. Gettell, History of Political Thought (New York, 1924) p. 492

'ibid.
4
"hr. Barnes and Mr. Rowse," loc.cit., p. 690

511Catholicism and International Order," E.A.l-iI., p. 126. "Mr.

Barnes and Mr. Rowae," loc.cit., p. 688.
 IT~

"1 must confees, as an onlooker, that 1 cannot

aee very much fundamental difference between National-
ism and Internationaliaml the first term can sound
either more pernicioua or more glorious than it ie,
and the second aa welle The firat exalta one particular
group of men, the second (in theory) aIl mankindj and
neither of these deitiee eeeme to me particularly
worthy of worahip. The wise man will pay due respect
to both, the fanatic to one."l

Both faaciam and communism are "apparently anti-capitalistic" j

but they do not eeem to Eliot, lias an ignorant obeerver, Il to defeat the

essential economic characteristic of capltalism, which ls not "the

division of humanity into those who live on earned and those who live

on unearned income, but the concentration of power into a few hands ••••

not the ahareholder, but the active director. 112

IIThe interesting point about capitalism la

ita creation of economic or financial power, diatinct
frcnn the politicel power, and in e wey leas res-
ponsible •••. The interesting question to enswer iB
whether Russia or Italy succeeds in conecntrating
all power into political hands, or whether they
will merely evolve a new financial class. lI '

Eliotls mature critique of capitalisID was for its materialism,

ita galloping industrialization, and its repudiation of a Ohristian

ordering of society and economic structure. It is clear that on this

level, neither fasciam or communism provided eny revolution in idee'

l"Mr. Barnes end Mr. Rowse," loc.cit., p. 689

2This concentration of real economic power in a democracy,

under the dieguise of the joint-stock company, has since become the
common place of the "manegerial revolution: Il It wes apparently brought
to Eliotls notice by his reeding of J. A. Hobsonls The Oonditions of
Industrial Peaeel vd. Eliot, "Political Theorists," Oriterion, VI. l
(July 1927) pp. 69-7' (pp. 7~-73)

'ibid.
 , I~

-Both fascism and communism seem to me to be

well-meaning revolts against Icapitalism l , but re-
volts which do not appear to get ta the bottom of
the matter; so thet they are likely to be merely
transformations of the present eystem which will
completely eatisfy the materialietic interpretation
of hiatory. III

Eliot confesses "to a preference for fascism in practice"

(es the form of unreason le6s remote fram his own), but contends that

"neither fascism nor communism is revolutionary ae idea." 2 Both show

a common familiarity, a cepacity to be eesily ebeorbed by the thought-

less mind. "They are both, in other worde, perfectly conventional

ideas •••• and even •••• merely variations of the present etate of thinge."'

This type of analysie, even when it ia aetute, is a little tao

Olympien for moet of ua: we find we muet judge contemporary and con-

flicting political theoriee by their results, as well as their viewe on

ultimate ende. Eliot aleo has deecended to attack Fasciem more epeci-

fically beceuee of its aggressive netioneliem, not just becauee as a

theory Il it becomea both artificial end ridiculous,,"4 but for its conS9-

quencee. Othere were aroueed by ite effect on the livee of the Abys-

einiane: Eliot wae concerned by ita effect on the future of European

civilizetion. Like Ortega y Gasset and E. R. Curtiue, and unlike the

Action franiaiae, Eliot wes concerned after the war with the problem of

how Europe could be organized ta provide an arganic cultural wha1e against

lloC.Cit., p. 690

2l oc •c it., p. 691. "The Literature of Faaciem," loc.cit., p. 288

'loc.cit., p. 68,

411A Oommentary"Oriterion, XI. 42 (Oct. 19'1) pp. 65-72 (p.1')

 , ,~

l
the undiminished centripetal forces of nationalism. Since the war,

Eliot has to1d us how the attempt to estab1ish a European international

community of 1etters failed, owing "chief1y to the gradua1 c10sing of

the mental frontiers of Europe."t

UA kind of cultural autarchy followed inevitab1y

upon po1itical and economic autarchy. This did not
merely interrupt communications: l be1ieve that it
had a numbing effect upon creative activity within
every country. The b1ight fel1 first upon our friends
in Ita1y. And after 19)3 contributions from Germany
became more and more difficult to find. u2

In April 1926, quoting liberally from the words of Max Scheler,

Eliot agreed that freedom of expression seemed to be threatened everywhere

in Europe except Eng1and and France. Scheler had reported the fate of

self-expression in Ita1y, at the handa of the uchildish popu1ar movement"

of Fascism. Scheler had reported a1so on the recent exile of Unamuno

from Spain, with "the universities in a bitter strugg1e for 1ife against

c1ericalism. Il And Eliot added that there seemed to be Udangers, coming

from both Socia1ism and the Church, to freedom of opinion in the German

universities."~ For Fascism was an extreme examp1e of the genera1 "obses-

sion with politics u4 which contributed to the deterioration of thinking.

1 UA Oommentary" Oriterion, VI. 2 (Au~. 1927) pp. 97-100.

A problem not approached by the pure1y po1itical machinery of the League
of Nations.
2N.D.C., p. 120

~IIA Oommentaryll Oriterion 'N. 2 (April 1926) pp. 221-22~

(p. 22~)
4
N.D.O., p. 120
 .,.

Similarly, Eliotls dislike of Napoleonic nationalism, his con-

tinuously stated preference for regionalist devolution, led him to com-

ment adversely on the Fascist policy of administrative centralization.

Although special arguments might he proposed for such a policy in Italy,

it could never he justified for England. l

But this is only a reflection of Eliotls fundamental divergence

from the Fascists in their conception of the State as leadership. l

have already suggested how great a difference lies between the intention

of those who would use sociel sanctions for the maintenance of certain

traditions, end those who would manipulate certain traditions for the

consolidation of central State power. Hence we should not he surprised

to find Eliot suggesting that dictatorship may be quite possibly something

lIessentially incompatible wi th kingship. 112 His Royalism proposed allegiance,

not to a man, but to the office of the Orown: the Orown, representing

the permanent interests of the nation, could thus counterbalance the State

machinery which represented the nation at any particular moment. Totali-

tarian dictatorship, instead of balancing these two powers, consolidated

them, behind en emotional if not quasi-religious subservience to a super-

men. The Nepoleonic hero is purely the creation of popular sovereigntYI

that is, his sole title is the respect and support of the people. When

this is so, there may easily be authority or aven tyranny against the indi-

viduel, but there cen never be resl aut hority against the whole. Eliot

IIlThe Literature of Fascism," loc.cit., p. 289

2uA Oommentary, Il Oriterion, XIII. 53 (July 1934) pp. 624-630

(p. 629).
auggests elsewhere that the ao-called leader ia really "that one of the

Gadarene awine which runa the fasteat. lll And, when all power haB been

trensferred to the transient authority of the cherismatic leader, there

is no room left for the traditional and hereditary influence of a landed

aristocracy.

It is possible that liberal democracy can, broadly speaking,

be opposed to those po1itica1 systems which are interested in the creatiom,

rather than the control, of leadership. Hence there is a tendency among

American political scientists like Professor Lasswell to see only two

alternatives, the free and the totalitarian. 2 But Eliot makes an equally

fundamental distinction between the alternatives to Idemocracy', between

the truly traditional and the modern or INapoleonic l ideel of leadership.

And Fascism appeared to Eliot II( in the form in which it has succeeded

up to date) to represent the Napoleonic idea."

"The latter, in contrast to the idea of Monarchy,

is a familiar conventional modern ideal it is the
doctrine of success. The feeling towards a dictator
is quite other than that towards a king; it is merely
the consummation of the feeling which the news pa pers
teach us to have towards Nr. Henry Ford, or any other
big business man. In the success of a man like Mussolini
(a man of Ithe people ' ) a whole nation may feel a kind
of self-f1atterYj and the Russian people deified itself
in Lenin. Both Ita1y and Russia seem to me to be suf-
fering from Napoleonism. And this does not strike one
as an lutter repudiation of materialism l ."3

lllA Commentary," Criterion, XII. 48 (April 1933) pp. 468-473

(p. 472)

2If one ls not (with Prof. Lasswell) "in step with ideal values
of the American tradition, and with the progressive ldeologles of our
epoch," theonly alternative is the concentration of power and influence
"in the hands of the soldier and political policeman." (H. D. Lasswell,
The World Revolution of Our Time, p. 6)

3"Mr. Barnes and Mr. Rowse," loc.cit., p. 690

As Eliot had commented drily in 1926. IIAuthority and Tradition (es-

pecially the latter) do not necessarily suggest Signor ~:usso1ini.lIl

(These observations are, l think, most pertinent in the interpre-

tation of the unfinished sequence "Coriolan," especia11y in the light of

Eliot' s earlier hint that "there are sorne similarit ies oetween the fascist

revolution and certain events in early Rome, but before the advent of

Christianity.1I2 They only confirm, what the poem' s own echoes of l>~aurras
and Arnold sh ; uld suggest, the folly of that 'euthoritarian' interpre-

tetion whose most recent exponent is D.E.S. l>iaxweU) The "Coriolanus"

figure in Eliot' s poetry is a complex one; but the "harmonious union of

emotion and thought ll which others attribute to him seems hardly to be his

most intrineic quality.)

This popular need for self-identification, and this weakneas

for self-deification which e ~;ussolini could exploit, were of immense

social-psychologica1 importance to Eliot. Elsewhere he has commanded

attention by hie description of the social significance of the drama.

This rni~ht be more obvious in the exemple of classical Athens; but Eliot

saw it equelly in the !<;iusic-hall Variety of Nellie '11a11ace and above a11

l"A Comrnentary, Il Criterion, DT. 2 (April 1926) pp. 221-22~ (p.222)

2"The Literature of Fascism," loc.cit., p. 286

~"The poem adopts a favourable attitude to attempts to restore

strong leadership, to revive the 'broken Coriolanus'. The leader here
may be one who keeps hie eyea fixed on God, 'the still point of the turning
world', as Frank Wilson holda, or he may himself be the still point."
(D. E. S. V~xwell, The Poetry of T. S. Eliot, (London, 1952), p. 1~2).
Perhaps Mr. Maxwell is committed to a critical the ory which excludes the
relevance of prose evidence like the above; "Ooriolan" is, l think, one
poem which can hardly be understood when abstracted from Eliot's prose
writings.
 I~,

l-~ar ie Lloyd, which gave artistic expres sion to the life of East-end London.

Music-hall, like religion in another time, made life tolerable: in it,

the Romantic Englishman, by learning to see himself as possibly funny,

could purge himself of his unsatisfied desire. l And where, in other

countries, the conditions of modern living had made such healthy kathar-

sis impossible, it was understandable that they should turn for self-

satisfaction te the power and the glory which were su~~ested to them by

the modern Idictator l •

By these unscientific hints at a Isocial psychologyl, Eliot

concluded that one must understand Nussolini as a man who knew how to

reflect, rather than control, the impulses of the people: that he was,

in essence, "a man of histrionic ability."2 It was in this respect,

Eliot later added, that one could discern "the difference between the

aristocratic ruler (seldom quite so aristocratie as he is imagined to be)

who is an extinct type, and the demagogue."~

"The modern Idictator l , a Hitler end Mussolini,

must be thought of rather •••• as a highly paid lead-
ing actor, whose business is te divert his own people
(individually, from the spectacle of their own little-
ness as well as from more useful business). (1 wonder
whether the more retired life of other dictators, Josef
the Terrible or the more gentle Salazar, ia no~ per-
haps a token that they have more real power) .11

lUThe Romantic Enf,lishman, Il Tyro l (1922) p. 4

2
UA Reply to Hr. Ward," Oriterion, VII. 4 (June 1928) pp. 84-88
(p. 86)

~eA . review of) "The Lion and the Fox,1I Twentieth Oentury Verse,
6/7 (Nov./Dec. 1957) pp. 6-9 (p. 7)
4·.LL.
b·d
 nro

Later, after a visit to Portugal, Eliot was only the more

convinced that we must learn to diaassociate Salazar and his regime

from the violent and expansionist histrionics of other 'dictators'.

"Salazar •••• has never encouraged the adoption of

the 'Leader Principle', and no leader haa ever won his
position with less personal ambition, or less appeal
to popular emotion. Nor did he riae to power through
a 'party'. He aimply happens to be the ablest statea-
man in Portugal, all the more distinguished by never
appearing in uniform or wearing a decoration. He looks
what he is by profession, a university professor: but
a very brief meeting with him gave me the impression
of a university professor who is also an extremely
acute judge of men. His interest and importance for
us is that without being in any dubious political
sense pro-clerical he is a Christian at the head of a
Christian country."l

l feel that, even though we may not be interested in the citation of

Portugal as a political model, the ability to make this kind of distinc-

tion is indeed an important one.

To Eliot, l am sure, the basic difference between Mussolini

and Salazar lay in their attitude towards Christianity. In 1934, having

exemined the famous exposition of Fascist ideology in the Encyclopaedie

Italiene (which was purpor.tt.llywritten by };!ussolini), Eliot expresaed

2
doubt that FascisID and Christianity could be found to be compatible.

Certainly the Fascist leader was not, like the British monarch, sacra-

mentally ordained, with specifically Christian responsibilities. In

1Christian News-Letter, No. 42 (Aug. 14th, 1940) pp. 1-4 (p. ,)

211The B1ackshirts Il (A Letter to the Editor). Church Timea ,CXI.

J, 706 (Feb. 2nd, 1934) p. 116. Later, in 1936. Eliot obaerved that to
portray the Ohurch aa the enemy of the people would aid fascist and com-
munist alike. ("The Church as Actiom Note on a Recent Correspondence."
New English 'lieekly, VIII, 23 (!viar. 19th, 1936), p. 451)
 , ZJ C

1928 Eliot predicted, not altogether correctly, that there would be no

closer harmony between the Ghurch and Mussolini, than there had been
l
between the Ohurch and Napoleon. In short, we may conclude that there

was no fundamental change in Eliotls ideas, except possibly of emphasia,

when he stated in The Idea of a Ohristian Society (. :

"The fundamental objection to fascist doctrine,

the one which we conceal from oureelves because it
might condemn ourselves as well, ie that it is pagan." 2

This ooly reflected his long-held opinion that ultimately the choice be- "

tween Iltotalitarian democracyll and the limited Christian society, l'laa the

only choice left for modern Europe.~

One should not conclude that Eliot, like so many others, re-

jected ~'ascism out 01" hand. Fascism o:::"fered new forms of' communal organ-

ization, and Eliot wondered whether this new corporate organization might

poasibly offset the new totalitarian phenomenon of the unorgenized mob,

"The reelly interesting thing about fascism is its syndicalism, its

organization of workers, and its financial policy, if it has any."4

From one or two scnttered remarks, one would be tempted to link

Eliot closely with the theoretical currents -- sa prevalent after the

events of 19,1 -- which sought to replace constituency by sorne form of

corporate or Functionalist representation. For exemple, the proposed

abolition of the University constituencies seemed to him "reac tionary"

in the worst sensel

l"The Literature of Fascism" loc. cit., p. 286

2
I.O.S., p. 18. There are many to whom this condemnation will not
seem strong enough; they ahould remember that to Eliot it is fundamental.
There are others, on the other hand, who will be surprised that Eliot, who
rejected fascism as Ilpagan," could have ahowed so much sympethy ta what he
described as the "agnosticism (or atheism if you like)" of Charles Maurras.
cf. infra p " \ q \.
1

'loc.cit., pp. 21-22

4nMr. Barnes and Mr. Rowse" loc.cit., p. 688.
 "The one most rational form of representation
in the House of Commons, the representation of the
Universities, ia to be destroyed •••• lt ia amazing
stupidity •••• to remove just those men who do actua11y
represent something. Far from abolishing this form
of representation, we ought actually to increaee itj
and to have more members responsible to genuine in-
tereate with which they are acquainted rather than
to mixed constituenciee which they may hardly lmow." 1

But this deeire for more efficient or exact representation, so

common at the time, is neither repeated nor juetified in Eliot's

writinge. 2

In any case, corporatiem was not enough ta win Eliot's approval

of Fascism in ItalYi and still lees does he consider it applicable to

En~land. Just as he criticizes Bel10c's and Cheeterton's distributism

for Hs "Romaniam,1I which "sometimes blinde them to the realities of

Britain and the British Empire,'" so he deala shortly with thoae who

think that Faecism could be reconci1ed with the British constitution,4

Nor ia it true, as Robbins euggests, that Eliot ever gave even

"wary praises" to "the new British fasciet movement lad by Sir Oswald

lvioe1ey.Ô When, before hie overtly fascist daye, Mosley published the

programme of "the New Party, ,,6 Eliot turned with interest and Il respect"

IliA Commentary" Criterion, X. 40 (April 19,1) pp. 481-490 (p. 482)

2
Incidentally, he ridicules the conception of the House of Lords
as an "idea1 eyndicalist aseemb1y,,, (although thie was one of the common1y-
prqpoeed schemes of interest-repreeentation) (liA Commentary" Criterion,
XI. 42 (Oct. 19,1) pp. 65-72 (p. 70»)

'"Folitical Theorists" Criterion, VI. l (July 1927) "pp. 69-7' (p.72)

41'A CommentaryU Criterion, VII. 2 (Feb. 1928) pp. 97-99 (p.98)

5
op.cit., p. 192

6üutepoken advocates of the New Party included Harold Nicolaon,

Sir Osbert Sitwel1, and John Strachey.
 .. ~

to "a pronouncement by men who have had the courage to disassociate

themselves from any party."l However, this document appeared to him to

lack both "profound moral conviction, Il and "any philosophical ins ight. Il

But Eliot did not even show this initial respect for the bully-boys who

made up the British Union of Fascists. In 1934 he expresses doubt whether

the Blackshirts can be both "zealous fascists and devout Christians,1I2

and by 1935 he dismisses Mosley's programme of church and social action

as "not only puerile but anethema.";

Of the golden dawn heralded by the Kibbo Kift Kindred, the

Blackshirts were only too sordid a fulfilment. But if Eliot had sought a

more activist embodiment of his own interests, he might have found it in

the work of Ronald Duncan's agrarian journal, The Townsman. 4 But Eliot's

admitted sympathy for its principles could not bring him to approve the

emotionel tone of that magazine. All the right elements were there,

lliA Commentary" Criterion, X. 40 (April 19;1) pp. 481-490

(p. 48;)
2 11The B1ackshirts" (A Letter to the Editor) Church Times,
OXI, ;, 706 (Feb. 2nd, 1934) p. 116

'"The Ohurch and Society." (A Letter to the Editor). New

English Week1y, VI. 2-' (March 21st, . 1935) p. 482.

4The Townsman, attracted such Monetary Reform writers as

H. G. Porte.us and E. W. F. Tomlin, and above all Ezra Pound; it had
published the Rexist Party Manifesta, a politicel hoax which parodied
all the old parties. It also featured articles by Bro. George Every,
Martin Turnell, and Lt. 001. Oreagh Scott, head of the Farmers' Action
Oouncil.
 '''''1

"yet l feel like a Tory who becomes aware

that he ia also (having been born where he was,
and not several generations earlier) eomething
of a Liberal.'"

Specifically, he fears the apparition in euch an ideology of "Ezra

Pound' s imaginary hero, the etrong man."

In sum, we can only conclude that Eliot was accused of faecism,

not because he hed ever approved of it, but because his attack on fascism

was for some people not vio\~~ enough. Eliot's antipathy to Fascism

was certainly no greater than his great fear of the contemporary confusion

and apathy which might lead to Fascism. His early warnings of 1924-5

became more specifie in 1928, when he concluded that this political

aberrancy was due to a failure to think our problems through to their

spiritual foundations: A "spiritual anaemia" underlay the parroting for

order and authority, the "recurring human desire to escape the burden of
2
life,1I which had been made intolerable by democracy. This was the source

of our "general sickness of politics ll :

"And in this state of mind and spirit human

beings are inclined to welcome any regime which
relieves us from the burden of pretended democracy.
Possibly also, hidden in many breasts, is a craving
for a regime which will relieve us of thought and
at the same time give us excitement and military
salutea •.•• lt is this feeling that l fear."'

l UA Commentary (n)" New English Weekly, XVIII. 7 (Dec. 5, 1940)

pp. 75-76 (p. 75). The same prudence might weIl have led him to ab-
stain in 1933 from showing intAl"C.... in Douglas Jerrold 1 s conception
of the "Ethical State" (/lA Cornmentary," Criterion, XII. 49 (July 19;3)
pp. 642-647 (p. 646»

2"The Literature of Fascism," loc.cit., p. 288

'·b·d
..LL.
 At this time, when the dogmas of democracy had failed, it wes

necessary to seek a more rational analysis of the deficiencies which

were instinctively felt. And in 1928 Eliot felt that this rational

return to moderation was abetted by the analysis of an empirisme organ-

isateur:

"If anything, in another generation or so, is to

preserve us from a sentimental Anglo-Fascism, it will
be some system of ideas which will have gained much
fromthe study of l-laurras. "1

Maurras' tragic historic destiny, by which the most violent of

anti-Dreyfusards wes fina11y condemned of tresson, has done much to ob-

scure his theoretica1 po1itica1 perspective. From s practica1 point of

view, we may feel that the simi1arities between Maurras and the Fasciste

proved more important than the differences. And even from an intellectual

point of view, the 1ibera1 may feel that they shared far more than a

common concern for 'tradition' and 'authority'. Perhaps the most dis-

turbing feature about Fascism and Naziem was their outspoken anti-

intellectualism in politicsj and it is easy to diBcern a similar anti-

intellectualism among certain elements of the Action frangaise. Maurras

himself, a friend of Sorel's, stressed the common man's need of myth, and

warned against dislocating "correct" social habit by indiscriminate en-

quiry. Nevertheless, i t is quite fallacious to lump Oharles Maurras

indiscriminately with the intuitionism and pragmatism of Sotel, or of

h The Action Franiaise, Maurras and Mr. Ward. Il Oriterion,

VII. ; (March 1928) pp. 195-20; (pp. 196-197). €f. "The Literature of
Fascism ," loc.cit.: "lvfost of the concepts which might have attracted me
in Fascism l seem already to~ve found, in a more digestible form, in
the work of Oharles Maurras:
 , lJ1ia

other members of the Action fran~aise. "}lion intuition jamais ne me

trompe," said Barr~s; 1 but l-1aurras outdoes his master Oomte in his in-

vocations of the Goddess Reason. Similarly, though the Réaction d'abord

of Henri Vaugeoislinked the Action fran1aise to the pragmatism of Blanqui;.

the politique d'abord of Maurras meant the fulfilment of the reasonable

inve8ti~ ation8 of political science. 2

To understand Maurras, we must explore these distinctions, which

illustrate the utter ambiguity of words like 'authoritarianism', or

'nationalism'.' Nationalism to Barr~s wes a whâlly anti-rational commit-

ment, a desperate gesture of surrender to the historie environment which

had inexorably determined us. In the nation the individual could find
1
his only certainty, amid a world des tumultes insenses. Hence there 18

no room for intellectuel discrimination or constructive criticism in

such a relativistic universel "Je me tiens ~ ma conception historique,

comme un naufragé ~ sa barque. 1I4 Nationalism, in short, is a denial of

rational judgment itselfl

lQ.uoted in Roger Soltau, French Political Thought in the Nineteenth

Century, (Newhaven, 19)1) p. )81. cf. Mussolinil "I am like the animale,
l feel when things are going to happen; some instinct warns me, and l am
obliged to follow it. 11 (Quoted in M. Sarfatti, Life of Mussolini, p. 60)

211La politique la premi~re, la première dans l'ordre du temps,

nullement dans l'ordre de la dignit'" Mes id'&s politigues, p. 96.

'To this end, Eliot has referred us to the essay on Barr~cs in

the Jugements of Henri Massis, which "demonstrates admirably the superiority
of the 'nationalism' of Maurras ta the Inationalism l of Barr~s, and the
important differences between the two. Il ("The Action Frantaise, 1-'1. Maurras
and Mr. Ward," Criterion, VII. ) (March 1928) pp. 195-20) p. 20,))

4Quoted in l.tiassis, op.cit., l, p. 208

 "Revêtons nos pr~jugés si temporaires, du moins
il nous tiennent chaud. Recommen~ons a ne plus penser.
Fermons notre coeur sur la v6rité." l

The world aa conceived by Maurras tranacended man's free will in

the equal and opposite directionl

,
where Barres saw eternal chaos, Maurras

saw eternal order. Like his master Oomte, l'.aurras dree.mt of the recon-

struction of society according to the absolute principles of political

science -- "anterior and superior to the will of menll -- which could be

isolated and formulated with the same precision as the laws of chemistry.2

And nationalism also is for Maurras, as it was for Oomte, not a means of

giving expression to the antagonistic fragments of the world; but part of

the proces6 of organizing or ordering the world as a whole the expres-

sion of peace end order rather than of violence and war.

dut we have by no means approached the x';aurras who wes of intereat

to Eliot. Eliot hed little patience with nationalism of eny description.

Like Ortega, he considered that the local differences of period and

nationality formed part of e lerger community in space and timel the com-

munit y of art, thought, and religion, in short the community of civilizetion

and of civilized men. Maurras agreed that the hierarchy of order ws

acnieved, not in the nation, but in civilization as a whole. Unfortunately,

IThe aystematic determinism of Barr~s, and the systematic

libertarianiam of Sartre, yield strengely aimiler doctrines of relativism
and irrational engagement. The two doctrines form a good exemple of that
oscillation between absolute theories, to which, according to Bebbitt,
More, and Eliot, reason unaided is so prone.

~eurres, 1<1ea idées politiques, pp. 101-107; Romantisme et

révolution, pp. 20-2,. Thus l~urras announced with certitude that "all
elected leaders are obeyed badly"; or that there i9 a "necessary causality"
between democratic election and centralization. The distinction between
natural and human lawe, which meant so much to Eliot, is wholly ignored.
 •a.,

however, this 'c5'.vilisation' was to Maurras a party among nations, not

their community. "Oivilisation" implied the Classic or Gro.aco-Roman-

Gallican tradition whose chief representative tcday was France; and any-

thing alien to this tradition, sueh as (inter alia)Protestantism, liberalism,

or Wagner operas, was barbarous. It was external, "not only to the eommon

Hellenie-Latin tressure, but to humanity at its highest." 1

It is worth rememberin~ that this hi~hbrow version of the White

~lan's Burden wee not en eccentric perversity of Frenehmen alone; but was

shared to a greater or lese degree by many soi-disant Olassicists, such

as Olive Bell or Irving Babbitt, who were not so blessed as to have been

~orn within Frence itself. Eliot himself, who has frequently confessed

his inobility to enjoy Goethe as he should, shared this predilection for

France of the grand si~cle. But he was never so foolish as to identify

the "civilized" or Olassic, with Hellenic culture (and, correspondingly,

Romantic with Teutonic). The true classic was universa~2 and in the same

fsshion, Britain's distinctive cultural value wes to ect as a via media,~

"bridge bet\ieen Latin culture end Germanic culture in both of which she

shares.113 It is clear th et Eliot' s classicienJ had more in common \1ith the

eelectie humanism 01 ':;rnst Robert Ourtius, than with that selective "Neo-

Olassicism" of Maurras and others which, as a German, Ourtius felt bound

to critici~e as provincial.
4

l"Prologue to an Essay on Oriticism, (II)" (translated Eliot),

Oriterion, VII. 3 (Mar. 1928~ pp. 204-218 (p. 216). cf. Mes id~es poli-
tiques, pp. 83-84:
"Les Allemande sont des barbares, et les meilleurs d'entre eux
(that is, Nietzsche) le savent •••• Le genre humain, c'est notre France, non
seulement pour nous, mais pour le genre humain. 1I

nl1a t ·~s a 0ass~c,

2.,"" 1' .
pass~m.

3 uA Oommentary,1I Oriterion. VII. 3 (Mer. 1928) pp. 193-194 (p.194)

4vd. E. R. Ourtius, "Restoretion of the Reason," Oriterion, VI. 5
(Nov. 1927) pp. 389-397 (p. 397).
 ,.,

AIready the reader must find it difficult to understand why

Eliot, throughout the later 1920's, repeatedly expressed interest in the

wri tings of l-laurras. -..le have seen that Maurras' nationalism was more

complex than either the rural romanticisID of soil which we find in

,
Barres, or the urban romanticism of violence which we find in Sorel. But

it can hardly escape the accusation of romantisme de la raison, which wes

laid so tellingly by Bende in La trahison des clercs. Bot~ ~aurras'

"reason" and his "empirisme," when deal ing with political matters, sound

only too reminiscent of those revolutionary Ideologues whom he so much

detested, and whose influence on his maeter Comte is so palpable. In

short, it is difficult to distinguis~ between the Minerva worshipped by

Maurras, "armée d'une pique et d'un bouclier," and the white-robed

"goddess" whom Robespierre elevated in the r..ladeleine. And in practice,

moreover, the reader will remember just how violent, intolerant, and ex-

clusive was Maurras' nationalism, how antithetical to Eliot's ideal of a

culturally inter-related Europe, cross-fertilizing, mutually stabilizing.

Indeed, Eliot 's first published notice of Haurras was critical,

in the manner of Irving Babbitt, for ïJlaurras' "inte!Ilperate and fanatical

spirit. Hl He always admitted the intemperance of Maurras' nationalism,

and its several weaknssses,

"such as a disposition, inherited from a previous

generation of sociologists, to regard politics as a
'science' independent of morals." 2

l"\'/as there a Scottish Literature,?" Athenaeum, 4657 (Aug. l, 1919)

pp. 680-681 (p. 681)
2
"The Liter~ture of Fascism," loc.cit., p. 290. Maurras went
furthera IILa question morale redevient question sociale" (Romantisme et
rèvolution, p. 35)
 • 1-

Why then did Eliot, in 1923 and again in 1926, express his

debt to L'avenir de l'intelligence? Why did he quixotically defend the

Action frangaise, after it had been excommunicated by the Pope, and at-

tacked by many of its former supporters, notably Maritain?

l think it is clear that Eliot owed much to Maurras' brliliant

criticism, and to his elucidation of critlcal principles. 1 And we cannot

forget the beauties of Maurras' superb style, for which, we remember,

L~on Blum was prepared to for~ive him almost everything. But l think also

that the influence of l..iaurras on Eliot was very largely in the realm of

political ideas, for the reasons which we examined in Chapter I. It was

perhaps Maurras who first convinced Eliot that the preservation of certain:

~aurra6' aesthetic the ory is a good introduction to Eliot's,

standing as it does midway between the intuitionism of Croce and Ortega,
and the dogmatic apriorism of Brunetière. Beauty for Maurras is neither
an inscrutable 'uniquitous' fact, about which all rational disputation la
impossible; nor is it an identifiable form or type. It is somethin~ at once
more simple and more complex than either -- a "fact of sensibility. n
(Maurras, ilprologue to an Essay on Criticism (1)," translated by Eliot,
Criterion, VII. 1 (Jan. 1928) pp. 5-15 (p. Il)) Thus taste is possible,
the most subtle discrimination of which man, defined as lia reasoning animal"
is possible. And among 'tastes' it is possible to detect the most civilized
sensibility, by which one enters the civilized community of art. In good
taste, reason must always maintain control of the passions, without itself
becoming uncontrolled.
Maurras' reason, which shows such 'tact' in the field of literary
criticism, was unfortunately more sure of itself in the equally intractable
field of politics. l can only wish that IItaste ll rether than "science" had
formed the basis of his political reasoning.
Greene has analyzed Eliot' s similerities to }liaurras in T. S.
Eliot et la France; but he might also, in recalling Eliot's treatment of
poetry as intellectualized emotion and emotionalized thought, have com-
pared Vumrras' appreciation of the phrase II sentiments pensées Il (L'allé.
des philosophes, p. 252)
 cultural standards implied the preservation of a certain social order,

one waich bourgeois industrialism (in its sheep's clothing of 'democracy')

was in the process of rapidly destroying. It was perhaps l·1aurras who

first pointed out to Eliot the natural allies of the intelligentsia who,

like it, were threatened with a common destruction: namely, the aristo-

cracy, the peasantry, and the church. And it was Maurras, we suspect, wao

first suggested Royalism as the common political programme behind which

all these belaagured forces, including the men of letters, must unite.

Others had sean the emergence of a serious political problem; Maurras, who

had re-vitalized the mystique of Royalism, seemed to offer some possible

solution.

It was in this lig;ht that Eliot excused Maurras' "agnosticism

(or atheism if you like)" after the Excommunication. It was unfair to

describe Maurras' religious feelings from the romantic Hellenism of his

early twenties, as was (and is) so commonly done. By 1928 his position

was one of an honest unbeliever who

"recogniS8s that he has much more in common,

in the temporal sphere, with Oatholic3 than with
Protestants or atheists. ul

And while he admitted the intemperance of gaurras' nationalism, it was

important to remember that the 'nationalism' of the Action fran~aise

lllThe Action rran~aise, K. Ï':aurras and Mr. Ward," Oriterion,

VII. 3 (If.ar. 1928) pp. 195-203 (pp. 197,201). This article is chiefly
concerned with clarifying Maurras' religious position. Against the pre-
vailing charge that lv".a.urras had lad the younger intellectuals away from
Ohristianity, Eliot replied with a testimonial of a type sometimes assoc-
iated with patent medicines: "1 have been a reader of the work ~ of
Maurras for eighteen years; upon me he has had exactly the opposite effect."
(loc.cit., p. 202)

"!..
 , .....

llwas primerily e atruggle ag;ainst internal enemies, not an instrument

of foreign aggression." l

The Action franïaise was, to Eliot, IIlese nationalistic in

essence then is fascism."2 To give one prominent exemple, whereas Fascism

stood for a strict policy of centralization end the strengthening of

the national state machinery, IIthe the ory of the Action Fran~aise car-

ries decentralization to the farthest possible point. 1I5 And in the 19201S,

Eliot apparently felt that the Action franiaise had shown a clearer

recognition of the duality of Church and State -- elthough by 19)4 Eliot

edmi tted that ~laurras 1 method of treating this problem Il is open to ob-

jection." 4 In general, just as fascism had been of intereat to Eliot

for its urban programme of corporatist devolution, 90 the Action frangaise

was of still greater interest for ita rural programme of regionaliat de-

volution, decentralizing both economic end political power.

But to Eliot in the 1920 ' s, the essentiel difference between

the Inationelism l of the two movements ley in their conflicting attitudes

towards leedersnip. In their common reection egainst pluto-democrecy,

the fescist alternative is that of the strong popular leader, whoee rule

ia based ultimately on public opinion. Tc such a leader, the institution

of the Kingship, though it may not be wholly done away with, ls clearly

onlya convenience. IIThe Action Frangaise,1I on the other hand, lIinsists

lllNr. Barnes and Mr. Rowse,1I loc.cit., p. 689

2'b'd
l:......!....

511The Litereture of Fescism,1I loc.cit., p. 289.

4liA Commentery, Il Criterion, XIII. 5) (July 19)4) pp. 624-650
(p. 628)
upon the importance of continuity by the Kingship and hereditary class. lIl

To many North Americans, this distinction between an elite-rula

which provides for hereditary continuity, and an elite-rule which does

not, may seem trivial if not specious. It may even seem merely to reflect

a snob distrute of the inevitable lower middle-class background of the

modern dictator, a romantic nostalgia for the titled aristocracy about

which Burke was so un justifie dl y sentimental. But Eliot's distinction

between hereditary and trained elites is, as we shall see, not purely a

sentimental one. Already he was insistent that leadership, to be truly

wise, must be based on a sense of tradition and the past: a historic

sense, or 'culture', that was more organic than what could be inculcated

through schools, youth clubs, hiking groups, and labour camps. The

Fascists, we might say, worried only about political leadership and the

conservation of political power. Maurras, BS clearly as Eliot, reacted

away from such a narrow conception of leadership; like Eliot, the order

he was concerned to preserve was not "political" so much as cultural.

Hence, the preservation of such an order demanded, not a further concen-

tration of State power, but the exact contrary: a consolidation of the

social forces which make for stability and permanence, in counter-balance

2
to the positive and dynamic machinery of the State. The forces of the

present, of the mass, and of change are already adequately represented in

the modern state machinery; the interests of the pest, of the pre-eminent,

and of stability must seek their embodiment elsewhere, not in the State

but the Throne. Because it upholds the sanction of tradition rather than

IIlThe Literature of Fascism," loc.cit., p. 288

2-
cf. infra, (:>.211 .
 , .,

that of transient authority, roya1ism is for Eliot IIthe alternative to

Nationa1ism ll -- above al1, as we have seen, to "the Napo1eonic idea"

1
embodied in Fascism.

A11 this shou1d not tempt us ta exaggerate E1iot l s sympathies

with Maurras. A1though Eliot reportedly had met Maurras, and trans1ated

(after the excommunication) his "Pro1ogue d'un essai sur la critique,"2

there is no doubt that he was temperamentally far more close towards

others who were in the Action frangaise in the 19201s, notably Hen~i

~,assU .and Jacques Maritain) Eliot preferred such men to lv'Iaurras not

only for their faith and orthodoxy, but also for their IIcommun espoir

en la restauration metaphysique,"4 and finally for their greater moderation

concerning La politique cl 1abord. But al though they naver approved l<~aurras 1

idolatrous Invocation to Minerva,5 yet even they appeared to Eliot to be

ti~ged with an alien faith in reasons

"};I. 1,1:assis and ~i. Maritain are for us, es Anglo-

Saxons, less oognate (than the critical the ory of Herbert
Read), beoause they have, for themselves and in a way
which is not exactly ours, found truth."6

1 11Nr • Barnes and Mr. Rowse," loc.cit., p. 690

2
Criterion, VII. 1 (Jan. 1928) pp. 5-15; VII. 3 (Mar. 1928) pp.204-218.

'Besides printing Messis and Maritain the Criterion also published

works by the Action fran~aise historiens Jacques Bainville, Oharles Benoist,
and Pierre Gaxotte. This is not to suggest thet the Criterion was eny more
committed to the Action franiaise than to any of the severa1 movements it
publicized, notab1y neo-Thomism. Eliot made tilis c1ear in his IIReply to
Mr. Ward, Il Criterion, VII. 4 (June 1928) pp. 84-88 (p. 88)

4V.assiS, Jugements, (Dedication)

5"Déesse amie de l'homme, ton charme seul est apte ~ nous introduire
au divin" Romantisme et R6vo1ution, pp. 227-232, (p. 232) One doea not have
to have read Pasoal ta see the gu1f between such ratiolatry and the Ohristian
message.
6M. Read and M. Fernandez,"0r iterion, IV. 4 (Oct. 1926) pp. 751-757.
(p. 754) • .'Ile have already cited Eliotls query whether St. Thomas would have
believed in his philosophy as much as H. l-iaritain appeared to.
 But Eliotls greatest aympathy WBa reserved for the flock of

Oatholic but anti-Meurrasian movements which emerged, during the 1930 1 a,

out of the debris of the Action française. These ranged from the non-

sectarian Ordre Nouveau movement of Dandieu and Robert Aron, to the left-

wing Esprit movement of Emmacuel Mounier. United only in their dislike for

the futility of an industrialism whose most evident fruit was the depression,

each group sought to re-assert, in their own way, not la politique dlabord,

but its converse la primaut~ du spirituel. Eliotts Commentaries of the

early 1930 l s reveal his interest in these groups, and especially in the Cath-

olic Royalism of "Thierry 1<1aulnier" (Jacques Talagrand). In all cases, they

reflected his own criticisms of Liberalism for failing to provide society

with an adequate spiritual purpose. At the seme time (for the political

lines were now more clearly drawn than in the 1920's) Eliot had to commend

them for their "valuable insistence on individuality."1

Why then was Eliot sa strangely silent concerning Maurras' vio-

lent anti-individualism, his outspoken contempt for "1es petites ·libert~s

de l'individu? 11 -Ilhy was he so willing to overlook }';iaurras' involvement

with violence, street-rioting, anti-semitism, personal recrimination, and

plans for the ultimate coup de force? l think his sympathy was extended to

~aurras lergely because of the latter's isolation; it aeemed atrange that

the Roman Oatholic Ohurch could accept an avowedly pagan movement in power

at Rome, while rejecting, in Paris, another movement which wes

(although considerably less popular) only ambiguously

l UA Oommentary," Criterion, XIII. 52 (April 1934) pp. 451-454

(p. 454) In the Oriterion's French Ohronicles of this period, Mont-
gomery Belgion gives a more detailed examination of these authora, aa
weIl aa of Jean-Richard Bloch and Daniel-Rops.
 1
un-Christian. out perhaps Eliotls chief motive was in reaction to hie

fellow Anglo-Saxons, most of whom seemed to show no awareness that

}laurras etood for anything but civil violence and racial hate. 2

Yet the liberal whose primary concern is for political order

will probably feel that these aspecte of Maurras were, ultimately, the

most important. He can see too little diff'erence between the activities

of the royalist Camelots du Roi and those of the fascist Croix de Feu;

both movements brought fame to themselves by battling in the atTeste

(always in the name of order), elaehing with razors and broken bottles

at the flanks of the shining cavalry they loved. It was all very well

for Eliot to indulge in the literary paetime of being "revolutionary" and

"reactionaryU; the fact remains that when Maurras or Sorel spoke of them-

eelvee in this wey, they fully lived up to what they eaid. The editor-

iels of Maurras were implicated, among other thinge, in the beating of

L~on Blum and the assassination of Jean Jaur~s. One need hardly add that

the Gommentariee of the Griterion were, temperamentally even more than

ided~ogically, directed towards quite different goals.' And on the

lUI should like to have explained to me why fascism can perhaps

be swallowed, when the Action ::-'rancaiss ie spewsd out. 1I (UThe Literature
of Fascism," loc.cit., p. 286

2Even Wyndham Lewis, who was later willing to call himself a

fascist, showsd no i!1tereet whatever in Uthe senseless bellicosity of the
reactionary groups of the Action 2rancaise type. Il (Quoted in l,;j~J.k..;.-.t) ,. L ' A(J·,'o>'\
F1"'Cl.I--so.'<sI!!.J"Griterion, VII. 4 (June 1928) F'f' 1(,-8Ll . (p, 94).)

'Bath men, for example, expressed considerable irritation with

their Home Secretariea. But Maurras wrote a letter to ~. Schrameck,
threatening to kill him; and at the resulting trial, Maritain argued that
this was an extreme but legitimate "defence of the public order. 1I Gan
one imagine Eliot writing a similar . letter to Sir ~illiam Joynaon-Hicks?
 " l

practical level, Eliot app~ars still more clearly as another Anglo-Saxon.

Suffice it to say that he was mistrustful of political action, more so of

collective action, and wholly so of 'movements l •

l>iany years later, Eliot criticized l-iaurras again: this time

from a more comprehensive perspective, one in which he was not so frightened

of sounding like a Liberall

liAs a political thinker (Maurras) was the disciple

of the positivist Auguste Comte rather than of Catholics
like Bonald and Joseph de Maistre •••• a man of powerful
but narrow mind •••• ill-informed on foreig;n affairsl!
(like aIl of the Action Fran,aise except Jacques Bainville)
The Pope IIwas condamning a heresy which asserted
that only one forro of government, the monarchical, was
compatible with Catholicism. Perhaps he was also con-
demning a dangerous intolerance which clessified Jews,
Protestants, and Freemasons in one comprehensive con-
demnation. l defended the Action Fran1aise when it
wes put upon the Index; my particular defence may or
may not stand; but l believe now that the Pope under-
stood its tendencies better. There was reason for dis-
satisfaction with the paper on seculer grounds as welll
not only its unsatisfactory treatment of foreign affairs,
but its laOk of appreciation of the importance of
economics. 1I

Eliot carefully points out that the Action fran§aise was, until recently,

separate from "explicitly Fascistic movements such as the Croix de Feu. 1I

Nevertheless, he reserves his praise in this article for the opposing

French Oatholic tradition: "Those great Catholic writers, such as Charles

P aguy
" and Leon
" Bloy, who have united a fervent devotion to a passion f or

social justice. 1I1

lChristian News Latter, Au~. 28th, 1940.lIith these latter names,

Eliot links P~res Garrigou-Lagrange and Lallemant. P~tain, he feels wes
"honourably deluded. Il After ~;aurras' death, Eliot paid his obi tuary respects
in fi French journal,. but was conventionally restrainedl his sole objection
is that "the only classicism possible for modern man is thet which embrac9s
the Christian faith. Il Eliot asks what part of r-;aurras' ideas is still accept-
able: "Sa conception de la monarchie et de la hierarchie, plus qu'l beaucoup
d'autres m'est proche, comme à ces conservateurs anglais dont les idées demeur-
ent intactes malgré le monde moderne. Il ('EOItU!!6,o'e è Cherles Leurr~s; Aspects de
la France et du l-Ionde, II. 8 (Apr. 25, 1948) p. 6)
 " ....

In conclusion, l feel that Eliot might have allied himself

more positively with the charges levelled against Maurras in La trahison

des clercs. The Action fTanlaise, as well as the Fascists, had contributed

to the spread of ideological and practical violence in this century. A

slogan like la politique d1abord could appeal with ease to a frustrated

and irritated generation; while Eliot 1s true significance (especially in

the 1930 1s) was to have sought to moderate and control thes'e enthusiasms.

While more and more of the intelligentsia aceused each other of one or

another Itreason l , Eliot appeared as one of the diminishing minority who

appealed to the via media.

\'le see him in this rolE;, most clearly distinguished from Maurras

and the Fascists alike, in his attitude towards the Spanish Civil War.

This eonfliet may have been, like most wars, a picture of general chaos

and sordor to the Spanish who suffered it. Internationally, however, it

acted like a magnet to draw the confused fragments of intellectual opinion

into clear and sharply opposing 11nes. To the left, it was an opportunity

to demonstrate the unit y of the ory and practice; to the right (including

Maurras and Claudel), it was an opportunity to fight a modern Crusade.

Speaking generally, we might say that the role of the intellectuals haa been

growing in all major revolutions ainee the Renaissance. But never before

had such large numbers of intellectuals taken part, on both sides, in a

war which concerned them for purely predominantly ideological reasons. As

Eliot put it, the Spanish Civil War had become an "1nternational civil war

of oppoaed ideas." l To most authors of left and right, this wes proof

litA Commentary,tI Criterion, XVI. 6; (Jan. 1937) pp. 289-29; t,.,. 2.'gq)
 ,."

that the attitude of moderation was no lon~er viable, that the only re-

maining choice wes a choice of sides. To Eliot, however, this extremism wes

primarily proof of the present "deterioration of poli tical thinking, Il the

deplorable pressure IIto acd,0pt one extreme philosophy or another. 1I Instead

of supportin~ the simple clarities of either the New Statesman or the Tablet,

Eliot wes atill asking for a via media. Why, he asked, should one take sides

in a conflict before ._ah~e knowledge? And though he admitted that parti-

sanship might prove necessary, aven partisanship "ahould he held with re-

servetiona, humility, and misgiving."

Needless to say, this appenl t~ moderation was not, among the

intelli~entsia of 1937, a popular one. Engegement had beoome more and

more the intellectual rule, and detachment the exception. Even in the

little literary raviews the poetry had to make room for editorials which

became more bitter, more ag~ressive, and more long-winded. The day Eliot

had predicted, when extreme Tories and extreme Communists would face each

other over a vacated middle ground, seemed already to have arrived. This

wes c1ear1y suggested by a questionnaire written and distributed to British

authors by the Left Review, which worked after the fashion of the times for

popular intellectual "front." As an "intellectua1 11 document, it ia a

curious1y ironie souvenirl

"Are you for, or against, the 1ega1 Government

and the People of Republican Spain? Are you for, or
againat, Franco and Fascism? For it ie impossible any
longer to take no side."

Of the many authors who replied to this document, there were still

a very few (including Vera Bri ttain, Norman Douglas, Charles }lorgan, Ezra

Pound, and V. Sackville-West) who preferred the impossible. And one of

these wes T. S. Eliotl

1
Authors Teke Sides on the Spanish War (London, 1937) n.p.
 ~oo

"While l am naturally sympathetic, l still feel

convinced that it is best that at least a few men of
lettera should remain isolated, and take no part in
these collective activities."l

In France at this time, Jacques l~ritain was campaigning within

his Communion against any Compromise with "totalitarian statolatry," and in-

sisting that the Falangist cause couid not in any way be viewed as a tlholy war." 2

And Eliot in the Criterion commended ~~aritain 19 exemple to English Catholics,

as exhibiting "the just impartiality of a Ohristian philosopher."' Neither

Eliot nor ~mritain claimed to have found the solution to the immediate dang-

ers of war. They did not see themselves at the head of a third 'neutralist'

army, marching with croziere between the embittered line9. Their fear was for

the future of independent thinking, beyond this or any other war. While the

intellectual masses formed ranks with the general collectivity, it was more

important than ever that "at least a few" should oppose their independence

of mind to the driving dialectic of history.

In later perspective this seems Iess quixotic. Perhaps it is

still futile to judge academically between Benda and Lerner, whether bel-

ligerency or moderation was the greater intellectua 1 "treason. Il But there

seems no doubt that the exacerbation of ideological enthusiaems had con-

tributed above aIl to the deterioration of political thinking. LiberaIs,

aven today, find it difficult to attempt an objective analysis of the merite

and demerits of the Franco and Salazar regimes, in a period when militant

opposition is patently no longer possible. So one is left with a mixture

of confusion and disillusion tending to paralysis; while a few young students,

who see themselves in the role of Pablo Casals, still refuse to visit Spain

for their summer vac.

Eliotls prognosis had proven only too correct, and l think we

must say much the same of his diagnosis. Most of the intellectuals seemed

10p.Cit., p. (29)
~laritain, Preface to Aux origines d1une tragédie, by Alfred
Mendizabal (Paris 19,8).
'liA Commentary," Criterion, XVIII. 70 (Oct. 19,8) pp. 58-62 (p. 58)
 .......

to have reacted from a eimilar sense of the futility and frustration

of a status quo which only "muddled through. Il And it ie wrong tè poke

fun at those militant pacifiste who, finding that pacifiem left them with

too little to do, were the first to fight with the International Brigade.

Any love, and any religion, ie based on some element of the absurd, for

which there may be reasons. Perhaps the worst of the intellectuals in

1937 were those to whom aIl things, including the present, were tolerable,
and to whom no type of commitment was necessary.

These were the people whom Eliot called LiberaIs; and Liberalism,

he considered, had given rise to the strange political gods of the present.

Excessive intransigence was only the fruit of an excessive tolerance, and

extremism the fruit of compromise. If so, the events of the 1930lS had

underlined the importance of a return to first principles. It was neces-

sary to discern a via media that issued, not from compromise with the

actual, but from mediation with the eternal. By seeing current political

issues in the light of a longer view, by his warnings against excessei

either of commitment or of isolation, Eliot had already, l think, proven

a worthy example. It remains to be sean whether he had found principles

that could help us; and, if so, what these were.

 CHAPl'ER Vl

ROYALISM

It has been said, not traly, but

with a possible approximation to
truth, that in 1802 every her.di-
tary monarch waa insane.
Bagehot, T~ English Constitution

Most people know ot Eliot'. political theory from on,

,.

famou8 paragraph, written in 1928:

To make my pre.ant position clear l have thr.e small
books in preparation which will not be ready tor a con-
siderable time. Kean_hill, l have made bold to unite
these occasional e •• ays aeraly as an indication ot wbat
may be expected, and te retute any aecusation of playing
ltpo8Sum. n 'l'he general point ot view may be deleribed aa
olassieiet in literature, royaliat in polities, and anglo-
eatholic in religion. l am quit, awarethat the ~irst
term il c~pl,tely Vagul, and laaily lenda itaelt to elap-
trap; l ~ aware that th, slcond tara i8 at pre •• nt with-
out definition, and easily lends itse~ to wbat ia ~...t W~&L
than clap-trap, l mean temperat, eonaerTatisa; th, third
term dOla not reat with me to detine. The uncommon reader
who ia intereated by thele scattered pape ra may pOl8ibl,.
be intereated by the amall volumes which l have iD prepara-
tiont The Schocl ot Donne, The ~tline ot Rozaliam, and
The PrlgelPle. or ledem Heresl.
In thia preaent chapter we hope te show wh,. The Outline ot

~or Lancelot Andrewes, p. viii. (The only 8.sa7 berain

whieh deals specifleall,. wlEh the concept of king.hip i. that
on "John Bramhall. U ) 10 books ever appearad with the.e tit1esJ

m,
But_Eliot. contribut,d to A Garland for John Donne, (Harvard, 1931),
.dl t.4 by 'rheodore Spencer, and 11'ter str Goa..... A Primer ot
Modern Rer.al toll~ed in 1934. Eliot's ~st polltlcal book,
whlch hâa no word to sa, at aIl eoneern.lng·royaliam, waa the Ielea
ot a Christian Society, (London, 1939). This aubstitution ot~
tltles illustra te. the tbeme of the pr.aent chapter.
 ......

Royaliem never came to be written.

We have already shown how unjustified was the surprise
which this profession evoked. Throughout the praTioua year
Eliot had manifested his intereat in r07alism as a "reactionary
-
and revolutionary" alternative, presumably to the constitutiona1
~

theory or the time. With the publication of this preface we

hear almost nothing more about royalism until the early thirtie8,
after which Eliot's royaltsm appeared as 80mething considerab1y
more te.perate and conservativ8, as well as more concret ••
Inl927 he was above all eoncerned with distinguishinghis
"royaliam" trom that genial love of king and eountrywhieh per-
- -
meated contemporary conservatism, including the works ot theo-
rista .uch as R. H. Gretton and Lord Hugh Cecil. 1
SUch men saw the king&hip as a pr8.cripti.e aanotion to
~;~lJt~Ps_ p,~rliamentary leadership; not (llke Eliot) as a 1'• .,0-
).u.:tl~~arl',fnew principle. Eliot lought to supplant cons,rvttism
with a ne. Toryism; a systematic politieal phi1osophy, based on
the divine origin ot kingly power. He suggeats that we shou1d
read.;Bolingbroke rather than Burke, Aristotle rather thÎln~Dis­

raeil:;"ror- not mere love of tradition, but "wisdom jofned.ith

a passioll1tor ideas, Is wbat we lack and require.-~?'
1'"

~rd Hugh Cecil, Conaerv.tilm, (London, 1912); R. H.

GrettQn, !b8 King'. Maiesty, (LOndon, !931); A. H. Ludoviei~
A Derenca., or
Conservai Dl, (London, 1927).,
2 '
. "Political !heoriat.," CriterioD, VI, 1 (July, 1927),
pp. 69-73. - But 'cr • 'inf'ra,W·'I..Oi ,2.\(. l auap•• t tha.t, in prot.ssing
his sarl,. interest in T0l"1im od in Bo11DgbPO~,. Eliot . _
influenced b,. Charlas Whible7, who rr.. a'bout 1'22 untl1 hi.
death in 1930 wa8 a close personal tri.nd. Whibley waa a
Qharm1Qg Itbelated Augustan Tory, uttarl,. laolatad trom hi.
own age, one whlch he toundtull ot sp•• d, hurry, and politieal
restlessness. AlI England and 1t. culture was the oreatiop, et
~lle "l?-le rich;" he could see noth1ng in the -drab Ideal ot
 Despite this preference tor a ph11080phlcal rather
tban an emotionel Toryism, Eliot telt still less communit1
wlth the abstract and amoral argument for absolutiat author-
ity _hich we find in Thomas Hobbes. We have already noted
Eliot's interest in Hobbes' great opponent, Archbishop
B~àmhall, Primate of Ir.land, tOI" the "common sens. and right

-
instinct," -the pursu1t ot" the yia media," wlth whieh he op-
posed the shallow and enthymematical deduction ot Hobbes'
"Iazy mind." Unllke Hobbes, Bramhall inaist.d on the divine
origin ot the kingly power, and hence on its moral responsibi-
lities:
Supertieially their theories of the kingship bear
some resemblance to each other. Both men .. ere vIo1ently
hostile to demecraey in any form or degree. Beth men
belieyed that the monarch should have absolute power. l
Eliot attributes the difference between the two to
Bramhall's beliet in "divine right":
- -
Bramhall affirmed the divine right of kings: Hobbes
rejeoted this noble faith, and aS8erted in effeçt. the
divine right of power, however oome by. But Bramhall's
view i8 not so absurdly romantic, or Hobb.s~so soundly
reasonable, a. might se.m. To Bramhall the-king himself
was a kind of 8ymbol, and his a.sertion of divine right

'the . " Radioala," but "a barrack and poverty for everybody."
leedle.s to Bay, Whib18y made a virtue of affronting the _
modern mind, and in turning ._ay from polities, "the profeasion
of the aecond-rate." Cf. The Letters of an ~liBhman,(London,
1911). Nevertheleaa he feit thât Bollngbro e 1 laeaB of a
Country Party ". .y yet antmate soma among our -own eontemporarI8s
to a larger, wiser poliey of 8elfl.saness." ("Bolingbroke,"
Crit.rIon, l, 4 (July, 1923), p. 358. In practIce, however,
he was attractedby the •• ntiment rather than the philosophy
of Toryism. Aasoeiated with W. E. Henley on the 'ationê~
Qbsetytf, he found no dltficulty 1n beco.ing (unlike Eliot) a
eloae personal friend or Lord N~rthcllff••
l"John Bramhall," ~., p. 350.
 wasa way ot laying upon the king a double responsibilit~.
It meant that the king had not merely a civil but a re-
ligious obligation toward his people. And the kingship
ot Bramhall is less absolute tban the klngsb1p ot Hobbes.
For Hobbes the Cburch was merely a depart.ent ot the
State, to be run exaetl~ as the king thought best. Bram-
hall does not tell us clearly what would be the duties ot
a private citizen it the king ehould violate or overturn
the Christian religion, but he obviously leaves a wide
expedient margin tor reaietance or justified reb~llion.
It is curioua that the system ot Hobbes, as Dr •. Sparrow-
Simpson has observed, not only iDjists on autocraey, but
tolerates unjustifled revelution.
One ia constrained to observe that in thla interesting
passage, Eliot reveala bis lack of famillarity with the his-
tory ot political theory. Thls ".lde margln for resistance"
.
(llke the "double responsiblllty" of the king) yas a common-
place ot earlier Christian commentators; but, far trom being
obvious, ln Bramball, it ia expressly refuted by him:
That subjects, who have not the power ot the ayord
committed to them, atter a long time of obedience and
lawful succession, atter oaths .ot allegiance, may use
torce to recover their former liberty, or rai •• arms
t~ change the laws eatablished, ia without all contra-
diction both false and rebellious.
If a soverelgn shall peraeeute his aubJects for not
doing his unjust commanda, yet it 1s not lawful to re-
sist by raising arms againat him. 2
Bramhall was one of thos. who eonslde~ it "better te die
-
innocent than to live noeent"; tnd bis advlce to oitizena
in the predleam.nt wh!ch Eliot enviaages Is the clear and

...........
lIb id •
2"The Serpent-Salve, or a remedy tor the bitlng ot
an asp," Works, iil, pp. 341-342, p. 351. l must record my
enjoyment or and interest in thi. little work, eventhough
Professora Allen and Figgis have tound It unworthy of analy-
sis. Prot•• sor John Bowle ho.ever has commended Bramhall's
retutation ot Hobbes: Hobbes and Hia Crit1c8, (Oxford, 1952),
ch. vi, pp. 114-133.
 ........

• ncient one of passlve obedience, tor wh1ch there are thr.e

remedlea: "The tiret 1., to cease trom sin ••• The second
remedy is, p2ayer and tear ••• ~ The third remedy i8, tlight."l
This doctrine of passiye obedience, moreover, vas
one ot the battle crIes of the royalistparty, and part ot
the central doctrine ot "divine right": J. N. Figgi. in hl.
detinitiye work The Divine Rlght ot Kinga summarizes tbu.:
Non-resi.tance and passlyeobedience are enjoined
by God. Under anJ clrcumstancea reaiatance to a king
18 a 81n, and ensurea damnation. 2
But If Ellot'. words do not come up to hi. usual
atandards ot scholarship, they clearly adumbrate the kind
ot po11tlea1 theory whlch he hlmselt upholds. What he ap-
provea la not Bramhall'. defence ot Stuart absolutiam, and
stl11 less the contemp~rary catchword ot "divlne rlght,"3
so much as the mediaeval conceptlon of the kingshlp, with
Its religioui derlvation and responsibilltl... The "expe-
dlent margln tor resistance" la also a mediaeval doctrine:
one which the Stuart monarchy and its theorlsts ot divine
right were doing aIl ln their power to destroy. W. can only

11bld., p. 344. The first two remadie. were eyldently

not 8uftlc1int for the Bishop hiasalt, who fled to Hamburg
ln 1644.
2~. cit., (Cambridge, England, 1922), p. 6. In-
cidenta11y, BolIigbroke, a Delst ln religion, had an elsen-
tlally Wbdg respons. to such doctrine: nA divine rlght to
govern 111 18 an absurdlty: to assert It 18 blaaphemy."
Quoted in Whibley, Bolingbroke, ~. ~., p. 358.
3 .
"It was essentlally a popular theory, proclaiaed
ln the pulpit, publlshed in the market place, witnes8ed on
the batt1e-tield." Figgis,~. !!!., p. 3.
 ,." ,

su~ise that Eliot, despite his frequent notices ot Neo-

Thomism, had not yet explored the political ideas of St.
Thomas Aquinas. l
l think his reterences to "divine right" can best
be interpreted as an abortive attempt to recreate the lost
mystique of Toryism. We know that Eliot derived personal
inspiration from the lives ot Nicholas Farrar, George
Herbert, and the community ot Li;tle Gidding. He seems to
have telt the same atfront against order in the execution
ot' "Charles, King and Martyr,n2 that de Maistre and young
Lamennais had seen in the execution ot Louis XVI. And so
Eliot opposed the attempts ot pub1icists like Lord Lyming-
ton3 to derive the Tory mytb trom the tradition ot "feudal-
.-
ism." The unruly barons who. torced the signing ot Magna
Charta were clearly the tirat Whigs: Torylsm is the more
spirItual tradition ot the religious devotion ot "modest
country families" to their personal monarch: "The romance
ot Toryiam begins with the Stewarts."4 -.

1
. The probable date of Eliot'a el.ction ot a more
Thomfstic approach ia around 1934, when he announced his
intereat in Itr..e m illeur ré ime ue selE> S. Tho , <;

by Marcel Demongeot: Modern Heresies, A Latter to the

Editor), New Engliah Weekly, V. 3 (May . 3, 1934), pp. 71-72.
Cf. "A . sub-Pagan socl.tr," New Engllsh Week11,XVI, 9,
(Dec. 14, 1939), PP.,125-l26.
2 .
At whose omission trom the saints of the Engllah
missal he affected surprise: nNotes on the Wal(I)," Ti.e
and 'l'ide, XVI, l (Jan. $, 193$), pp. 6-7 (P. é). - -

3Ich Dien:' The Tory Path (London, 1931)

'4.".1 Commentary,"Crlterion, XI, 42 (Oct~, 1931),
p. 68.
 Still. l thlnk it i. untortunate that hi •• ympathies
wlth Farrar and Laud ahould have lad him to commend the
rather uninteresting theories ot Bramhall. and (presumabl~)

Filmer, and (explicitly) that "pedantic toreign monareh,"

James l. And his two attempta to suggest that "divine
right" could be, in England, a modern "revolutionary" idea,
.eem ~l.arl,. unfortunate and immature. l
What Eliot was really Interested in, from a theorati-
cal standpoint, was the notion of the religious derivatlon
and responsibl1lt,. ot pol1tical power: and this to hi. waa
the crux ot trueTor,-lam. In 1931 however, modlfylng hia
ear11er judgment about Bolingbroke, E110t stated that Tory-
ism br It. nature was more than an lS!!4be1ng bound up wlth
aomethlng "lnar't iculate and instinctive":
Toryism is never quite justly representedby Boling-
broke, or br the Conaervatlve phl1oaophy ot Burke, or
br the daring innovations ot Disrae1i. 2

~en the ordlnary man is terrified by the bogey of

a tascist or a communlst dlctatorshlp, it Is not his miDd
that 18 terrified •••• It, on the other hand. you talk~h±a
about the divlne rlghtot klngs, or the advantages ot an
heredltary o11garchy, he will retQrt either wlth open deri.ion
and hearty glgg1es, orwlth the patlent gentlenes. wlth whlch
he treats a harmleas maniao. Theae ideas are, as Ideas, and
whether true or fa1se, revolutlonarYi and a real1y ravolutionary
Idea ia olten to be dlvi~.d b,. the 1aughter it evokes." ("JrIr.
Barnes and Mr. Rowse," loc. clt., p. 683.)
There la an elemant ~truth ln these remarkaj how.ver,
with such simple criterla, Ellot might have toyed wlth elaetlon
by lot, or policy by haruspicatlon, whleh would be even more
"reall,. revolutionary."
J. N. Figgil, who was a leading Catholle polltlcal
theorist.as w.ll as a Bcholar, had declared himae1t with hearty
giggles when it came to a revival ot divine rlght: "That the
doetrine 18 abaurd, when judged tram the atandpoint_ot modern
politica1 thought, il a statement that requires neither pro of
nor exposition." (,2R. ill., p. 1).
2 "A (Otn~>'\\-~':
Eliot'A: loc • ill., pp. b&tQ'\. Burke and Disraeli are now
 Nevertheless, although he never again mentions any-
thing about the "noble taith" or divine right, Eliot still
-
considera that political theorT ia 8ssential to Toryism.
Of central importance in this is the relation ot the Cbureh
to State:
Unless Toryiaœ maintains a definite and uneompromi-
aing theory of Chureh and State, Toryism is merely a
fasces of expedienta.
At the same time, 1t must have "a religious roundation for
the whole of its politieal phil~sophy."l
Doubtleas Eliot planned in hia Outline of Royaliam
to give a more det.iled explanation of the king's sacra-
mental and secular responslbl1ities, and of the resultlng
balance of power between Chureh and State. What this theory
would have been, we can only guess by his approving quota-
tion of the fo11owing paragraph by the Reverend Charles
Smyth:
The Royal Supremacy ia not Era.tian in ita impli-
cations, because the king i. a persona mixta, something
lesa than a priest, but something more than a layman;
he ia bath a secular and an ecclesiastical persan; and
it ia the orthodox theory of the Chureh of England that
it is his office ta administer the State througb his
secular officers, and the Church through his spiritual
offieers (not exoluding 1a~en, for they a1so are viri
eocle8iastioi, ehurohmen). ----
And in 1934, returning to the problem of Church and State,

tindeSirabl~ deplcted as philosophers; ef. supra, p. l03.

. 'Lof.;'i·r1LHere Eliot specifieally attacked Lord
Lyming't on, w 0 saw no reason why all of the loyal though
heterodox communions ahould not have due representation in
the House of Lords.

2Charles Smyth, "The State and Freedom," Christendom,

(June, 1931), pp. 119-120. Quoted in Ellot,~. !I!., p. 71.
Eliot suggests !a passant that the royalist "can admit only
one higher authorit~ than the~hrone, wh1ch 18 the Church."l
These "hints followed by guesses" are all that we
now hear of Eliot'e royalist theory of Church and State, but
they are enough to place him,.hether he will or no, in the
main current of British conservative and romantic thought, a
current flowing since Coleridge.
Without calling him a "mediaevalist," we must none-
-
the1ess observe that his thinking even in these ear1y and
Middle periodi, consistently shows more 8im1larities to
Bracton than to Bramhall.
So far this royal1sm 8eems tedious and remote. But
Eliot envisaged modern innovations to adapt the institution
of the Crown to the needs of contemporary indus trial society.
In particular, he saw the significance of the Kingship as a
potential economic institution. In 1927, after the General
Strike, the HGgarth Press published a pamp~let on the coa1
prGblem by Demant and others,2 which contended in general
(like Eliot) that the economic and po1itical prob1ems were to
be solved together in relation to a severe spiritual aSkes;,
of individualB and the community. Speclfically they asked
for Chur eh intervention tO,relieve this prob1em. Eliot,
reviewing th1a book, brings the problem to the Kingship, fore
If the Church is to do what they want, it must hay.

l~A Commentary," Criterion, XIII, 53 (Ju1y, 1934>,

pp. 624-630, p. 629. .
2
V. A. Demant et al. "Coa1: Il challenge to the
national qpnscienee."
 more power, and if it is to belstrengthened, then the
Kingship must be strengthened.
And in 1934, reviewlng Monarchy by Sir Charles Petrle, he
suggested that the latter
mlght have experimented wlth new idea8, luch aa vest-
Ing the Qwuerahlp of land and of the materiala of pro-
duction in the Crown in~tead or in that queationable
proprietor, the nation. .
Such talk distinguishes Eliot from the main drift of
the Christian soclo1ogists. Except for that other avowed
Tory, Charles Smyth, they looked in the main to guilds,
corporatlons, or to Church organizations ·a s countervailing
powers to the sovereignty of the State. Elio~with his
greater sympathy for contemporary French theory, still 100ked
to the Crown:
(Sir Charles Petrie) might further have ahown ho. a
deTot~on to the Throne (as distinct trom personal devo-
tion to a popular King) ..may aet as a check and balance
upon devotion to the party, the party leader, or the
s. tate. A young French r01aliat, Thierry Maulnier, has
recently remarked ln "1934": .
The law of French._ !ociety does not consiat in an
utter devotion (un devouement total) -- how.ver en-
thusiastic and heroic this devotion may be -- of the
individual to the itate, but in the restoration of a
right equilibrium and of right relations b.t•• en the
State and th. individual •
.. Ta which the commentator ,?f L.'Action Frania18e adds:
"whi1st protecting the rlghts, t~. dut!.s, th forces
and the amenities of the faml1y.
Such quotations, as we saw in the last ehapte~,

- XIII,
l"Politieal Theorists," loc. eit., p. 73.
2nA Commentary," Crlt.;lon,
-
53 (July, 1934),~p.b~4-b~
(p. 629). ~ -. .. -
3Loe • cit., pp. 629-630. This idea was apparently
sugg.sted~ EImlor1ginally by Maurras' "L'Avenir de l'in-
telllg~."
4·
___ ... ,
~ ~"? .!....
...
'.
-,~
1- (
should serve sUffieiently te show that, despite his early
approbation of Bolingbroke, Eliot's royalism was to be dis-
tinguished from the general Twentieth Century quest for
.~rong personal leadership.l
Nevertheless, we can see that Eliot's royaliem was
never worked out as a coherent doctrine. Just as his pref-
erence for Bolingbroke came to nothingj so his indictment of
conservatism for its lack of ideas was weakened when he
recognized the role in Toryism of the "inarticulate and in-
stinctive." Whether or not he invests the Crown with
-
fiduciary economic powera, he has said notb1ng to alter the
existing constitutional power relationship bet_een the King
and Parliament. So what of Dlvlne . Right? Only twice did
Eliot ever refer to this noble infatuation, but It was
scotched forever by an unforeseen test-case. We refer to the
events which led to the abdication of Edward VIII.
It Is worth recalling thê theoretical issues concern-
ing the Klngship whlch were ralsed in those short elght
months by that eccentric and colorful monarch. More was
involved than a merely constitutional question, of the rights
of Mr. Baldwin, of the Privy Council, of Parliament, or of
the Prerogative. In a time of economic and politlcal stagna-
tion, when the old-time party pOlitlclans had falled ln thelr
promises of recovery, many people were hoping that the king
might emerge victorious fram the crisis as a new source of

lAlso that Professor Co.er's summary ot the modern

French case is very far wide of the .mark, vlz: "Important
governmental declsions demand a unit Y and a vigour • • •
which only a powerful king can supply." Recent Political
Thought, p. 336.
dynamic personal leadership. These men were encouraged by the
king's visit and speeches to the unemployed mining areas ot
South Wales. It was easy to conceive of him as a popular
champion, a patriot-king, standing up to the clique of finan-
eial and industrial interests who were supposed to dominate
the Cabinet and frustrate the drastie economie measures
which were necessary for recovery. This point of view was
briefly espoused by Mosley's Blackshirts; but It received
more serious and articulate approval from two most anomalous
sources of support: the Social Creditora and the Roman
Catholics.
As the January, 1937 issue ot Blacktriars l pointed
out:
Many Cathollcs saw in King Edward a ruler who was
keenly alive to the needsand the rights ot the working
man and ot the poor, one who might be expected to put
into operation some ot the demands ot Rerum Novarum
and Quadragesimo ~. 2

It was easy tor su ch Catholics, as well as for the Social

Creditors, to believe that the non-contormity which had
undone the king was not so mu ch moral or spiritual, as
economic and political. From these considerations, the dis-
creet organ of Blacktriars whispered its suspicions of a
"trame-up," while The Catholic Times bo1dly announced a
-
"ramp" of Big Finance against the progressive king.3

lA monthly journal trom the Dominican eommunity at

Oxford.
2B1ackfriars, XVIII, 202 (Jan., 1937) pp. 5-6.
3Arguments ln the King'. det.nce also appeared in
The Tablet, and G. K. ta Weekll. -
 Atter all, the religious issues ot the kingts pro-
posed marri age were hard to un_eava. It was the Catholics
whose religious sensibilitiea were most likely to be ot-
tended by their monarch's laxity; but the Catholics a180
telt, in most cases, a deep sense of tealty and devotion
to a power derived trom God. On the other hand, the non-
conformist majority which stood behind Baldwin in Pariia-
ment had no very strong views about divorce; and indeed
was shortly to pass legislation facilitatlng divorce tor
aIl. Speaklng from a Roman Catholic and royallst polnt
of view, Blacktrlara considered that the private morals
and taith of the Klng should not be allowed to impugn the
sacred rlght of the monarch to hla throne. If the King
had no sense of grace, at least he was not hypocritical.
It did not aeem anemalous "that a non-ehurehgolng nation
-
ahould have a non-churcbgolng king."
And so Blackfriars suggested that a truer exp lana-
tion ot the crisis eould be round in Edwardta potential
challenge to the existing leadership ot Parliamentary
parties:
Not all are yet satistied that the reason for the
abdication was less that King Edward'e private lit.
wa,8 too like tbat ot many. of his sub3ects than that
his publtc life was too llke that of a King.
~any case, the Crisis (as it was then called)
showe(f that:
the real power which governs us ia neither royal nor l
democratic; let alon., as many of us would wlsh it, both.
 '"' '"

For neither had the personal inclinations of the

monarch been allowed to prevall; nor had the people been
consulted, or even lnformed, of this major constitutional
issue. And by its outcome, concluded Blackfriars, the
"popular myth of the Kingship had been disastrously
lmpaired. ttl
Such opinions were far more violently expressad
by many Social Creditors, espacially those who always
looked undar the Woolsack for the evil ghosts of Finance:
The avents of recant months, culminating in the
enforced abdication of King Edward, are a tarrifying
example of the l.ngths to which the secret Venetian
oligarehy which controls England, with the Commons
as a formal register of its decrees, are prepared to
push matters to maintain their influenoe and authority.2
To the Party Secretariat, it appeared that the
British Crown had been an accidental pawn in a "gang war"
between the Morgans and the Rothschilds, in which the two
kings Edward and George had unfortunately been on opposite
sides. The more intellectual elementa who contributed to
the New ~lish Weekll and the New Age, did not resolve
matters so simp17; but to those who felt the need for a
new type of leadership, the late king had appeared,
potentially at least, as a Saviour of the Poor. To E. W. F.
Tomlin, a disciple of Wyndham Lewi., it seemed elear that
Edward had presented our firet modern opportunity tor

2C. H. Norman, "The Coup d'Etat of Deeember 1936,"

New English Weekl;r, (Jan. 7, 193'1), pp. 248-250 (P. 248). -
 .,.
a Patriot King, "an older and to us more demoeratic concep-
tion of Ki~gship~"l
Throughout the criais Eliot must have been divided
between his allegiance to royalist principles, and his al-
legiance to catholic orthodoxy and practiee. His friends
among the Christian Sociologists, such as M. B. Reckitt 2
and V. A. Demant, had all followed the Church ot England's
condemnation, as expresaed by the Bishop of Bradford and
the Archbishop of Canterbury. But a reader of Maurras,
Massis and Maulnier, who had once spoken of the "noble
faith" of Divine Rlght, might logically
, ,
have been expected
to support the opinions of Blackfriars and of Social Credit.
Eliot actually did not make up his mind until atter
the crisis .as over; when he decided, it was against the
case of the king and ot those who had otfered bim ideologi-
cal support. 3
Speaking from a common sen.e point ot view, Eliot

l
"Kr. Reckitt and the Crisis," New E~liSh Weekll
(Feb. 11, 1937), p. 351. Since the .ar, Toml~ has been
better known tor his labours to disseminate the inspirations
of Simone Weil.
2Cf • "Envoi to the Crisis," New ~liSh Weekll,
(Jan. 28, 1937), pp. 307-309. In this ar~le Reckltt, as
an advocate of _Monetary Reform, .amply disposed of those Social
Creditors who had distorted the events of the Abdication,
merely to paint another tableau in their pieture of financial
cunning. It is only fair to add that his article was approved
warmly by many correspondents, some of whom predicted that the
Monetary Reform movement might never recover from th1s example
of folly.
3"Mr. Reckitt, Mr. Tomlin, and the Crisis," New
English Weekly, X, 20 (Feb. 25, 1937), pp. 391-393.-
 ... \ 1

denied that the central issue had anything to do with the

famous speeches at Merthyr Tydfil. Like the Church of
England in general, he considered that the raal issue was
whether a king to whom religious obligations meant 80 lit-
tle could hold an office of sacramental importance, in a
society still nominally Christian. Here it was wrong to
critioize the klng's private lite and friends (as the
Archbishop of Canterbury had dona) for "it is possible to
-
be a good ~ing without baing a moral man." But it was
right to give (like the Bishop of Bradford) "censure of
the King's public negligence ot religious observance
a legiti~ate oriticism."l And when it came to marrying
.-
"another man's. wife," Eliot had to agree with Reckitt that
the king's demands were quite impossible: not (as usually
alleged by the Conservatlves) because it offended popular
sentiment, but becauae of the religious significance of
his title. Blackfriars' protective attitude towards the
-
"popular myth" of the Kingship was too sanguine; it ignored
- - .
what would have happened to this "popular myth" had Krs.
- -
Simpson ascended the throne. For thismyth "owes a good
deal of its power to the belier that klngs a;e, like priests
lonely men who have sacrificed their natural lives."2
Despite the earlier praise he had once given to

lLoe. oit., p. 392. This distinction il reflected

in I. C. S:;-P. 25.
2Ibid.
 iUlJ

Bolingbroke l Eliot now shows little patience with Tom1in's

talk of a "Patriot King":
Kr. Tomlin does not everywhere keep distinct the
notion of power of the kingship (which l think we
should llke to see enhanced) and the "patriot King"
as an object of personal devotion. 2
What Tomlin calls a -.ore democratic conception of Kingship"
neglects the need of the King to have some unpopular virtues
as weIl, to be independent of bis populace as of his minis-
terse What Tomlln in fact does is identify the Patriot
King as a "duce or tuehrer." Men who think thus
are enjoying the vision of an idealised past and
prepariog themselves for a oertainly not democratie
future. J
Eliot's analysia of the Abdication criais i8 level-
headed; but it has certainly apiked his antl-democratic
artillery of the 1920'8. Instead of proclaiming the "noble
-
t'ai th" of Divine Right, he approves the further subversion
of an office once thought sacred, by a clique of Par lia-
mentary commODerl. In short, his "revolutlona'r y" royallsm
- -
has proven indistingulshable in practice from that of the
cODservatives he so much dislikes. And this seems to have
been Inevitable.

l
Bolingbroke Is now -eited as an "eighteenth
century wrlter whose notions about the Klngship were not
complicated by rellglous orthodoxy.
2 ' '
~. ill'" p. 392. Cf. supra, p. ~l.l.

31oc. clt., p. 393. Cf. Eliot'. crltloism of

Tomlln's frI.nd~nald Duncan, lupra, p. 1~_.
 ."
Like Plato with his philosopher-king, and Rousseau with his
legislator, Eliot appears in his early writing to fall back
upon the device of monarchy as an ethical and spiritual
necessity: necessary because of the ethical inadequacy of
the unregenerate crowd. As he admits, his royalism requires
faith: if not faith in a human,at least faith in a human
institution. As such, it does not appear to have solved the
problem of falth in politics and in politieal institutions.
Instead of the faith in the people, in Parliaments, or in
aristocratie leadership, (all which faiths have been tried
and found difficult, as weIl as irrational), Eliot merely
substitutes a faith in the monarchy. As such, he seems
merely to have substituted for faith in an existing insti-
tution, Parliaœent, a faith in a non-exist&nt one, the
Kingship of an earlier age. And when, in 1936-37, the
Kingship moved and willed as an earthly institution, yet
another earthly faith was led to its necessary di.illusion.
The abdication crisis only underlined wbat bad
already become evident in Eliot'e political thinking: that
his quest for novelty, the revolutionary and reactionary,
was Inadequate and immature. We might Agree that the
existing poiiticai state of affairs was to be reJected a.
Inadequate, (Just as, with right spIritual Insight and
moderation, all existing states of affaira should be re-
jected as Inadequate). We might agree also tbat a more
tundamental questioning ot existing values was necessary
than tbat which fascism or communism could offer. What
was needed was a deeper crltlcism of existing political ends
and institutions. However, while ~2tal criticism ot our
world is a necesstty, total rejectton of our world may be •
luxury. In the 1930's the voice ot wisdom apparently dis-
auaded Eliot trom the searoh tor a revolutionary new idea:
henceforth he conoentrates, not on alternative. but on im-
provement.. And with thia concern tor wisdom, his "isms"
disappear; we haar nothing more ot a olassici.m or ot
royalism, whieh in ten years had produoed so little in the
way of positive suggestion. tor change.
Beeause Eliot's attitude tuwards the Abdioation
waa 80 muoh like that of Baldwin, It would be talse to con-
olude that "the search tor principles" had failed, or baen
abandoned. Eliot's interest in politieal pr1noiples was
alive as ever; but it was now olear that what he sought was
not primarily a retorm of politioal institutions, around
royalism or any other politieal ideology. Even the relation
ot Church to St.te did not now seem so important to him
politieally as the th.ologieal prineiplea behind th!s relation. l

lIt is worth remembering how singularly reluetant

Eliot personally was about maint.ining na definite and un-
eom~romi8ing theory ot Churoh and State~ (ct. supra, p. ~Og'J.
In Thoughts Atter Lambeth," ha axplieitly side-steps the _
question of Di.establishment (S. E., p. 372), while even in
the Christian Sooiet{ he wilL not maintain that the Estab-
lishment "ls the bas relation in the abstraet." Disestab-
lishment is to Eliot a "desierate measure," becauae of the
risks contingent on 8uch a visible and dramatie wlthdrawal
of the Chureh." (I.C.S., pp. 49-50). In solving the problem
of a church In_apartly-seeularized society, the ADs!o-Catho-
lie is elearly in a dilemma, aa the crisis over ~.-Book
Revision ot 1928 illustrated.
 ... #001

From these principles in themselve., no political

ideology could be simply deduced, and Eliot now admitted
that Maurras had been heretical when he alserted "that
only one form of government, the monarchical, was compat~

ible with Catholicism."l It was not possible for the

Church any more than for the individu.l Christlan theorlst
to deduce wbat polltical programme or Ideology was rlght.
This dld not mean that theology and Its fruits
were Inapplicable to politic8: such a conclusion Is the
great error of Liberalism. 2
But tollowing Temple and Most of the Chrlstian
Soclologiats, Eliot distinguishes between a negative and
a positive role:
It Is mu ch more the business of the Chur ch to say
what .l. wrong, that Is, wbat 18 inconslstent with
Christian doctrine, than to propose partlcular schemes
of improvement. What 18 right enters the realm of the
expedient and 18 contingent upon place and time, the
degree of culture, the temperament ot a people. But
the Ch~ch can say what is always and everywhere
wrong.

1
Christian News-Latter, No. 44 (Aug. 28, 1940).
2 -
ct. infra, Chap. VIII.
3 ··· .
I. C. S., pp 101-102. Thus, for example, Eliot
was eonsulted in the drafting of Temple'. letter which
called upon the government to alleviate . the conditions ot
the unemployed. But he regretted the attempt of soma te
win Chur ch approval for Social Credit by a resolution in
Assembly. ct. his correspondence wlth Reckltt and Demant
in the New ~liSh Weekly, VI, 18, 20, 23 (Feb. 14, Feb. 28,
March 21, 1 ), pp. 382-383, 422, 482. Such people needed
to distinguish between what they thought right, and what
the Church ought to do. Individual churchmen should not be
trightened to draw thelr own secular conclusions trom their
religion, but the church as a whol. ahould not go tarther
than to condemn.
 One might say that henoeforward Eliot as a political
theorist tollowed this same negativ8 progress, of elimina-
tion and correction, towarda what he considered to b. Chris-
tian truth. In this way he was not guilty of the further
proliferation of ideologies, which to Eliot seemed one ot
the worst truits of Liberalism. StIll lese did he propose
the totalitarian alternative of a closed political system.
The fixed and permanent truths that he believed in had a
fIxed centre that was not of this world. The problem of
applying them to a society that was forever changing might
be ditfieult. but it was also Ineluctable.
And so Eliot's role hereafter ia chietly critical,
his criticism descending from, and ascendlng to, a positive
i~ unattalnable ideal. Some will object tbat the crltlo1sms
should be ignored because they are not "constructive"; and
-
the Ideal because It is not "practical"; but that. say.
Ellot, shows a mentality which takes the world and the
present too seriously. This is the mentality that had
helped lead Western Europe to lts crisis between the wars.
French royalism between the wars was a "constructive"
..
criticlsm -- one that lmplled signiflcant alteration of the
political system. In England lt had not the same immedlate
and positive relevance, but it could remind the intelligence
of an lnstltution it had forgotten or 19nored. l

~he spiritual conception of the kingsh1p (advocated

by Eliot. Reckitt, Dawson, and othera) has, however, gained
immense ground. In 1953, the sacramental, doctrinal, and
(as Eliot had described lt) sacrificial quality of the
If there was any value in Eliotts royalism, it was when it
was most rigorously impractical, describing a past that had,
quite likely, never really existed. The Bramhall and Hobbes
deseribed by Eliot are not altogether the historie Bramhall
and Hobbes; partly they are two legendary adversaries drawn
in the light of a perennial and vital conflict. (The same
is true of his Maehiavelli, and his Savonarola.) But
perhapa this note of fiction has even inereased their sym-
bolie significanee, which Eliot found, in them, and in his
"modest country families":
Why should we celebrate
Theae dead men more than the dying?
It ia not to ring the bell backward
Nor ia it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old faction.
We cannot restore old polieies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And tho.e whom they opposed
Accep.t the constitution of silence
And are tolded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit trom the· fortunate
W. have taken trom the deteated
What they had to leave ua -- a symbol:
A symbol perfeeted in death. 1
In the next three chapters, .e examine Eliot's

Engliah Ooronation rite was emphasized to a degree unheard

ot sinee the latitudinarianism of Bishop Hoadly and Queen
Anne. In it the unit y of Chureh and State, the spiritual
rather than nationalist quality of devotion to a Crown, were
exemplified and adumbrated, even by that penny press whieh
Eliot so disliked. But none of those poli tic al institutions
usually associated with "liberalism" or "democraey" were in
any way weakened or impaired.
1
"Little Gidding," Il. 182-197, Four Quartets,
p. 41.
criticism, firstly of Liberalism, and lAtterly or that
totalitarianism to which he believed it lad. By their end,
l hope we shall ba batter qualifiad to understand and
criticize the Ideal which Eliot himself has finally des-
cribed in the Idea of a Christian Society.
 CHAPTER VII

LIBERALISM: AN ATTITUDE

In the last generation men ware unable

to take Jesus as Lord, and were sad.
Now they.are ehoosing other masters,
and are glad.
J. Neville Figgis, The Gospel and Human Needs.

By identifying the new learning with

herasy, you make orthodoxy synonymous
with ignorance.
Erasmus

In 1928, For Lancelot Andrewes had.won for Eliot

what h& could only describe as a "flatterlng obltuary notiee";l
-
wlth After Strang8 Gods (1934), many reviewers fought to ex-
hume and scatter his bones. For in this book of literary
crltlcism Eliot publicly released a set of criteria wh10h to
the tolerant mind were Intolerable: criteria such as "ortho-
doxy," "herasy," and even "blasphemy."2

1
S. E., p. 358.
2Terms whioh must have offered no surprise to readers
of the Criterion. Eliot.s thinking here seems to have beèn
influenoea by hIs Catholic and rather less critical fri.nd,
Montsomery Belglon: vd. especially The Human Parrot (London,
1931); and equally by Maritain's Art and Sch01astlclam
(London, 1930) , (tf·the Use of Poet~, il pp. 124-125.) But 1 t la
alao Interestlng_to compare E1iot's_theological crltlclsm
with that of a more representatlve'Churchman: R. Ellls
Roberts, "The Confuslon ln Llterature," Percy Dear.œer (ed.),
Chrlstlanlty and the Criai. (London: Gollancz, 1933), p. 72.
 ....
And to this was added the warning that "a spirit of exees-
.
sive tolerance ts to be depreeated."l Behind Eliot's argu-
ment, to which we must return, were the compelling observa-
tions that "tolerance" ahould not tempt us to treat all
books, all pointa of vie., aa morally innocuoua or inscrut-
able. Eliot argued further that this tendency was especially
dangerous in an age lacking spiritual authority, when people'.
behaviour tended to be influenced more and more by llteratur~.2
So he was arguing against "Liberalism" in literary
criticiam; the critic should not restrain from completing his
critieiam, by a judgment on the world-picture or religion
which a work implied. In thia, the man of culture learns to
speak to his own age, in so far as he can, with the accumula-
ted wisdom of tradition. But Eliot is enlightened enough to
consider tradition as by itself largely unconscious if not
irrational, and in need of eonscious critici8m:
Tradition by itself i8 not enough; it muat be per-
petually eriticised and brought up to date under the
supervision of what l call orthodoxy; and for the lack
of this supervision it i8 now the sentimental tenuity .
that we find it. 3

l
A. S.G., p. 20.
2Cf• "Religion and Literature," E.A.M., pp. 100, 102.
The emancipated lib.ral may already be off.e nded, especiall,.. if
he has learnt from Prof. Spitz, or one of his colleagues, that
the values of life "are no more reducible to logieal argumenta-
tion than one's liking for chocolate as compared with straw-
berry iee cream." (Patterns of !oti-Demoeratie Thou t(New
York, 1949J, p. 253. ut s agnost c sm n va ua ons played
no part in the Liberalism of thinkers whom he tends to admire,
such as T. H. Green. Cf. "An Estlmate of the Value and Influence
of Works . of Fiction in Modern Times," Works, 'iii, especla1ly
pp. 37-39. Green'. language is . heavy_wlth the phrase. ot
Hege1ian Idea1ism, yet It ls most fruitfu1 to eompare bis ob •
• ervations with those of Eliot.
3i. S. G., p. 62. Cf. p. 29.
 ·.,
Eliot opens his Charles Eliot Norton lecture on
"The Modern Mind" by citing a text trom Jacques Maritain:
"Work such as Picasso's shows a fearful progress in self-
consciousness on the part ot painting."l To thi. progress
Eliot attaches no Inherent value, elther positlve or nega-
tlve. But he suggests that what orlglnally encouraged the
original and uniquehas more recently encouraged the medlocre
and uniform.l. This decay he teels cm be linked to the decay
. "
ot Protestantism,t.. and above all the decay of orthodox sensl-
bllity, until we have largely lost the public language, sym-
bols, and emblems which see our life in Its relation to
death. It does not follow that the best literature is the
most Christian, or that the quality of a writer's talent i.
dependent upon the intensity of his faithi literature is not
propaganda, and recognition of orthodoxywould not even estab-
llsh a single point of vlew as that whlch was "correct."
Eliot, in the critical tradition of Hulme, Richards, and
Basil Wll1ey, makes an important distinction betwsen ortho-
doxy ot beliet and "orthodoxy of sensibll1ty" -- the latter
of which can comprehend auah athelats as Babbltt or James
Joyce. 3

lMarltain, Art and Scholasticism. Quoted ln Eliot,

"The Use of Poetry, Il p. 121.
2"Religion - and Litera ttire," E. A. M., Pp. l08~s

3À. S. G. ~e are not conc~rned with the authors'

beliets, but with orthodoxy ot sensibility and with the sense
ot tradition, our degree ot approachlng "that region where
dwell the vast hosts of the dead." And Lawrence ia, for my

f
 His readings in world literature, the pagan as much
as the Christian, have convinced Eliot that "orthodoxy of
eansibility" is a criteri on which exists, aven if it is futile
to imagine that this manifold orthodoxy can ever be axhaustad
or even wholly achiev~d. And he feels that with the decline of
respect for spiritual authority, wa have more and mora lost sight
of the wisdom of the past, more and mora been thrown back on that
weak anè. untrustworthy guide, our "Inner Voice." This has lad to
one consequence of Liberallsm which no one can deny: the collapse
of common assumptions or dogmas. Twentieth-century thought ls
a veritable gallery of world-pictures: for, "when one man's
~iew of life- ls as good as a nother's, all the more enterprising
1/1
spirits will natur~lly evolve their own.
But Eliot makes it clear that he i8 not suggesting by
fforthodoxy," one sing le point of view,ff a narrow path laid down
for every writèr ~ to follow." Such a singleness of opinion is
not round "even in the strlcter discipline of the Church."
The Church is catholic: "It is not a sum of theologians, but
1/2
the Church itself, in which orthodoxy resides.

purposes, an almost perfect axampl~ of tha haratie. And tha

most ethicalll. orthodox of the more aminant writers of my time
i s Mr. Joyce.' A. S. G., p. 38. Th"3 defence of "orthodoxy"
is most significant in political thought, even if .it does not
imply a Malleus Maleflcarum, and we must return to this state-
ment later: infra,pp. 2.59.2~J, 2.S6-ZQ " 360-3'2.
l
A. S. G., p. 32.

2 Ibid •
 --,

Analagously, the same ia true, not of any one school

of authors, but of literature as a whole. But there has been
a reaction away from .&\w ' JI
r;:(H.:\I«I. tJl1IOI.«.L, the commonplaces of thought
and behavior, leading in our own day to their deliberate per-
version. l This has been consciously encouraged (and not only
in our literature) under the name of "individualism":
What is disastrous is that the writer should delib-
erately give rein to his "individuality," that he
should even cultivate his~differences from others; and
that his readers should cherish the author of genius,
not in spite of his deviations from t~e inherited Wi8-
dom of the race, but because of them.
In the final stage of this reliance on the creative
personallty, which has continued now :for several centuries,
we see the emergence of individual religions, or what Hermann
Broch had called "private theologies. "3 It is on thia subject

IFor an analysis of the intellectual's flight from

the common .place, cf. de Gourmont, "La Culturl des Idé@s."
2A. S. G., p. 33. Eliot suggests that Ezra Pound
finds Cavalcanti more sympathetic than Dante, and for non-
poetic reasons -- becauae the former is_so distinctively a
heretic. (P. 42.)

3 Ibid."It is fatally easy, under the conditions of

the modern-world, for a writer of genius to concelve of hlm-
self as a ~ssiah. Other writers, indeed, may have had pro-
found insights before him; but we readily believe that every-
thlng is relative ta its period of society, and that these
insighta have now lost their validity; a new generation is a
new world, so there is always a chance, if not of delivering
a wholly new gospel, of delivering one as good as new. Or
the messiahship may take the form of revealing for the first
time the gospel of some dead sage, which no one has under-
stood before; which owing to the backward and eonfused state
of men's minds has Iain unknown to this very moment; or it
msy even go baek ta the lost Atlantis and the ineffable w1s-
dom of primitive peoples. tf
that Eliot is, l think, supreme: in hls judgments on that
literature which in America has come to be called mytho-
Eoeie, which sets itself up, either implicitly or explicitly,
as a substitute for traditional systems of morals and reli-
gion. We think again of the whole troupe of modern super-
stitions which have been allayed by that dry voic. -- Mr.
Shaw's "potent ju-ju of the Life Force," Lord Russell's
. - -
"enervate gospel of happiness," or "the innocent pranks
-
of Dr. Freud." "Orthodoxy" beeame in Eliot's hands a
trenchant critical instrument, and his use of Christian ob-
servations most apposite -- but only in describing the limit-
ations of patent heterodoxy. Others havœ discerned the
limitations and dangers of categories such as "Original
Sin," when they are set up in court over the entire field
of modern literature. l Eliot is at his best on authora like
Lawrence, or Yeats, in whom he detects at an early age "the
doctrine of Arnold, that Poetry can replace Religion, and
also the tendency to fabricate an individual religion."2
All this reminds us rather of the Pascalian grisaille
whlch we saw ln T. E. Hu~e. It Is, 1n effect, another
Critique of Satisfactions, directed at literature rather

lWe would wish for judgments that are either more

or less complete than the following: "With the disappearanoe
of the idea of Original Sin, with the disappearance of the
idea of intense moral struggle, the human beinga presented
to us both in poetry and in prose fiction to-day • • • tend
to become less and lesa real." ~., p. 42.
2Ibid., p. 44.
 .....

than philosophy, and attempting to evaluate the contemporary

stream of "world-pictures," of "philosophies of life. ft (By
1930, the pulpit oratory of Wells, Russell, and Julian Huxley,
the new gospels of Gourdjieff and D. H. Lawrence, had only
confirmed the birth, especially for intellectuals, of what
Hulme had called the "inevitability of belief.") Like Hulme,
Eliot feels that the renewed application of theologieal
criteria can restore order in this chaos of value-systems:
there are standards of criticism, not ordinarily in
use, which we may apply to whatever is offered to us as
works of philosophy or art, which mighi help to render
them safer and more profitable for us.
This Is advice for the literary critic: but it also, in ef-
fect, runs counter to the natural preferences of liberallsm.
For it suggests that .we should try to live and think in con-
formance with Christian dogma, and that an excessive apprecia-
tion of "tolerance" has led us to accept conflicting opinions
too readily, and to criticize them too little. The reaction
away from Christian thinking has led us off balance, to "the
aggrandisement and exploitation of p'ersonality," whil.
-
novelty and originality have become glorified "for their own
sake."2
This was Eliotts argument: two or three hints at a
critique of liberalism that has sinee beeome famillar to us
in the writings of Christopher Dawson and Karl Mannheim. It
was not an attack on multlpllcity of opinions, but the

Irbid., p. 63.
2Ibid., pp. 53, 23.
 ..... -

suggestion that they should be criticized by a single set of

criteria. 1 There was not a word about censorship, for which
Eliot had elsewhere axpressad his lack o'f sympathy,2 not a
word aven in favour of an official Index, or guide to disap-
proved reading. 3 Origina1ity and personality (even when these
imp1ied scepticism and eccentricity) were adm1tted to have
their own value. But:
when morals cease to be a matter of tradition and
orthodoxy -- that is, of the habits of the community
formulated, corrected, and elevated by the continuous
. thought and direction of the Church -- and when each
man is to e1aborate his own, then personality becomes
a thing of alarming importance. 4
Today this Seems unambiguous. But apparently to many
liberals in 1934 any criticism of the "excessive tolerance"
of the 20th Century could only suggest a return to the intol-
erance of five hundred years earlier, to the burning of HUI,
and the Malleus Maleficarum. E1iot's sentence, Just quoted,
could only imply 'to Professor Qui11er-Couch of Cambridge "that

1Cf • the famous opening of "Religion and Literature,"

E. A. M., p. 91: "Literary criticism shou1d be completed by .,
criticism from a definite ethical and theological standpoint.
In 80 far in any age there- 'is common agreement on ethical 'and
theological matters, 80 far can literary criticlsm be substan-
tive. In ages like our 0.0, in which there is no such common
agreement, it i8 the more nec.ssary for Christian readera to
scrutinize their reading, especially of works of imagination,
w1t&expllcit ethical and theological standards. The 'great-
nes.~ of literature cannot be determined so181y by literary
standards; though we must remember that whether it is litera-
ture or not can be determined only by literary standards."
2Cf. supra, p.I2..1.

, 3Which had recently been pronounced by him to be'

'Perfectly sound in principle." l'The Use of Poetry, "p. ' 136.t\.
;:

4A• ,S. G., p. 54.

fthe Church f should exercise control over our Literature, and
over Poetry 'ln particular. nl But the liberals of the weekly
press went still farther. "Oh dear, oh dear," smirked the
-
New Statesman and Nation, at this !tcomplacent advocacy of the
rack and thumbscrew. u2 The Times Literary Supplement observed
dourly that !tin these days, heresy-hunting is about as popular
as witch-hunting."3
But th~ exacerbation was not found among LiberaIs
alone. 1934 was a year of intellectual fatigue, of enerva-
tion and irascibility. In a surfeit of systems, analyses,
and re-unifications, each man seemed bent primarily on dis-
tinguishing himself: intransigence had a higher value ·than
reconciliation. This acrimony was, as Eliot said, "a symptom
-
of differences so large that there is nothing to argue about."
But for Eliot the univers al disease became an excuse for his
own short temper:
In a society like ours, worm-eaten with Liberalism,
the only thing possible for a person with strông con-
victipns is to state a point of view and leave it at
that.LJ-
To talk without listening ia always dangerous, and
the responsibility for thinking masns that things cao never
be "left at that. ff In this case Eliot was tempted ta fling
in bait for the LiberaIs, remarks whose relevancy ia not
always apparent, and whose Christian orthodoxy is even less

l~:: F.o.:tL aa: C'.it1:an (Cambridge, 1934), pp. 51, 54.

2New Statesman and Nation (Feb. 24, 1934) , p. 274.

3T. L. S., 1681 (April 19; 1934), p. 278

4A• S. G., p. 13.
so. And there is one short parae raph, about which, were it not
so famous, the least said would be the best:
The population should be homogeDeous • • • •
Reasons of race and religion combine to make an!
large number of free-thinking Jews undesirab1e.
This ls apparent1y a brief sketch of the idea1 society for
the creation of culture; a1though Eliot warns us e1sewhere against
the attempt to define any such positive conditions. In so far as
the first observation has meaning, it is refuted in E1iot's later
writings. 2 While the second remark cou1d on1y have too much
meaning: uttered, as it was, in the winter of 1933-1934. Rere
it is not enough to turn our derision upon the Professor Robbinses,
who could nn1y conc1ude that Eliot "seems to favor pogroms."3
Nor is it enough to reea11 E1iot's approva1 of the poetry of
Isaac Rosenberg for its Rebraic qua1ity -- "beeause it is Eebraic
it is a contribution to Eng1ish 1iterature. n 4 One can, however,
add that the importance of lI an ti-Semitie" or even "Semitic"
references in his prose writings has been vast1y over-estimated.
At one point he depiets the po1ydox eharacter of the British
Par1iament (for Eliot questioned its authority in reyising the
Book of Co~~on Prayer). Later, there is a passing allusion to
Marx as a "Jewish economist," and the suggestion that Berg-
son's mind was not quite eharaeteristica11y French. 5

1 .
Ibid., pp. 19, '2..0
2
"It is a recurrent theme of this essay, thet a people
should be neither too united nor too divided, if its culture is
to f10urish." l'Jo D. C., p. 49.
3 .
The T. S. Eliot My th, p. 50.

4"A Commentary," Criterion, XIV, 57 (July, 1935), pp.

610-613, (p. 611). .
5 "A Co""""C!.'" o.-r~. - ç ..... h:,n'ôV' 1 X," .6'
' •~~I\(April, 1935), pp. J+31-~36, (p. 433).
•
Revelation, ed. Baillia), p. 4. Bagehot once referred to the
specificelly Jewish mindof Ricardo, and the remark was quoted
approvingly by Lord Keynes. (Economie Journal, Sept., 1915).
 ... --

But this is virtually the complete story. It is indeed a

/
feeble acho of Banda's Belphegor; and not everyone remem-
bers that Benda himself was Jewish.
More significant was his failure to remark on the
overt anti-Semitism in the writings of Ezra Pound and Charles
Maurras, to which he shows a definite lack of unsympathy.l
Superficially, the Jew was an apt literary symbol for the
cosmopolitan free-thinking 20th century bourgeois, without
home, without faith, and without what were once approved as
"manners." l doubt that Eliot ever trembled before the in-
ternational machinations of the Protocols, Freemasonry, or
Wall Street. 2 For in the Intellectual, anti-Semitism ls a
strange inverted faith, whose strength increased with the
decrepitation of his Christianity. Yet the Jew is a symbol
for Eliot as weIl, in Gerontion, in Burbank, and implicitly
ln Sweeney Agonlstes. Being a Canadian, raised and schooled
with Bleisteln and Klipstein, l find it as difficult to react
aesthetically to the symbolic Jew in poetry, as to react
intellectually to the symbollc Jew in prose. l do not think
this is what Eliot meant by "a spirit of excessive tolerance. ft
But the equal toleration of the Jew is indeed a symbol of
Liberalism, of the bast in Liberalism. And Eliot, with his
peculiar bias which we always discern, does not seem to have
had scruples about distinguishing to1eration in practice,

1Though br, 1940 he recognized that Maurras' anti-

Semitism showed a 'dangerous intolerance." Supra, p. \'\1.

2which so troub1ed the peace of so Many Soclal

Creditora, Most notab1y Ezra Pound.
 ...-.

from lack of discrimination in principle. What was truly

needed in 1934, as Eliot had stated, was a dissociation of
ideas: a dissociation for example between the toleration
which implied respect for other persons, and the toleration
which meant disinterest in other ideas. If Liberalism and
excessive tolerance were really due to be criticized, then it
was necessary first of aIl to attempt thelr definition.
This ls precisely what After Strange Goda did not at-
tempt. Instead it appealed rather cheap1y to the inverted
prejudices of the 1ibera1 "faithfu1," for the emotional
reaction in the New Stateaman which Eliot knew quite right1y
he cou1d expect. 1 Instead of definitions, we are given on1y
these petty blasphemies before the altars of Reason, Progress,
and Humanity, or else a vague sub-conscious longing to join
in a conf1ict:
the strugg1e of our time to concentrate, not to dis-
sipate; to renew our association with traditiona1 wis-
dom; to re-estab1ish a vital connexion between the
individual and the race; the strugg1e, in a word, against
Libera1ism. 2
But the tragedy of the book is that the strugg1e, which prom-
ises such honour, cannot be precisely located. We are
conscious only of a "siclmess at heart,tt an i11 humour in the
body polltic, and the surgeon does not tell us where.
Over the years, however, Eliot was providing a more

1Qui11er-Couch confesses his difficulty ln discerning

what Eliot "means by 'Libera1ism,' except that 1t is something
he dis11kes," and in this he certain1y has our greater sym-
pathy. (~ •.·ill., p. 61). .
2,. S. G., p. 48. Cf. p. 61.
 -,

patient diagnosis, in the Commentaries of the Criterion. One

by one, he isolated and described those symptoms which were
most obvious and silly -- the excesses of internationalism
and pacifism, the longing of intellectuals to be bullied and
abused by either a "strongman" or 8. ruthless foreign party.
(In the course of this analysis, we remember, he discovered
himself to be "something of a liberal.,,)l Issue after issue
he recorded the pulse, first of the ~epression and its hor-
rid prospect of permanent leisure; then of the relief and
enthusiasm as ail nations prepared for war. And if we are
now astonished at the derision with which his diagnosis was
received by social scientists, we must remember among other
things that he was an unlicensed practitioner, in their 8y8S
an out-and-out charlatan, threatening among other things. -the
int-e gri ty of their profe ssion.
I have said all this to pleadto the "profession"
that the deepest and most dispassionate consideration be
given to the signiflcance of his ultlmate analysie, as lt ap-
peared in 1939 ln The Idea of a Christian Soclety. It ls
the more interesting because it conforma so close1y with the
Diagnosis of Our Time, which was offered in 1943 by one of the
internationally most-reputed sociologists, Dr. Karl Mannheim.
It is hard to reslst quoting Eliot te analysis in full:
It is my contention that we have today a culture
which is mainly negative, but which, so far as it is
positive, is still Christian. l do not think that
it can remain negative, beeause . a negative culture
has ceased to be efficient in a world where economlc

1 .
Cf. supra, p.IILt. But contrast A. S. G., p. 6lJ
 .......
as well as spiritual forces are proving the efficiency
of cultures which, even when pagan, are positive; and
l believe that the choice before us is between the
formatiori of a ïew Christian culture, and the acceptance
of a pagan one.
Liberalism is to Eliot this negative element, a dis-
solution, a release trom our traditional modes of belief,
thought, and action. It ls clear to him that much of this
tendency can no more be deplored than it can be prevented.
The clarion call to the struggle is now forgotten: What is
to be . attacked is neither ttliberalismtt or "democracy," but
the intellectual tendency for these two terms to become
~anctified~2 But today Liberalism faces a crisis, from what
Demant had called its "enantiodromia," or tendency to become
the opposite of itself:
That Liberalism may be a tendency towards something
very . different from itself, is a possibility in its
nature. For it is something which tends to release
energy rather than to accumulate it, to relax, rather
than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined
by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather
than towards, something definite. Our point of departure
is more real to us than our destination; and the destin-
ation is likely to present a very different picture when
arrived at, from the vaguer image formed in imaglnation.
By destroying traditional social habits of the people,
by dissolving their natural collective consciousness
into individual constituents, by liceosing the opinions
of the Most foolish, by substituting instruction for
education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wls-
dom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by toster-
ing a notion of getti~ on to which the alternative i8
a hopeless apathy, LI~ra!ism can prepare the way for
that whioh is its own negation: the artificial, mecha-
nlsed or brutalised control which ls a desperate remedy
for its chaos. .

l
I. C. S., p. 10.
2I'bid., pp. Il, 14: "I shall have expressed mysel!
very i11 lr l give the impression that l think of Liberallsm
as something simply to be rejeoted and extirpated, as an
evi1 for which there ls a simple alternative."
 It must be evldent that l am speaking of Liberalism
in a sense much wid$r than any which can be fully exem-
plified by the history of any political party, and
equally in a wider sense than any i~ which it has been
used in ecclesiastical controversy. True, the tendency
of Liberalism ca~ be more clearly 111ustrated in religi-
ous history than in politics, where principle is more
diluted by necessity, where observation is more confused
by detail and distracted by reforms each valid within
its own limited reference. In religion, Liberalism may
be characterized as a progressive discarding of elements
in historical Christianity which appear superfluous or
obsolete, confounded with practices and abuses which are
legitimate objects of attack. But as its movement is
controlled rather by its origin t.han by any goal, it loses
force after a series of rejections, and wi~~ nothing to
destroy is left with nothing to uphold an~~nowher~ to go.
With religious Liberalism, however, l am no more specifical-
ly concerned than with political Liberalism: l am con-
cerned with a state of mind which, in certain circumstances,
can become universal and infect opponents as well as de-
fenders. And l shall have expressed myself very ill if
l give the impression that l think of Llberalism as some-
tbing simply to be rejected and extirpated, as an evil for
which there is a simple alternative. It is a necessary
neg~tive element; when l have said the worst of it, that
worst comes to only this, that a negative element made ·to
serve the purpose of a positive is objectionable. In the
sense in which Liberalism 18 contrasted with Conservatism,

\Vhere "Liberalism" was usèd, contemporaneously with

its appearance in politics, .to imply the criticism of Christian
dogma by natural reason. That this could not oe dissociated
from the temper of political Liberalism became more and more
apparent; and today, in America, "Liberalism May be defined
as respect for the worth of the individual." (Aubrey,
Present Theological Tendencies, p. 36.) _
ît ls worth observing th~t in ecclesiastical contro-
versy Liberalism, at least in England, has virtually disap-
peared: it proved a transitional stage from which one could
either re-embrace orthodoxy, or advance to an out-and-out
humanisme And so Newman's prediction in 1841, that it would
prove "a half-way house to atheism," seems to have been his-
torically justified. This explains . why the ecclesiastical
analogy, where the intellectual limitations of Liberalism have
been so weIl demonstrated, is so important in the thought of
Eliot, Demant, Dawson, and others •
.The North Americ~,who often tends to equate Liberal-
ism with aIl that i8 bright and decent in Europe since Aris-
totle (cf. infra, p. 1.(,1 ) cp.n better understand Eliot by
remembering that, for the last twenty years, "the denunciation
of Liberalism has been the Most consistent theme of Anglican
theology." (Roger Lloyd, The Church of England in the Twenti-
eth Century, ii, p. 26.)
 both can be equally repellent: if the former can mean
chaos, the latter can Mean petrif~~ction. We are always
faced both with the question "what must be destroyed?11
and wi th the question "what must be preserved?" an'd nei ther
Liberalism nor Conservatism, which are not p~ilosophies and
May be merely habits, is enough to 8uide us.
The truth of these observations depends on their
wisdom: in the whole space of this the sis, even, we cannot
nope to prove them true, or false, but only to attempt their
partial elucidation. Two words of warning, however, are
necessary at once. Most of us share what Eliot calls the
"Anglo-Saxon mentality." When a problem is suggested we
think immediately of what is to be done about it; and in the
field of politics we think directly of the manipulation of
social forces and,sanctions. In our anxiety to remedy what we
are told is wrong, we may misunderstand Eliot in two opposite
directions. We May suspect that in criticizing "Liberalism,"
Eliot 18 asking us to Interfere in matters where no instttution
or individual should have the power to legislate. And, though
we cannot find this in his writings, we conclude that he wishes
to transfer political power to an "aristocracy," or to a "theo-
crattc" church. And when Eliot refuses to admit this, we con-
2
clude either that he ls sinister, or footllng, or confused.

Ir. c. S., pp. 12-14.

~r. Spitz continuously and rather condescendi~ly

reproves Babbitt and Eliot for their political "authoritarian-
ism" thinking that they seek a political nanacea in the rule
of '!ci vi lized" men. But the whole tendendy of Babbi tt and
Eliot is away,from, not towards, reliance on political authority.
Babbitt: "As forms of government become more democratic, as
the outer . restraints of kingshlp, aristocracy, and class disap-
pear, so it becomes more and more necessary that the individual
no longer controlled by authority or habituaI respect should
control himself." (Democracy and Leadership, p. .) Eliot
adds: "So far, the doctrine is obviously true and Impregnable. 11
(S.E., p. 438.) .
 Or we may make the exact opposite criticism, that
the "Liberal" dissolution described by Eliot i8 so vague
and pervasive, that there is no point in objecting to it. We
May teel awsd in the pressnce of inexorable cosmic torces;
and teel that to cri~l" the dissolution of a culture i. as
foo1ish as to criticize the coo11ng of the earth. Or we may
take the very different "nose-to-grindstone" view: that no
problems exist, or at least are worth worrying about, except
Immediate and practical problems. In either case, we show
impatience at Eliot 1 s analysis, because we do not see what
is to be done about 1t. We accuse him, not of conniving
against our hard-won liberties, but on the contrary of de-
featism and withdrawa1. l
These twin but mutually contradictory misunderstandings
pervade the literature on Eliot's social ideas. Eliot, l
think, would consider them the fruit of a common prejudice
among liberal and radical intellectuals: of seeing aIl posi-
tive social criticism in terms of a programme of political
activity. But this is not Eliot's motivation: like Aristotle,
·+0 .
he ia going back to tiret princlplee, not onlyAcriticize our
explicit and positive ideals, but also to integrate the bast
of our collective unconscious, or partly conscious, aima,
values, and sources of behaviour. This task May sound gro-
tesquely difflcult, but it has become necessary:

lThus, for example, Prof. Sidney Hook sees Eliot in

a dilemma • . "The fundamental difficulty of. Mr. Ellot's posi-
tion" is that . religion "provides no principle of dirsction for
the intelligent control _of social change." ("The Dilemma ot
T. S. Eliot," Nation, (Jan. 20, 1945), p __ 69.).
 What we are seeking is not a programme for a party,
but a way of life for a people: it is this which
totalitarianism has sought partly to revive, and partly
to impose by force upon its peoples. Our choice now ls
not between one abstract form and another, but between
a pagan, and necessarily stunted culture, and a rel~gi­
ous, and necessarily imperfect culture. 1
In our last chapter, we shall attempt to examine how far
Eliot advanced towards such an "idea" of our society.
What we feel compe1led to ask Eliot, notwithstanding,
Is how far he identifies Llberalism with thls dissolution of
collective thought and behaviour, and how far It is to him
a force, a diabolu~ ! ! machina, whlch is distinct from the
general social phenomenon, and yet responslble for it. For
it ls indeed idle to talk of either promotlng or reject1ng a
"negat1ve civillzation": such matters do not lie within our
collective choice. On the other hand, if Eliot means by
"L1berallsm" any more conscious and voluntary force, (and the
- -
ecclesiastical analogy would suggest that he does) then we
shall want to accuse him of "intellectua11sm": of attribut1ng
complex social changes to men's voluntary actions and conscious
Ideas.
But Eliot, l think, steers through this dilemma. In
our final chapter, we shall see him discern three senses of
the te1"Dl "culture," asking of each how far that "culture" is
something that can be consclously almed at. 2 It ls not, l
thlnk, pedantic to discern three analogous senses of the ter.m
"Libera11sm," ask1ng of each "Llberalism" how far 1t can be
- .
consclously or vo1untarily opposed. From phenomena whlch are

Ir. c. S., pp. 15-16.

2N. D. c., p. 19.
 ~"'I''''

chiefly social and unconscious -- the picture of Europe which

Eliot has Just described -- we pass by stages to a philosophy
of lire which is conscious, explicit, and which can and
ought to be profoundly critieized. Thus Liberalism as a
whole is like a nest of Chinese boxes; in which the individual's
phil080phy resides at the heart of the social phenomenon.
Throughout is something which we calI the "interaction" of
social facts and individual ideas: the outside box may be the
largest; but Eliot is right in referring to the considerable
play of ideas through European history of the last 150 yearSj
a role which has been growing with the importance and con.t~ous­

ness of the "intellectuals."

Not much, indeed, can be consciously or politically
"done" to revivify decaying "traditional social habits": in
this century we have se en artifical stimulants applied to the
ravivaI of these, and the result has been a social inebriety
which was no more desirable than it was "traditional."l
But slightly more within our power of control, or at
least of choice, is that spirit of destructive criticism,
whlch accordlng to Ellot la a necessary negatlve element in
any society, but whlch runs the rlsk of exhaustlng Itself
through dissipation:
As its movement is controlled rather by ita origin
than by ~~ goal, it loses force after a series of re-
jections, and with no~ing to destroy ls left with
nothing, to uphold anâ~nowhere to go.Z

lAs Eliot has made very clear: Cf. ante, Ch. VY " .
21. C. S., p. 14.
 This critical spirit, whether or not it sees Reason
enthroned in the courts of Enlightenment, can rightly be assoc-
iated with Liberalism, for it attaches great, often absolute,
value to something called Freedom of Thought. One runs great
danger in hypostatizing such a tendency, even by naming it;
and Eliot has wisely abstained from criticizing anything but
particular instances of its excess. But he joins with the
many figures of this century, from Mannheim and Hulme to
Maritain and Berdyae~ who depicted a general intellectual
tendency from the Renaissance to the end "of the 19th Century,
one which in its later stages becomes undesirable.
To Hulme, thls spirit was healthy as long as it
called for the critical examination of belief and dogma. It
became unhealthy when it claimed to be able to support man
and society in their struggling existence. without belief and
without dogma. For at thie point it became itself a beliet
and a dogmat a faith in itself. Bafore ultimate truth had
been something unknowable; now it was something knowable.
Betore, ultimate value had been something supernatural, now
it became something natural. As Hulme had lndlcated, as soon
as faith in the hidden Father was forgotten, man turned inevlt-
ably to the Revelation of himself.
What we Mean here by Llberalism is not humanism, but
an intermediary stage, attempting to live without faith, by
critieal spirit alone. In Europe, Eliot was l think justified

!'I!l pO~lÎ'èl:ng, to the ,':t'allure of this "experlment" (which he dld

not name). In every field, the 20th Century has seen the
sclentists, the positivists, the psychologists, and the in-
tellectuals, all the self-appointed torch-bearers, obsessed
with the limitations rather than the opportunities of "free
thought." The fruit of thinking seemed to be despair at its
own limitations; and the same mentality which had shouted in the
new philosophy now usually warned against any philosophy at aIl.
When H. G. Wells, that representative man,predicted that in
future philosophy would be discussed "only in moments of weak-
ness," M. B. Reckitt commented grimly:
The "revolt from dogma" began as a claim that men should
learn tothi~k for themselvesj it is ending as a warning to
them not to.
In political thinking, there 8eems to have been some-
thing like an astronomie eataclysm, from which aIl the intellectu-
als have been scattered towards the dark walls of their universe,
towards irrationa11sm, the uneonscious, the intuitive, the
drives of myth and of mystique, and lastly, towards dogme and
orthodoxy. Some have gravitated towards a "higher reason," Itke
-
that of Pascal's, which "the reason does not know." Others have
reacted towards no reason at aIl. Each new movement has seen
the others in ll re treat," and charged them of (depending on one's
point of view) intellectual heresy or intellectual treason,
whichever seemed worse.
Our continent is $ill the continent of Dewey, Lamont,
and the Little Blue Books. But in Europe, among those who are
derisively known as the avant garde, l am sure it is safe to
say that "free-thinking " in the 1930's sounded as tall-collared
and Victorian as the names of Bright and Bradlaugh. 2 Quite

l"Religion and Politics," Christendom (Dec., 1934), p. 216.

2-
Prof. G. D. H. Cole is a vigorous surviving example c~
 ~,-

the reverse was true of the respectable British middle-class,

after two generations of grammar-school education, to whom talk
of "dogma" and "orthodoxy" sounded not merely un-English, but
altogether unreel. And in between were the pilgt. forward-
marching armies of Modernism, who "woul-d once have been considered
intellectual vagrants," but Were now "pious pilgrims, cheerful-
ly plodding the road from nowhere to nowhere, trolling their
hymns, satisfied so long as they may be 'on the march,."l If
religious Modernism has come a cropper since the war, it may
be partly because their spokesmenwere appalled to realize that
the men of free intellect in whom they placed such high hope,
were "betraying" aIl tr$ Mode'rnism stood for. 2

What was happening, of course, was that the critical

instrument, having analysed so much else in man and society,
was becoming increasingly pre-occupied with the criticislli of
itself. As a result, we have had a new emancipation. It is

of that venerable tradition. But his world is the disappearing

world of hand-wound phonographs and penny sweets: the fact is,
he is still 'a British republican.
l
S.E., p. 359.
2Cf • Rev. J.C.Hardwicke, rv~.A., "The Intellectuals in Re-
treat," The Modern Churchr.lan, XXIV, 10-11 (Jan.-Feb., 1935)pp.
631-637, (p. 635): "At the moment our intellectuals in retreat
spend most of their,_leisure in labouring to show that the Renais-
sance, the Reformation, and the French Revolution were ghastly
mistakes, and that the humanist outlook, from which every liberal
view ~- wnetne!! in re ligion or in poli tics, take s i ts origin, i s
perverse and erroneous -- heresy, in short, sinee our refug~es
are adept in using theological terms. Perhaps no small amount
of this theorizing among our modern British intelligentsia i8
derivable from T. B. Hulm~ •• •• "
The Rev. Hardwicke was far more explici t than Eliot ,con-
cerning the barbarian future: "While the neo-Catholics are on
their knees in the splendid isolation of the cloister, the new
barbarism, the uprush of the mass man from below, will flood in
and swamp them. The culture for which they stand will be sub-
merged, and deservedly • • • • " (p. 637.)
 -"1

far, far easier for my generation than it was for that of Hulme
or Eliot to begin life with a healthy disbelief in either sci-
ence, or in progress, or ln the natural goodness of man.
These faiths were far more widely and uncritically held
in Eliot's day: it was indeed, as he said, an age in which~ll

dogma is in doubt except the dogmes of sciences of which we have

read in the newsps_pers." l
It was indeed true, as Hulme had suggested, that in the
"new respectability," new faiths, all of them mutually support-
ing, had s11pplanted fai th in the supernatural, and in God. And
by the 1930's Liberal faiths were beginning to look threadbare
and shabby: either tao far-gone, or not nearly novel enough.
Eliot did not attack these outright, as did man y of his associates.
A. J. Penty, for example, would say outright that "our civiliza-
--
tion has moved into an economic and spiritual cul-de-sac" from
its misdirection at the Renaissance; but Eliot admitted this
was a suspect over-simplification. 2

lLancelot Aridrewes,S.E., p. 337. Joseph Neednam,

noted Marxist and embryologist, warned Communists that "there is
a possibility that for the opium of religion, some other sort of
0r.iwn, the opium of séience, perhaps~ may be substituted.!I
( 'Landian Marxism," Criterion, XII, ~6 (Oct., 1932), pp. 56-72,
(p. 67).) -
Montgomery Belgion, as usual, te_kes a good point a li ttle .
too far: "In the fields of politics and ethics , we grant~scientists
the same childlike confidence our ancestors granted, for other
purposes, to wi tches or to medicine-men • • Uz..o.Jso believ~ 1 not
in demons, but in heredity, and complexes; not in incantations,
but in sta ti stic,s; not in fa te, but in determini sm • • • • (There
is) a cult for the opoosite of the taboo, the non-taboo. 1I
Cri terion, XIII, 51 (Jan., 1934), pp. 321--322 ( , -'~..
2
Eliot, I.C.S., p. 30. Penty, Criterion, XIII, 51
(Jan., 1934), p. 339: "The idea of equality is the rlie;-t which
resides at the root of our confusion. It has not only destroyed
the authority of the wise over the foolish, but it has filled
men's hearts with envy, greed, and fear."
 He was re1uctant to hypostatize, to name universal
symptoms su ch as "The Dis-integration of Values." True,
he published the observations of men like Hermann Broch
on this subject;l but Broch is an existential offshoot from
Idealist historicism, Broch, like Berdyaev, ta1ks like a
Platonic metaphysician, a poet with history, but Eliot is
always critical.
Eliot does, however, feel that the progressive
discarding of Christianity, the "successive stages of
achism, heresy, and toleration"2 has indeed come to a
terminus or crisis. We are coming to see the necessity of
a definite choice, between either God or atheism. Slowly,
the intermediate stages of Christianity will disappear, ·
"and 1t is well that they should disappear."3 One cannot
criticize the character or works of agnostics ("Many of
the most charming and congenial persons l know•.."etc. ,) ) ;
however:
Their agnosticism represents a transitional stage,
as broad-mindedness and tolerance on any large scale
are transitional. Their great-children will probably
find themselves with sorne positive be1ief; and thls 4
belier will either be ror Christianity or against it.

1Broch, "The Dis-integration of Values," from "The

Sleep-walker," Criterion, XI, pp. 665-675 (tr. Edwin and
Willa Muir) • .
2"The Modern Dilemma," Christian Resister, (Oct. 19,
1933), pp._675-676, (p. 675). -
3Loc • ~it.: "The future will be black and white.
That ia, however;-a slow proceSSj the humanitarians, the senti-
menta1ists, the conservatives, and the fundamentalists are
tenacious of life. But amongst the more intelligent, and in
the main centers of activity, l think it is no exaggeration to
say that mena.M . women tend to be either more orthodox, or
else do not pretend to be Christians at all."
4Ibid.
On this point, Eliot is in âgreement with
nearly all~xists, even Prof. Laski. Cf. infra, p. 3~5.
 Here we return to the necessity of making a choice,
where Liberalism has been making 11 gran refiuto, the great
refusa.l:
The real abyss is between those who believe in the
supernatural and those who do not; and amongst the lat-
ter l class all those who are liberal enough to allow
a little place for the supernatural. 1
The belief of the former is not belief in the afterlife:
"it is to believe the supernatural is the greatest reality
here and ,now. We have to make it our source of values and
the pattern of our life.,,2 ·
Here Eliot echoes with apt quotations from St. Paul
somet~ing of the Sorelian violence and anti-humanitarianism
of Hulme and Wyndham Lewi s. 3

44 7•
-
lIb id. Cf. , S. E., p.
2Loc • cit., p. 676. Cf. Little Giddins, 11. 54-55.
--- Here, the intersection of the €lmeless moment
ls England and nowhere. Never and always.
3Eliot continues: "In the way in which the modern
world uses the terms 'human,! there is undoubtedly something
inhuman about this. As a supernatural religion, Christianity
must aim to lead its f6110wers to something above the human --
though the last thing the Christian wants is to be a 'super-
man,' and the majority of human baings hata and faar any
summons to be more than healthy natural human beings. St.
Pauli parh~ps, was not perfectly 'lntegrated,' or his iQterpre-
tation of estote lerfecti was not" thatof Freud. For l know
that in me (that s in m flesh) dwelleth no ood . thin: for
8 resent w w ie
00 know no wretc ed man t a am w 0 s a e-
ver ~ rom t e 0 t
0 s ea ? e can - ave no ea, or
human beings, lower t an that of salntliness: an Ideal which
the world repudiates, or reduces to the saintliness of a
Santa Claus. We reçognize the chasm between the divine and
the human, we admit our shortcomings and wrongdoings. "It i8
not true that we have never been broken: Wa have bean brokan
upon the wheel." The world insists upon baing right. It
insists upon being . virtuous. It isright, it is virtuous, it
is damned." Cf. Wyndham Lewis, "Tha Art of Baing Ruled," p. 56:
"Life itself Is not important. Our values make It ,soj but
 ..... -

Some of this may be compensatory. Like them, Eliot

clearly feels that wi·t hout the discipline of orthodoxy,
reality, truth, and value hav~ tended to slida from the
invisible to the visible world. This is alleged to have been
the result of free thinking; but "No," Eliot objects:
It is not hard thinking which causes such a thing
as the graduaI drift away from Christianity during the
last faw centuries, but rather following a line of
least resistance. Many people assume that,if the
Christian truth had been true, Europe would have stuck
to it; and the reason why the majority of people, in
the most civiliaed countries, have drifted away from
it, must be that 1t is not true. But this belief goes
together with another crude faith, the faith in progress
and enlightenment and civilisation is something auto-
matie, that to improve from generation to generation
is natural to man; and when doubt is cast on this be-
lief that things will get better Just of rhemselves,
people are apt to fall back into despair.
This much seems incontestable; so widespread, indeed,
has been this despair, that no European of this century
would express a belief in progress as Eliot has Just defined
it. 2 But Eliot does not waste time in beating Babbitt's old

they are mostly, the important ones, non-human values, al-

though the intenser they are the more they imply a supreme
vital connotation." "To attach, as the humanitarian does,
a mystical value to life itself, for its own sake, is as
mueh a treaehery to spiritual truth as it ia a gesture of
'humanity'." !!!r, p. 303: "Deadness is the first condi-
tion of art."
lrtR~li~ion and Science," Listener, VII, 167 (March
23, 1932), _pp. 428-429, (p. 429). Slml1arly, Eliot admitted
that merely because the liberal attitude now appeared to be
incapable of being socially maintained, wes no reason to call
it "talse." "The Modern Dilemma," loc. cit., p. 675.
--
2Simllarly, we need not ~aste time with the more ex-
plicit faith "of the Liberal school of historians in the nine-
teenth century and in our own time, for whom past history was
explalned in almost teleological terms, as leading up to the
freedom, justice, and enlightenment b~ which they felt their
own civilizatlon to be distinguished. Eliot, "The English
Tradi tion," Christendom, X, 38 (June, '1940) pp. 101-108,
(p. 101). _
 ......

Victorian ghost of the de mon Rousseau. The demon is attacked

in modern dress; and he is indeed recognizable.
One of the most telling of Eliot's criticisms of the
present day is for its temporal parochialism, our "over-
estimation of the importance of our own time":
There never was a time, l believe, when those who
read at aIl, read so many more books by living authors
than books by dead authorsj there never was a tife so
completely parochial, so shut off from the past.
The intellectuals, in other words, have lost their
"historie sense." This does not mean that we ignore the
past, far from it: other ages have been ego-centric through
ignorance, but our age has been ego-centric ~.tlmO'llgh compla-
cent historical knowledge.,,2 We have lost our sense of com-
munit y and identity with those who come before us and after.
So many have described our age, not as a moment of time, but
as an ultimate threshold, either of darkness or of light. 3
And we tend to feel that our instruction in the problems which
confront us can only come from our contemporaries. We may
not go as far as the relativism of the Bergsonian time-doctrine,
in which, according to Eliot, "what is true for one age i8

l"Religion and Literature," E. A. M., ~. 10a.

2"A Commentary," Criterion: XII, 46 (Oct., 1932),
pp. 73-79, - (p. 75). -
3After Strange Gods, (the Page-Barbour Lectures of
1933), was rollowed not on1y by its four quoted exemples of
modern heresy, but also by Prof. Dewey's lectures of the fol-
lowing year. From these we extract the fol10wing extra-
ordinary description of L~beralism: "Intelligence after
millions of years of errancy has found itself as a method,
and it will not be lost forever in the blackness of night."
(I!Liberalism. and Social Action," ( Ne..., "t'OYk) 1935), p. 93.)
not true for another, and there is no external standard." ·
But there is still the tendeney to regard the philosophy of
St. Thomas as something, not wrong, but simply Itgone~l
We do not now read the classlcs for what th~contain in them-
selves, for delight and for instruction. We read them either
for the antlquarlan curloslty of how the y affected the past,
or for the utilitarian eurioslty of how the,. helped ereate
the present. This, Eliot.charges, ls a parochialism, na
provlncialism, not of space, but of time." It is · a point
of view for which
history la merely the chronicle of human devlces'
which have served their turn and been scrapped, one
for which the world i8 the property solely of the liv-
log, a property in which the dead hold no shares. 2
, Ag'!linat this, Burke had been urging respect in
politic! for the blind forces of prescription. But Eliot
is urg1ng intellectual respect for reason and wisdom as ex-
pressed in tradition and orthodoxy. AlI of us, he claims,
and not merely the disciples of Bergson or Whitehead, tend
to a false antithesis: attaching aIl value to change and
novelty, and opposing these to permanence and the Eternal,3
which are valueless.

l"Mr. Middleton Murry's S~thesis," Criterion, VI,

4 (Oct., 1921), pp. 340-341, (p. 346). This criticism is
perhaps most true of our edueational system, where nearly
aIl the great works of the past are now read in modern trans-
lation, or else pieeed together from scrappy quotations in
sundry text-books.

~at is a Classic, p. 30

3 tt A Commentary," (Oct., 1932), loc. cit., p. 14.

The circumstances of this remark are interiSting7 Eliot
 To Eliot there ls nothing new ln thls antithesls,
a perennial feature of popular philosophy: "It ls at least
as old as pre-Socratlc phllosophy, and metaphysics has strug-
gled with its conundrums ever since." But it is still a
wide-spread error in our own day:
One might expect it, in its crudity, to have become
out-datedj it seems to belong to the year 1910, with the
pleasant essays of William James (as popular a wrlter
in his day as are Eddington and Jeans in ours) and with
the epidemic of Bers~ But the course of events has
led it to take less obvious forms. We cannot deny that
the words (so impressive because of their association
with physics) static and dyn!!ic are popularly used
almost always, the one disparaglng1y, the other eulo-
gistlca11y. We may have forgotten the philosophy of
James, we May even sneer at the idea of 'progreas' (and
perhaps 'progress' has only bscome unfashionabl. because
we are able to qualify it as 'Victorian')j but we are
still over-valuing the changing and 19noring the perma-
nent. As Curtius remarks the Permanent ha~ come to
Mean Paralysis and Death. 1
Babbitt, we remember, traced all our errors to the
Platoniç problem of balancing the One and. the Many. Here
Eliot also names "our failure to grasp the proper relation

is commenting on :!Peutffuer Gelst in Gefahr,!l by his friend and

associate, the German humanist Ernst Robert _Curtius': "Dr.
Curtius is concerned with the views of a contemporary soc1010-
gist named Mannheim, of whose work r am ignorant, and '.; ~ .• ' \
w;.ho' has hi therto been only a name to me. 'Indeed " says
Curtius, 'for many contemporary thinkers, Mannheim among them,
there seems to exist a crude antithesis between Change and
Value on the one side, and Permanence (Dauer) and Va1ue1ess-
ness on the other.' «
But Eliot need not have looked so far afieldi he had
already read such observations in the work of Maritain and of
Babbi tt: "Everything good has come to be associated wi th '.
novelty and change, with the piling up ' of discovery on dis-
covery. " (Babbi tt, 'Democracy and Leadershi:e, fi pp. 114-115.)
lrbid.
of the Eternal and the Transient," of whioh one oonsequence
"is our over-estimation of the importanoe of our own time":
henoe Eliot oharges that our age, "whatever Its professlons,
ls still Imbued with the doctrine of progress."l
Our praotioal conoern must always be with present
problems, and this ls good; but our theoretloal vislon, If
we are not very oareful, tends always to slip down into the
perspeotive of the practloal. We oome to
take for granted that the past, any part or the
whole of it, has its meaning only in the present • • • •
The notion that a past age or oivillzatlon might be
great in itself, preoious in the eyes of God, because
it suoceeded in adjusting the delioate relatlon of th~
Eternal and the Transient, is oompletely alien to us.
Thus we tend to be condesoending towards the men of
the past, and servile towards the men of the future, -and this
is not good. We will not admit that "men individually can
never attain anything higher than that has already been at-
tained,,3(by which Eliot means the individual perfection of
-
the Saints). And we make perfeotion a goal whioh we approach
collectively in the future, rather than individually here and
now. Instead, says Eliot, "we must affirm that perfection is
as neBrly attainable for man here and no~ as it .ver will be

lLoo. el't~, p. 75: "This is natural to an age whioh,

whatever its professions, is ~till imbued with the dootrine
of progresse The dootrine of progress oannot make the future
seem ~orQSr~~~ol than the present -- this faith our
senses bluntly denYi and a future in time, of Infinite or
indefinite extent, is somethlng which we oan by no means real-
Ize. But the doctrine ofprogress, while it can do little to
make the future more real to us, has a very strong influence
towards making the past less real to us."
2 Ibid •
-
 ......

in any future in any place."l

This of course is a prose affirmation of one of the
chief themes of the Four Quartets, whose whole motif might
be characterized as an attempt to adjust, in verse, "the
delicate relation of the Etemal and the Transient." Do
such exhortations have no place in a discourse on political
ideas? To answer this question, we can only turn to the
motivations by which some of us turn to political action or
political thought, including the social sciences. How far
do we expect by our labou~ to overcome, not any particular
evil, but the problem of evil itself? How far, in short,
do we act from the faith that perfection wl11 be more nearly
attainable in the future? This is the explicit inspiration
of Marxism, and perhaps it is ultimately what is most wrong
with that creed; need l add, "qua creed"? but l think we
shall have to agree that this !mmanent faith is far more wlde-
spread than that. Each of us who is in sorne way concerned
with poli tics should ponder the following warning from a
distinguished Marxist intellectual and scientist:
It has always been the tacit conviction or the
social reformer and the person occupled with the prac-
tical application of scientific knowledge, that by
man's own efforts, not merely minor evils, but the
major evils of existence may be overcome. Unfortu-
nately the problem of evil is not capable of so simple
a resolution. So long as time continues, so long as
change and decay are around us and in us, so long
will tragedy and sorrow be with us. "Life is a sad
composition.!" wrote Sir Thomas ~rowne, "we live with
Death, and Dye not in a moment."

11oc. ill., p. 7~.

2Jose~h Needham, "Laudian Marxism," Criterion, XII,
46 (Oct., 1932) pp. 56-72, . (PP. 67-68). _

tt
 We shall not aIl agree on the truth or importance
of these words, Just as we shall not aIl agree on the sig-
nificance of the writings of T. S. Eliot. But some at
least agrae with Eliot that many people today still turn from
Christianity to a faith in progress, to cheer themselves up
when facing a contemporary scene which, for them, would other-
wise be intolerable. Hence it is another aspect of what
Hulme called "fai th in man," and Eliot, "the myth of hum an
goodness which for liberal thought replaces the belief in
Divine Grace."l
And ~, in thls thesls, I am to be the small boy
who ls Judge for a day, I shall agree with Eliot that this
appears as a lapse to what he ~alls a "lower-level belief,"
deficient above aIl in the quality of lts doubting. 2
In saying this, one can still disagree with Eliotts
attempt to show that a belief in progress and the values
of this world lands one necessarily in a contradiction. 3

-..... ..
~ .. . ' P/,-.
~ ,

3ft A Commentary," loc. cit., p. 71: "If the progress

of mankind _is to continue 'i'S"long-as man :::l,lrvives upon this
earth, then, as l have said, progress becomes merely change;
for the values of man will change, and a world of changed
values is valualess to us -- Just as wa, baing part of the
past, will be valueless~o it. Or if the progress of mankind
is to continue only until a-'perfect t state of society is
reached, then this state of society will be valueless simply
because of its perfection. It will be, at best, a smooth-
running machine which r~s without a purposejan efficiant
bureaucracy with no meaning: and this . it might weIl become."
l do not think that this in itself can refute those
who believe in our asymptotic approach to in~efinite Ideals:
ef'. Morris Ginsberg, "The Idea of Progresse A Revaluation, :I
 ... ,
One suspects that Hulme and Eliot learned to sound
,
so much like Pascal, not because meliorism was 80 unreason-
able, or soheretical, but because it was to them so distaste-
fuI. And something in us stirs in approval: for here at
least is criticism, and in the world of thought the critical
has more use than the merely mushy. Some of us will think it
silly, sick, or even wrong to reject the world and deny the
flesh; but we still turn for critical insight to "that bitter
fraternity "which lives- on 8. higher level of doubt~"l
Many in fact will do SOi but contend that it was a
vast intellectual confusion ever to associate all this talk
of progress and natural goodness, either with d&mocracy or
even with Liberalism. At first glance we agree: Lord Keynes
was one of this century's most prominent Liberals and demo-
cratsj and his refutation of such ideas has already been
quoted. But we must still ask what it was that led the French
anti-romantics to talk of "le democratisme .2! .!! pensée et
~ l'esprit": for example, why did the German humanist Robert
Curtius allege that
the anarchical condition of European intelligence
is nothing other than the irruption of democracy into
the sphere of the intellect. Our cultural situation
is applied parliamentarianism.?2
~More ia involved than an analogy between the freedom,
equality, and fraternity of men, and the freedom, equality,

(London, 1953). Here l think Eliot has just failed to catch

the paradox of the notion of "perfection."
l"A Commentary," Cri ter1on, XII, "48 (April, 1933)
pp. 468-473, (p. 472). "
2"Restoration of the Resson," Criterion, VI, 5
(Nov., 1927), pp. 389-397, (p. 392). _
 ...
",

and mutual toleration of ideas. ~ Professor Spitz,it ia

not necessary, if one is a democrat, to believe that we
choose between values as we choose between flavours of ice
cream. But there is a sense in which liberal democracy has
made such ideas a commonplace. We are only too familiar with
the charge from men like Douglas Jerrold that today, (i.e.,
in 1933) "the State has abdicated from any moral or cultural
-
or intellectual leadership," and that this ia "only the
reflectiôn of the abdication of the 'modern ml~d. ,,,1
,- .....

"The State" la a very ambiguous term; but we suspect

that Mr. Jerrold wants something that we could not accept;
that "a wouldexcludethat 'negative' quality of our social
structure whièh Eliot has admitted to have such great value. 2
And yet, if by "the state," we mean the whole organized
structure of society, then this abdication is not only largely
raal but largely deplorable. Certainly we cannot approve a
situation in which "one man's'view of life' is as good as
another's." The experience of history is that certain ideas
are always, potentially at least, more popular than others;
and that, John Stuart Mill notwithstanding, these 1deas are
very far from being the best. Using now the terme of Broch
rather than Eliot, we can describe "the changes from Platonism
to Positivism, from the Speech of God to the language of

IDouglas Jerrold, "Authority, Mind, and Power,"

Cri terion, .XII, 47 (Jan., 1933), pp. 223-243,~. 237 ,n:~~.).
2Thia difference of intention became much clearer
during the Spanish Civil War. Eliot was "naturally sympa-
thetic" with the Republicans; his former associate saw the
Falangist cause as the forefront of the world-struggle for
civilization and order.
 "" ,

things," the passage from "centralization" to "multifariousness"

in truth and ln values. We might call thls the passage from
the transcendent to the immanent view of thlngs, of reality
and of divinity, of truth and of values. Our notions both of
the "real" and of the "divine" are, in their origin "other-
worldly. ff But that their attributes should pass to this world
.
(it is not very surprising to state) ls only natural. It is
naturalj it is usual. In consequence, if nobody's thinklng
is interfered with in any way by anybody else's, it is only
natural that what we are calling "i.mmanentlsm," and what
Eliot calls the liberal myths, will tend to prevail. (As an
~xample, l might point out that "free-thinking" still means to
.
us a-religious- or irreligiou's thinking.) That is why we are
perhaps justified in treating the belief in progress and the
belief in natural goodness under the heading of "Liberalism."
They are the beliefs with the weight of numerical support.
Th~y are opposed by beliefs which to the "free-thinker" will
always be unsympathetic and hence unpopular. As long as
these latter beliefs, such as Christianity, have absolutely
no special status or privilege in society as a whole (and
this was apparently Mill's Ideal) then it is only natural
that the former beliefs will tend to predominate, and the
latter to disappear. Perhaps Lord Keynes admitted this,
when he said that "civilization was a thln and precarious
crust erected by the personality and the will of a very few."l
We are curious to know whether he would have included the i

prophets among this number.

 Of course, neither Liberalism or democracy ls committed
to the theory of Corllss La.mcbnt, that each man's "philosophy"
should count for one, and no onets for more than one. True,
ideologies are not to be enforced by lawj the "State" of the
idealists is likely pernicious or else doea not existj but
there is undeniably the opportunity of education. Everyone looks
to education to solve the problema of liberal democracy: the
liberals themselves, and equally their opponents. Universal
education was eagerly expected by Coleridge no less than by
Bentham; it was striven for by Matthew Arnold no less than
by the Webbs. It is not surprising that in the 1930's Eliot
too, when he began to talk of practical programmes and reforms,
turned to the same problem. "Education," he s~id, was "in
the long run the most important problem of society":
Education is a training of the mind and of the sensi-
bility, an intellectuel and an emotional discipline • . In
a society in which this discipline is neglected, a
society which uses words instead of thoughts and feelings,
one may expect any sort of religious, moral, social, and
poli tical aberration, and eventual decomposi tion oy. ~ ,
petrification.
Unfortunately we have no time to examine Eliot's views
on education, which, (though of aIl his views they are perhaps
the Most likely to shock the liberal)2 are timely, practical,

lU, Commentary," Criterion, XIII, 53 (July, 1934),

pp. 624-630" (p. 628). Eliot i s views on education are well- "
known; they will be found in '-'Modern Education and the Classics,
(E. A. M., pp. 169-185); "Education in a Christian Society," -
Christian News-Letter, . Supplement 20, (March 13, 1940), pp. ~ 1-4j
"The Aims of Education," ,Measure, II, 1-4 (Dec., 1950, Spring,
Swmner, Auturnn, 1951), pp. 3-16, 191-203, 285-297, 362-375.
Later we descr~Eliotts apparent shift in emphasis, by which,
in the Notes towards~Definition of Culture, the importance
of education came to b~ deprecated rather than stressed. Cf. infra,
pp.
2Most of us are hard1y habituated to remarks like the
 and (I think) likely in some measure to come about. l But
it is important to make c1ear that when Eliot talks of
restoring "orthodoxy of sensibi1ity," it is the means of
education, and chiefly higher education, that he has in
mind. Here Eliot sees the liberal view of education, stress-
ing the unique and the personal, as one which leaves the
individual's ultimate view of life entirely up to himself,
regarding this as a field in which no one is quallfied to
.~

interfere. ' l think most liberals wouldaccept this definition:

most English liberals, inparticular, for historie reasons not
wholly of their own, regard doctrinal education as the sarne
horrid tool of "Imperial reaction" as the liquor and colonial
interests.~ It seems to be common among liberals to view with
horror the association of education with religion, and Eliot's
talk of religious education has brought out further charges
of Intolerance and reactlon. It 1s not enoughfor Eliot to
maka clear that he does not wish to datail clergymen to the
supervision of all lay educators, "or that free scientlfic
enquiry should be hindered, or the results mutilated to fit
in with orthodoxy."3

following: "The modern world suffers from two great dlsasters:

the decay of ._ the study of Latin and Graek and the dissolution
of the monasteries." ("The Modern Dilemma," loc. cit., p. 676;
elucidated in E. A. _M., _pp. 183-184.) ~
The latter idea has received support from Karl Mannheim,
cf. P.W"nz, p.331.
lCf.~, pp. b~o - ~bl.
2E.g. L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism, (London, 1911 (1942),
pp. 215-216). Many· who ln America are ca1led If11berals," but who
are from E1iot,'s standpoint mostly "radicals".(E.A.M., pp. 179-
180) disagreejand choose "faith in _life,ff or "the dlgnity of
man" as fundamental values _which ought (instead ai' Christianity)
ta be inculcated.
J-rt3uilding up the Christian World," Listener, VII, 169
(April 6, 1932), pp. 501-502, (p. 501).
 Eliot is accused of narrow-mindedness, even though his
idea of religious education would very probably include the
teaching of atheist philosophies such as Lucretius. l Eliot is
attacked with such vehemence, l believe, because his approval
of "dogma" and "orthodoxy" would, if reasonable, question the
fundamental premises on whi~h an explicit liberal philosophy
is be.sed.
Meanwhile, such liberalism is already attacked from
the left, with the charges that education must inculcate or
reinforce the values of the communal way of life. 2 Eliot

was fully aware of his deep agreement in this respect with

such critics of the left: "As only the Catholic and the commu-
nist know, aIl educ8.tion must be ultim8.tely religious education. 1f3

Today, however, sociologists and secular theorists,

notably Dr. Mannheim, tend to agree that educationis presently

1
Which, we remember, was ta the braad-minded Liberal
mentality of Lord Macaulay, "the silliest and meanest of aIl
systems of naturel and moral ~ philosophy."
2
Later we shall cAlI snch cri tics "rB.dicals" in educa-
tion and culture. It should be po1nted out _that our_distinction
betwe~n "liberallsrn" and "radicallsm" in education goes f'arther
than Eliot's. "Liberalism" to Elict_implies no discrimination
between different intellectuel disciplines as objects of study;
"Radicalism" implies a bias in favor of the "vital issues,"
from which,naturally, little reason can be seen for the contin-
ued teaching of' Latin and Greek. "In short, while liberalism did
not know what it wante d of education, radicalism doea know; and
it wants the wrong thing. Radicalism is, however, to be ap-
plauded for wanting something. Tt is to be applauded for wanting
ta select end eliminate, even if It wants to select and eliminate
the wrong things. If you have a definite ideal for society, then
you are right to cultivate what is usefu1 for the development and
maintenance of that society, and discourage what ls useless and
distracting. And we have been tao long without an ideal."
(E. A. M., pp. 179-181.)

3E• A. M., p. 183.

 largely responsible for what Mannheim calls the "criais in
valuations," and must be revised accordingly. After such
concurrence, what had seemed "unrealistic,11 "reactionary,"
or "irratlonal" in Eliot's theories, may posslbly be examined
more dispassio;ately.l
Meanwhile It has become more apparent that in exam-
ining this vague exflation of partly conscioua tendencies, _
we have indeed been coming closer to the true heart and soul
of liberalism. For they are synchronous with a more explicit
philosophy now commonly known by that name, whose bed of child-
birth was indeed the Europe of the Reformation and the Renais-
sance, and whose great prophet was indeed John Locke. But from
the point of view of T. S. Eliot or of any other Anglo-Catholic,
the significant feature of this explicit Liberalism is not
its political affection for liberty (surely we all love liberty)
but its disaffection concerning religion in politics. From
thi! point of view Locke is today Most significant for what
he denied, rather than what he encouraged:
Religious worship • • • hath in its own nature no
reference at all to my governor or to my neighbour, and
so necessa ily produces no action which disturbs the
connnunity. 2
"No action which disturbs": this voice of calm
assuaged a century sick Of Intolerance and war. But we have
seen what this inaction came to mean in politics: that gradual
erasure of the mental tablet, by which the Divine natural law

l
Cf. post, Chap. X~.

2H. -R. Fox Browne, The Life of John Locke (London,

1896), p. 177.
faded away, and only the laws of competition were lefti and
the only retribution feared in social matters was not that
of the Deus absconditus, but the still darker logic of a
"hidden hand." That is the third and fully explicit level of
ttliberalism," which wes fully and expllcitly attacked by all
of the "Christian Sociologists," and 8gually by T. S. Eliot.
 CHAPI'ER VIII. Liberalism: a Dogma
"He that glorieth, let him glory
in the Etemall"
1. Cor. i. 31.

In the last chapter we suggested that we must distinguish three

senses or levels of 'Liberalism', depending on the extent te which these

can meaningfully be consciously attacked. There was firstly the general

state of European society and culture, without any connnon ideal behind

which te be united. There was secondly a partly conscious tendenqy towards

the relaxation and dissolution of manners, tradition, and thoughtj and this
was leading, we suggested, to the graduaI substitution of what Babbitt

called humanitarian ideals. And, lastly, we referred to an explicit

political philosophY of Liberalism. Departing from the usual analysis

of university theorists, we suggested that from our point of view the

central doctrine of Liberalism, and the basic idea of all those

intellectuals who have called themselves I~berals, was the emancipation of

political questions from the realm of religious controversy. And we

suggested that this was the main point of difference between Liberalism as

a whole, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, its historical background

of Christian society and culture (which still partly exists), and its
possible future, the totalitarian secular community.

Eliot did not hesitate to consider aIl those who were (in our sense)

explicitly Liberal, as non-Christian, outside the City of God:

"lve are •• aware that if Christendom were reuni ted tomorrow it

would be far from coextensive with even the European world. Against it
would be not only that considerable body of influence which is positive-
ly anti-Christian, but aIl the forces which we denominate Liberal,
 embracing aIl people who believe that the public affair~o~ fhis world
and those of the next have nothing to do wi th each ot~r f" t.t}l't,"!n a
perfect world those who like golf could pl~ golf, and those who like
religion could' go to church. We, on the other hand, feel convinced,
however darkly, that our spi ri tual fai th should give us some guidance
in temporal matters; that if it does nbt, the fault is our own; that
morality rests upon religious sanctiori; and that the social organization
of the world rests upon moral sanction; that we can only judge of tem-
poral values in the light of eternal values. \fe are committed ta what
in the eyesof the world must be a desperate be1ief, that a Christian
world~order, the Christian world-order, is u1timate~ the only one
which, from any-point of view, will work. III

In describing this separation between the public affairs of this world

and those of the next, Eliot follows closely the critique of Liberalism

which we find in Reckitt and Demant. The distinction between IIpub1ic" and

tlprivate tl morality, between IIself-regarding ll and lIother-regarding ll actions,

is indeed the mainstay of 19th Century Liberal Doctrine, as weIl as of

their classical paragons. To the Liberal, this distinction provided the

criterion between the public realm of the secular and the private realm of

religion: to the theorist, this was the highest and worthiest fruit of

IIChristian dualismtl • But Reckitt and the Christian Sociologists SaW this

separation, not as the culmination of dualism, but as i ts collapse. The

two worlds in which we were asked to live no longer inter-acte rnstead of

disputing the field of our ethical life, they would simp~ divide i t, 1ike

King Solomon's baqy. And Eliot agreed that dualistic tensions could not be
maintained in a society which 1ived by

"the exp1icit doctrine that religion is for a man's private life, and
that his public life belongs to the secular state. The terminus of
such a doctrine is of course to put an end to man's private life
altogether, for the division cannot be maintained. n2

111catholicism and International Order", E.A.M., pp. 116-117.

Eliot was addressing the Anglo-Catholic Summer School of Socio1ogy, which
explains the apparent~ cathedral 'weI.
2Religious Drama: Mediaeval and Modern, (New York, 1954), pp.
unnumbered. The Amërican professors who are so fond of quoting the Funeral
Oration of Pericles sometimes fail ta add how important was the ro1e which
religion played in Greek cormnunity 1ife.
 But to suggest that the Liberals of today work against Christendom,
is this not a slander on a highly respectable political denomination?

There has, certainly, been no shortage of devout Christians and even Catho-

lics 'lrTho consider themselves Liberals (and vice versa). Yet, Eliot's

contention is, l think, at the worst no slander, thoueh we m~ weIl

question the identification of Christendom with the Catholicoecumepy.

The borders of the City of Liberalism are to-d~ less defined than ever.

One might indeed prefer Liberalism to denote a post-nineteenth-century

phenomenon, co-terminous with those who used it of themselves. Ironically

enough, if we are to believe Lord Acton, 'Liberalism', political~, was

"first used about 1807 -- of Chateaubriand and de Stael".l

(This would mean that one man -- Chateaubriand -- can claim the

honour of being not on~ the first denominated Liberal, but also the first

denominated Conservative: a perfect illustration of what others have often

pointed out, the partiality of each doctrine, each having had meaning only
11>
in the presence of the other.)2 But today 'Liberalism' is a debilitated

term, As it loses its particular meaning, its reference is pushed forever

back, to the Enlightenment, ta the Renaissance. Now, according to

Professors Trilling, Coker, Br int on , or Watkins, it is a tradition at

least as old as Aristotle, or the Funeral Oration of pericles. And in the

ve~ limited sense of respect for the individual's private rights, this,

too, is surely true. (Unfortunately, this respect has not always or

eve~here existed; otherwise, one would be tempted to go mueh further, and

s~ that the first Liberal was, potentially at least, the first Adam.)

Ferhaps no more definite ereed ever existed for a doctrine so vague

IAeton Mss., ADD. 4955, quoted in Fasnacht, Lord Acton,p. 239.

2Littré, Dictionnaire de la tangue franKaise, 'Conservateur'.
Chateaubriand, of course, is ehiefly noted foris defence of Christianity
and monarcqy, one which has received approval even from Eliotl Yet, he
rejected the political deductions from Christianity which he saw in de
Maistre and Lamennais.
 4

that it could be professed with ardour by atheists like Bradlaugh, and

Catholics like Lord Acton, by hard practical men like Fawcett and Cobden,

who believed in the laisser-faines, and qy those confusing Idealist

philosophers, like Green and Bosanquet, who believed in the State. But,

whether they realized it or not, they aIl had something else in common.

There was not one of them who did not approve, as a mark of 'progress' ,

the dissociation of dogma and ethics, the separation of theology and religion

from politics. l On the popular level, this was indeed the 'age of

Liberalism'; and words like 'dogma', or 'original sin', acquired an

unpopularity which for a tolerant age was quite distinctive.

Eliot's definition seems at least to be applicable; all Liberal

wri tings do seem to separate "the public affairs of this world and those

of the next." Put differently, they all exclude from the politics of this

world any form of other-worl~ judgment, (a word which has become wholly

dissociated from its socio-religious origin.), while religion is viewed

socially as a private preference of the individual. 2

What will be questioned is not the applicability but the relevance

of such criticism: how far does it relate to the deficiencies and problems

of liberal political theory as they are usual~ described? Here again, we

must be patient, and discern different levels of Iiberal political theory:

levels which represent more and more comprehensive attempts to provide a

liberal intellectual explanation for ail of our existing political values.

And l believe that, as we proceed, certain deficiencies, or at least

difficulties, will become more and more clear.

IThis was, for example, the key to Acton's dual allegiance, and the
reason for his .strange admiration of George E~iot. cf. J.N. Figgis;
Introductio~l.in Act?n, Histor,y of Freedom and Other Essqrs, (London, 1907)
pp. xxi, XXlll; G. H1ffiffiel!arb, LOra Acton, pp. 162-169.
2nr. spitz's description of democracy seems almost an echo of
Eliot's description of liberal theory: "the puritan no less than the
aesthete, the sombre no less than the gay, the religious no less than the
agnostic-~eaèh is'left free to decide and follow his own special values."
loc. cit., p. 253.
 There is not much excitement, these d~s, from showingthe

limitations of what Laski calls t atomic liberalism t , in which a pUTe~

negative or formal conception of political liberty is the sole political

value. Nonetheless, the ideal described in Mill's "On Liberty", lives on

today; for, as Eliot admitted, one "cantt exactly disagree" with it. Eliot

is cormœnting on a staternent of an ideal society which was agreed upon in

the correspondence of a Mr. Ervine and G.D.H. Cole:

"the only society that is fit for mankind is one in which every
individual has the utmost freedom of thought and action and speech that
is compatible with the freedom of thought and action and speech of his
'ne ig hb01.lr" l

The limitation in such an 'idea f of a society, "'.

as~ generally agree
2
today, is that it is purely negative: "Freedom is not enough."

Eliot does not go as far in his cri ticisms as the Marxists or

Charles Maurras, who had seen in such professions a hypocritical cloak for

the real domination of the bFrgeoisie. Indeed, he is willing to express

his sympatqy- with the spirit of such a staterœnt, though he cannot find

much meaning in the letter. 3

~uoted in Eliot, "Notes on the Way (rIT)" Time and Tide, XVI.3
(Jan 19, 1935) pp. 88-90 (p. 88). '
211It is"essentially a compromise; and a compromise is hardly an
ideal. And 't.. hat i6 it, exactly, ta be free1 The statement in itself'
sounds at first acceptable ta everyone. Yet, one can conceive a 'society ' in
which every individual has the utmost freedom of thought and action and speech
that is compatible with the thought and action and speech of his neighbour r
which should he, at the sarne time, a thoroughly intolerable society to live
in," loc~ ci t., p. 89. "
-'Î dare SérJ that Hr. G.D.H. Cole, Hr. Ervine, and myself, would ail
be equa11y indignant over particular infractions of liberty. r dare s~
we all feel the sarne about Sedition Bills, and that sort of thing. But
when r read their correspondence, r wonder whether the abstract Liberty
they both love'so muchmore than they love each other, is anything but a
phantom." loc. cit. p. 88.
But MI'. Cole has a solid English capacity for indignation, in the
best tradition of Wilkes and Cobbett, which Eliot never approached. The
proposed rncitement to Disaffection Bill, indeed, drew not another word
from his pen.
 Nevertheless,
"1 think that any conception of liberty which is merely political
is vitiated from the start. We have alreaqy, in fact, enlarged our
conception of liberty from that of the political~ minded nineteenth
century. Ive have discovered that even if one man' s vote is as i~Qt:\~ ~s'1\.,.Qo\- oç-
another, there is a good deaL more ta freedom than political freedom;
we have recognized that economic slavery is as important as political
serfdom. We recognize that the man who is in terror of losing his job
because he knows he Wlll not get another, is not a free man. In sore
respects, certainly, the only free man is the man with an independent
incarne; he is relatively free to dery publ~c opinion. There . is not
lacking a small but convinced body of opinion that affirms that
nowad~s political freedom is a shadow, and financial slavery a very
solid substance; that Ireland, India, and the Dominions gain a
politica~ independence which is a shadow gratifYing to local vanity,
and accept a real subjection to the Bank of England. ,,1

Such ideas were vigorously asserted not only by the Marxists, but

also by Eliot's acquaintances among the Social Creditors, and even, once

or tWice, qy Eliot himself. 2

It seemed to him, as it seemed to aIl the Christian Sociologists,

that the most vis~ble and most prominent consequence of separating poli ti-

cal and religious jurisdiction, of secularizing and de-spiritualizing

society, had been capitalism; and aIl that went with it. One authority,

in short, had been followed qy anotherj and the apparent failure of this
latter caused many to join Eliot in his question Ca question which was not

"a crit~cism of the government, but a doubt of the validity of a

civilizationfl ) :

"l'las our society, which had alvJays been so assured of its

superiority and rectitude, 50 confident of its unexamined premisses,
assembled round anyth~ng more permanent than a cangeries of banks,
insurance compan~es and industries, and had it ~ beliefs more

l
". ., Eliot, "Notes on the Way (III)n Time and Tide, XVI.3
<";:l
(Jan 19, 19j~)
pg. 89.
2"And the House of Commons, whlch has seemed to cling to the Church
as the last reali ty in England over which i t has arry control, must
eventually relinquish that tardy shadow of power too. The only powers left
are those w~th w~ch we must aIl reckon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
and the Bank of England." "Thoughts After Lambeth", S.E., p. 372.
 essential than a belief in compound interest and the maintenance of
dividends?"l

Most Liberals have been sensitive to the deficiencies of 'merely political'

freedom; sorne have attempted to correct them with a philosophy of 'positive

Liberalism'. Roughly speaking, such a philosophy considers that individual

liber~ only becomes significant or actual when embodied in sorne concrete

substantial content. In practice this means the association of libert,y

with other goods which Eliot agreed were necessary, such as nsecurity, work,

leisure, satisfactions of socie~, friendship and sex, and health.,,2

As a philosophy, also, 'positive liberalism' was obviously more

satisfactory than its negative antecedent. But this ability ta satisf,r is

its most dangerous quality. Insofar as it does provide us with the values

we recognize, then the negative attitude has become positive in theory as

weIl as practice; ta that extent we have proceeded, as Eliot describes,

from Liberalism ta the nphilosophies which deny it".3 Eliot is far from

regretting this progress in itself, though like most liberals he is fearful

that the value of the negative element m~ be forgotten: what now becomes

alarming, however, as Liberalism as a philosophy embraces more and more

values, is its secular quality. It is true that most idealists, like

T.H. Green, were devout Christians, but most people of my generation are

astonished to learn this: we are, in our own way, as convinced as Eliot

that Christiani ty is in no way implied by their philosophy.4 We rerœmber

Ir.c.s., p. 65, on the occasion of Munich: "the starting pointil,

Eliot explains, for the thoughts expressed in this book. For Eliot's
connections with the Social- Credit movement, cf. infra, Pt'- :;'2.1. ~23.
2"Notes on the Wayll, loc. cit., p. 89. l'tlS"not often that Eliot,
in his dislike of humanitarianism simple, will admit the importance of
these things. But here we listen to his 'official' rather than his ~rivatet
voice. 3
I.C.S., p. 16.
4Green 5eems to have hadreligious reasons for not taking orders.
In any case, after a long debate, he signed the Thir~-Nine Articles. An
unexplored influence on his political philosophy was F. D. Maurice.
only an individual and a common good; we can remember no values transcending

the immediacy of the former, save those found in the latter. The limitations

of the private particular will are resolved in the higher will of the

state. l think such philosophies are now largely forgotten because some-

thing earthly had been idealized, while it has remained our conviction

that i f the individual is corrupt, the State is no less so. Matthew

Arnold is supreme when poldng fun at optimistic individualism: lia devout,

but excessive reliance on an over-ruling Providence".l But Arnold has not

led us out of this wilderness: instead he asks us, in the heavy Germanic

style of the day , to submi t to the "State, or organ of our collective best

self, of our national right reason. ,,2 And this, we feel, seems to smack

equally of a "devout, but excessive reliance."

According to Eliot, the trouble with such philosophies, as they

become positive, is their Secularism. Holyoake had defined his Secularism

with a logical clarity, as a morality which

"deals with the moral dutY of man as deduced from considerations

which pertain to this life aJ.one and proposes to regulate human affairs
by considerations purely human.,,3

Eliot, however, will attack as 'Secularism' any philosophy which is based

l
. Culture and Anarchv, pp. 124-125.Arnold's remarks here are echoed
by Eliot "Religion and Literatlire", E.A.M., pp. 106-107.
2Culture and AnArcrv, p. 97. .
3Quoted ~n Roger Lloyd, op. cit., p. 149.
 .. I~
t..;.
(

even "primarily •••• on 'well-being in the present life. ,ni

As Liberalism becorres more po~itive, more and more explicit~

secular, it is Eliot' s contention that the paradoxical value of liberty

will be forgotten and thus perhaps lost. For though i t is true that . .

liberty only has meaning and value within the law, for a Christian that

law will always tend to encroach upon liberty, as long as it is a law

of this world alone.

Eliot, like Babbitt, tends to suggest the inevitability of this

reaction, which provides the best secular refutation of secular liberalism.

It is but another example of Eliot's repeated insistence (following Demant,

Dawson, Berdyaev, Mannheim, and so many others) that ltberalism first of

all dissipates Christian social forces and restraints, and then, when it

has done so, becoming increasingly se.c ular, tends to become the opposite

of itself. 2

IRevelation, ed. Baillie, p. 3. cf. "Religion and Literature",

E.A.M., p. 11~ Il~:
1'They hold the assumptions of what l calI Secularism: they concern
themselves only wi th changes of a temporal, material, ànd external nature;
they concern themselves with morals o~ of a collective nature. In an ex-
position of one such new faith (quer,y: in Laski??) l read the following
words:
", In our morali ty th3~ïngle test of any moral question is whether
it impedes or destroys the power of the individual to serve the State.
(The individual) must answer the question: "Does this action injure the
nation? Does it injure other members of the nation? Does it injure my
ability te serve the nation?" And i f the answer is clear on àll those
questions, the individual has abs olute liberty to do as he will.'
'~ow l do not deny that this is a kind of morality, and that it is
capable of great good within limits; but l think we should aIl repudiate a
morality which had no higher ideal to set before us than that."
This morality, Eliot continues, "represents, of course, one of the
violent reactions we are witnessing, against the view that the community is
solely for the benefit of the individual; but it is equal1y a gospel of this
wor1d, and of this wor1d alone."
21'A Corilmentary (1)", New Eng1ish Weekly, m. 25 (Oct. 5, 1939)
pp. 331-332 (p. 331), et al. cf. ~., p. 'Lo.s •
For, they say, the only idea of liberty which has survived historically is
the paradoxical notion of Christian liberty, a liberty wherein we are

nonetheless determined, for we are only free in Christ's will. The

tendency of liberalism, reflecting a greater and greater faith in natural

man, is to lose sight of the reasons for maintaining this complex and

apparently paradoxical notion. Tt reduces the idea of liberty to the

purely political, and by an abstract rationalism it presents the problem

in terms of false antitheses. Here, says Eliot, only dogma can correct

our thinking:
"The conception of individual liberty ••• must be based upon the
unique importance of every single soul, the knowledge that every man is
ultimately responsible for his own salvation or damnation, and the
consequent obligation of society to allow every individual the
opportunity to develop his -tnn\ humanity. But unless this humanity is
considered alwa;ys in relation to God, we may expect to· find an excessive
love of created ·bJe.i~, in other vmrds humanitarianism, leading to a
genmne oppression of humanbeings in what is conceived by other human
beings to be their interest."l

l think it may be agreed that the Christian view of human needs is

a saler defence of liberty than the Benthamite. For to the Christian the

fundamental unit of value is the soul, a transcendental unit that cannot be

sununated in any collectivist calculus. In thi~, way Christianity differs

radically IIfrom Cormnunism and any other religion of Huma,ni tyfl:

tilt is the mass of individuals with which we are concerned: not

the 'mass of humanity', or 'the masses', but the mass of individuals,
each with his own precious differentiations, his eccentricities and
ho bbies, his own peculiar way of making the best of life ;iwuia.aœro.'* iti'IdhA'difo.Is, &1'""1'\0
tw'n){\:",~1i.:Ns 'luite the sarne meaning; and no two or more of whom can be
really united except i.t~t. love 0f God. The Christian view of society is,
if you like, a paradox, for it is an organism in which each part has an
equal value to the whole; but but of this paradox you can escape bnly
inte anarchism on the one hand, or the opposite heresy, communism, on
the other. And that gives you a further paradox; for anarchism and

l"Catholicism and International Order", E.A.M. p. 123. Gf. ~J

IfS: 30 (. ·
 \\

communism respectively, in suppressing half of the values of life,

suppress the whole. 11l

Thus by positing this paradoxical axiom of equal value to the part

and the whole, Eliot steers straight through the tired dilemma of the

individual versus the state. The systematically-minded !3ecularist" derives

'
"rights" or 'koOdsll from this world alone: thus to someone like Professor

T. D. Weldon, it seems logically clear that either the state exists for the

sake of the individual, or vice versa. 2 But to Eliot, as to all Christians,

the primary values are not of this world. Society is an end, as Aquinas

had insisted, but this end can never overshadow our fundamental destiny,

which is elsewhere. Hence, the tension or dualism of Christian social

the ory , which is annihilated the moment we find earthly self-sufficiencyin

either man or society:

"The Christian view is, l think, essentially dualistic. The City

of
,
Gad
,
is ..at "best only realizable
'Il!
on
\
earth
1
under an imperfect
3 likeness:
t:lI 0 V(.)OL11 ':? C. cr("J S 'Wkf IlL 0 f..I. Y1"-" fi'..v,," 11: t. ..."T""" l.

Tt is in this 1 ight that Eliot discounts the practical applicabili ty of

philosophy or ideology to poli tics. We must avoid that 'monism l which

leads of necessity to lIan identi ty of theory and practice l1 (and likewise'

to a unification of the spriitual with the temporal power):3

"It is natural for philosophers ••• to affirm the prirnacy of

philosop~ over politics, just as certain Popes affirrned the primacy of
the Roly See over temporal government; but poli tics , even Communist

l"Building up the Christian -;,.'orld," Listener, VII. 169 (Apr... 6, 1932)

pp. 501-502 (p. 501). Coleridge had expressed something like this moral
axiom, that the part is eqUal to the who1e; but returned to favour the
organic ~ver the atomic view of society. Vd. White, pp. 140; 141.
And 50 he allows for only two alternatives -- "organismll and
"meéhanismll --between which we must· choose. (States and Morals (London, 1947)-
pp. 20,34-36,46). Each of theso is, as he describes it, a monster. l do not
know by what abnegation of the spirit he can find his IIrœchanism" a.n;y less
distasteful than the LeViathan to whichit is opposed~
311A Commentary", Criterion, XIV.56 (Apr.1935), pp. 431-436 (p.435)
cf. Infra, p. 33\ •
 politics, will go on being the thing of expedients and makeshifts that
i t alw.;ws has been. fi
Elsewhere, Eliot recalls for us the words of Pascal: "The Christ will be

in agony even to the end of the world. ,,1

But the best expositions of liberalism refuse te be tempted inte

facile and explicitly secular moralities, either of individualism or of

secularism. They adhere to a negative interpretation of the role of

governmental macnine~, not from the optimism that the best will prevail,

but from what Eliot approves as 'uncynical disillusion', the disbelief

that the best can be made to prevail. Their sole positive assertion i5
2
that no positive theo~ of the end of man is politically relevant.

l think it is clear that Eliot accepted gratefully the constitutional

framework of modern liberal society; (cf. ~, ~)~o.fs. :III' -y ) he

objected rather to the tendencies to place faith in this framework, or te

construct political philosophies out of it, to view it as the highest

achievement or even final end of histor,y, or to propose it as the ~mbol or

substantiali ty of our Western way of life. It is when we are told that

beyond this our culture recognizes no collective purpose in life, that

Eliot feels that liberalism has defined its own insufficiency. The fact i~

according to Eliot, that people just are not content without recognizing

l''Building up the Christian World", lac. cit., p. 502.

2e.g. Sir Ernest Barker, The Citizen's Châlce (Cambridge, 1937) p.l.3z
"If we look at ends or aims rather than at process of method, it is
the ideology of democracy to have no ideology. It has no single set of
connected ideas about the ends or aims of government. On the contrary, it
it its essence to have a plurality of sets of ideas, represented qy a
plurali ty of parties, and to trust to the play of discussion •••• "
But his liberal 1 trust 1 was perhaps a little tragic, for 1937:
"Finally, we need not despair of ail this «v i. J-J-c.)" d'"T~($'I..S - - - - - all
these conflicting gusts of the veering gale of doctrine ••• Perhaps these
direful winds are a wB3" of peace rather than ·of wa.~ ••• It may even be
counted for good that Europe should be sa mueh one that i t can be vexed,
like a single sea, by all these embattled winds of conflieting ideologies. fI
(p. 21).
 ~71

I~

some higher purpose of life. And in their search for mlfths, inspiration,

affiliation, and above all sacrifice, the people will not pause to listen
to Lord Keynes or Sir Ernest Barker, who mutter that "it is the ideology of

democracy to have no ideology". The key evidence for the Christian

Sociologists in this argument was of course the rise of totalitarianism.

As Brother George Ever.y put it:

"Behind Nazism there lies not only, or even mainly, the defence-
reaction of land-owners and industrialists to Connnunist threatenings.
There is sOJoothing more. There is the cr.y of a people defrauded of
wisdom by professors and groping after something more permanent and
elemental than the theories of specialists, "the religion of the
blood".l
ï\~ p.,..J'CS6~"$ ~ ~W\. s 0lIl.1 ~r
S'iiGA UiSA96 are quite unreal, even of that disillusioned liberal democracy

in which they themselves lived; for we now suspect that England's

continuous surviva~~ery political age, was the degree te which its

constitution merged into a larger, only partly conscious, way of life.

It is, 1 think, only those people who have thought a very little

way, who will altogether deplore these undeniable and problematic human

weaknesses, or write them off as 'irrational'. And only those sarne people

will simply oppose such drives to a 'rational' love of libert,r. For liberty

has always been a paradox in the eyes of Christian and secular philosopher

alike: we only seem to become free from our own passions and drives when
2
we submit to the higher law of something else. It was the importance of

this paradox, 1 thin~ which explained the Victorian vogue of British

Hegelianism, and that belief in the Ethical State which we glanced at in

Matthew Arnold. According te Eliot, this paradox was notcaught by ArnoldJ

still less do we find it in the "vide pompeux" of Bosanquet. One cannot

l .
"Sorne Reflections on the Idea of Catholic Sociology," Christendom,
(Dec. 19~4), p~ 268. .
Plato, Republic II, III; cf. Romans, viii. 2. Babbitt, we remember,
found the enduring and universaI truth of Buddhism in the divine law
(without, however, the personal legislator.)
 ' .. /

stop short of the extreme statement of this paradox, as it is found in

F. H. Bradley:
"How can t~e human-divine ideal ever ~. my Wlll? The answer is,
Your will i t can never be as the will of your private self, so that
your private self should become wholly good. Ta that self you must die,
and by faith be made one wi th the ideal. You must resolve ta give up
your will, as the mere will of this or that man, and you must put your
whole self, your entire will, into the will of the divine. That must
be your one self, as i t is your true self; that you must hold to bath
with thought and will, and all other you must renounce."l

These words, s~s Eliot, remind us where Arnold and all ethical

authori tar~ans fall short:

"There is one direction in which these words -- and, indeed,

Bradley' s philosophy as a whole -- might be pushed, which would be
dangerous; the direction of diminishing the value and digni ty of the
individual, of sacrificing him ta a Church or a State. 2 But, in aQY
event, the words cannot be interpreted in the sense of Arnold. The
distinction is not between a 'private self' and a 'publ~c self' or a
hig her self', i t i s between the indi Vi dual as himself and no more,
a mere numbered atom, and the individual in communion with Gad. The
distinction is clearly drawn between man's 'mere Wlll' and 'the will
of the Divine' ".3

The liberal philosopher may weIl agree that the 'higher self' of

Arnold and Babbitt, which is suspended without visible foundation, like

Mahomet's coffin, midw~J between heaven and earth, this provides no

certain basis for any morality. Idealism is to-day a crumbling and

deserted tower; Babbitt's humanism, a still loftier erection, seems to have

lEthical Studies, (Oxford, 1927), p. 325. Quoted (incorrectly) in

Eliot, "~ancis Herbert Bradley, S.E., p. 414.
1{e might say of Liberalimnas a tendency, that i ts danger is of
leaving only the State as an object to which an individual can sacrifice
himself. "Humanitarianism" thrives as a creed from the inspiring
examples of 50 many self-sacrificing humanitarians; but this is not enough.
We remember the Napoleonic dictum that, in the modern world, there is no
more tragique, there is on~ la politique; and we are sad.
310c. cit., pp. 414-415.
 ":a.''\
15

crumbled the sooner and only added to the babble. The liberal of this
century need not be a positivist, empiricist, or "New Realistll, in order

to enquire what is the relevancy of such criticism. He wishes to argue

in defence of the political freedoms, and leave matters at that.

Eliot replies that, once we have begun to theorize, we must go

further before understanding the true meaning and value of 'liberty'-

"Assuming that the individual has political and economic freedom,

is that enough to guarantee his liberty? Liberty for the individual
means, and must mean, a great deal more than that. There is still
intellectual and moral freedom. This is freedom from the influence
of environment, of heredity, of public opinion, of mass-made thought.
Ve~ few people want to be free from these things; fewer still have
the stubborn will to free themselves from them. It requires the
maintenance of an attitude towards ourselves that is extremely
painful. HoW easy it is to see the servitude of others, their obedience
to prejudice, to the group among which they live, to the collective
will of-their progenitors -- and how difficult ta recognize and face
our ownl 111

This process of liberation is negative, we look inta the inner

darkness, proceeding by elimination, not illumination. We begin ~ seeking

to transcend the limitations of our own personality; but the 'common good'

is no terminus to such an ascent, and we must free ourselves from the cake

of custom and tradition as weIl:

La vie est un d~pouillement -- l have quoted this phrase of

Gourmont before now, and l think Ezra Poundquoted it before l did;
and the phrase has a long histo~ behind it; ta be free we must be
stripped, like the sea-god Glaucus, of any number of incrustations of
education and frequentation; we must divest ourselves even of our
ancestors. But to undertake this stripping of acquired ideas, we
must make one assumption: that of the individuùi ty of each human
being; we must, in fact, believe in the soul. 1I 2

To talk in this way of distancing ourselves from our own impulses and

compulsions does not merely mean to pass beyond the limitations of self

and community. It recalls Spinoza's theory of freedom: "the view that to

l
"Notes on the W<3iYt: (III)'~ p. 89.
2Ibid.
 understand, to accept, to identif,y oneself with what happened was freedom:"

"But, on second thoughts, this is a pagan perversion of a Christian

truth; and it is a perversion which has been still further perverted in
our time. It seems to me that young and inexperienced Marri.ans have
found a new thrill in a doctrine which is ve~ ancient, in feeling that
by surrendering themse1ves to what was going to happen aQYW~, they
might acquire a will more whole and a purpose more serene. In the
modern forro in which they accept it, l fear that (to use an equa1ly
modern term) they may be mere1y experiencing the de1ight of masochism."l

still, the search to provide meaning to freedom, does imply in

this way the re-maldng of ourselves. This is the truth echoed by Laski in

bare1y-resonating phrases like "se1f-realization" or "se1f-fulfilment":

but to give any meaning to such phrases we must enquire through and beyond

morality ta more ultimate questions:

"If one is going to theorize about liberty, then one must go on

from poli tical and economic liberty ta moral liberty. And one cannot
stop short of theology. What, in short, is the ultimate nature and
reason for liberty?"

And E1iot's reason for such a painful and difficult procedure, so un1ike

those basic comforts of the Atlantic Charter, is Christian:

"To me, the notion of liberty is meaning1ess wi thout the further

notion of liberation. One lives, not to be free, but to be freed. And
to be freed from is meaningless unless one has sorne notion of what one
is to be freed for.
"According tô the Christian view, l be1ieve, the importance of
liberty is due to the importance of every individual human soule If
human souls are not ultimately important, or if they are not equally
important, then liberty does not matter. There is a paradox, on the
highest authori ty, about gaining one 1 s soul and losing i t. There is
also a paradox of liberty, repeated by Spinoza, repeated by Marx~pnd
stated by a man very much greater than eit':er Spinoza or Marx; who
says: To fol10w Christ is to deny self; this is not that other course
which is nothing but to seek oneself in God, which is the very opposite
of love. For to seek self in Gad is to seek for comfort and refreshment
from God. But to seek Gad in Himse1f is not only to be willing to be
deprived of this thing and of that for Gad, but to incline ourse1ves to
will and choose for Christ's sake whatever is most disagreeab1e,
whether proceeding from Gad or from this world; this 18 ta love God.--
(st. John of the Cross: The Ascent of Mount Carme1.)2

1E1iot i8 c1early thinking of J.M.Murry, cf. Revelation, p. 14,

"A Cannnentary", Criterion, XI, 44 (April 1932) pp. 467-41:3.
2.\'NotfSo"i\c.W."I~loc. cit1, pp. 89-90.
 .... '
/7

Eliot suggests that the political idea of liberty cannot subsist

qui te apart from the religious idea of liberation. It cannot be permanently

interesting for ends in this world alone:

"The ultimate meaning of liberty is that each individual should be
free to determine his own eternal salvation or damnation. There is no
other final meaning, there is no other final value te liberty than this.
La sua voleuntade (sic) e nostra pace is the last word about free will.
And the problem of politicâl liberty cornes eventually to the general
problem of free will. From our earthly point of view, of course, we
know little enough about what the states of salvation and damnation
are. The amount of real Ifreedom l in most people's lives is apparent~
very small -- which does not abrogate our obligation te become as iree
as we cano Our obligation, certain~, is to love -- to love Wlthout
des~re (for the ~atter is to seek one self in the beloved object, see
st. John of the Cross quoted above) -- or l ~ght say to love beyond
des~re -- for sueh love ~s not effected by the mere quenching of
desire. The soul, by resigning itself to the divine light, that is,
by removing every spot and stam of the creature, whîch ~s to keep
the wilï perfectly united to the will of God -- for to love Him is to
labour te detach ourselves from, and to d~vest ourselves of,
everythîng which is not Godls for Godls sake -- beeomes immediate~
elllightened bY, and transformed in, God. Id

l know of no public react~on to these observat~ons in 1935 save

that of Miss Rebecca l'fest: "The complete lack of logical connection

between these sentences would evoke unfavourable comment from aQy

literature teacher."2 To say they lack logical connection may be fair

enough. But l think they might nonetheless command more attention today,

for they form an ancillary chapel te the structure of the Four Quartets.

Nevertheless, l cannot pretend to assert that all reflection upon

liberty will ultimately be Christian; still less, that it will lead us to

read st. John of the Cross. But the idea of liberty does, l think, require

reconcillat~on with the idea of neeessity, whether of determination or of

destiny. He are not all required to be philosophers; but once we assume

this role, whether explicitly or implicitly, then the idea of liberty

can only be faced in this contexte Th~ context is that of our ultimate

l
loe. cit., p. 90.
2Time and Tide, XVI. 4 (Jan. 26, 1935), p. 124.
 world-picture, or what used to be called our religion. And here it makes

no difference whether we are atheists or Jesuits, behaviourists or

Roslcruclans: IIrf one is going to theorlze about liberty • • .one carmot

stop short of theology.lI l

A lot of ordinary people will object that tills may or may not be so,

but that in any case they have no more desire to discuss philosopqy than

they have to talk Apologetics. If they are ln politlCS, then they are

wliling to suspend all theorizing about Liberty, and argue instead about

employers' liability and the elght-hour d~. l hope it is now clear that

Eliot's argument is not directed against the practice of 'practical' men.

~f.hat lS denled is a philosop~: the philosopny that metapnysical-religious

speculations about liber~ should have no bearing upon politics. We have

alreaqy- ci ted tills philosopny from Sir Ernest Barker: "i t is the ideology

of democracy to have no ideology." Here at least lS the admission that

such a positive statement is an ideology, just as positivism turns out to

be a metapqysics, and athelsm a form of religion. And Eliot of course does

not reprove liberals like Barker for statements which are positive, but for

a liberalism which is partly positive, undissoclated from an ideology which

is not nearly positive enough.

l think Eliot would treat Liberalism as he once treated that

"defence of mediocri ty", the eudaemonism of Bertrand Russell. This contained

much practical wlsdom "that is qmte commonplace and perfectly acceptable •••

But when such an attitude is expressed in intellectual terms, it becomes

something very different from what it is when it is merely lived out. We'

might say that it is a view of life which is perfectly tenable until it is

1
Or, if the phrase is more palatable, the crltique of satisfactions.
The atheist, for example, might prefer to talkof atheology.
made articula te. ,,1

So we see that insofar as there is na struggle against Liberalism",

it is not against the village Hampdens, but against the liberal intellectual

who cannot resist embellishing all that has been going on with a theory.

For insofar as that theory is positive, it is Secularist. And the Secularist,

Eliot says, is faced with a dilemma:

"If you concern yourself with this world alone, then you have only
the choice between two opinions: (1) you m~ think you know what is
best for people, andyou will envisage them only as 'free' when they
come round to your view of what is best for them. (2) You may hold
that no one can know what is best for people, or that 'best' means only
what each thinks best for himself, •••• In the former choice, you are
imposing your own opinion; in the latter you are aillnitting that there
is no purpose for existence.,,2

Is Eliot justified in concluding that the first alternative, so

clearly 'illiberal', is the 'natural' destiny of unopposed Liberalism? Is

the second alternative not viable? Eliot after all is not quite fair to

it: its adherent adroits only that no part of the communit,y, whether

Church or State, gentlemen or intellectuals, has anyopinions that are in

any way worth rende ring official, about the 'purpose for existence'.

Eliot seemed quite convinced that the second alternative, though

it cannot be proven ta be false, WaS not an opinion which would survive.

He suggested that as a society became less dogmatically Christian and
orthodox, 50 inevitably its philosophy and wisdom, concerning such

fundamental notions as individual liberty, would inevitab~ dec~. l feel

that we can best understand his ideas on this point when we remember wqy

he felt that the humanism of Irving Babbitt would not endure. It was not

so much that it was wrong, as that it asked for a mental discipline that

l
Revelation, ed. Baillie, pp. 9, li: "For once we have asked the
question: what is the end of man? we have put ourselves beyond the
possibilit,y of being satisfied with the answer: 'there isn't aqy end, and
the only thing to do is to be a nice person and get on with your neighboursl"
2"Notes on the Way (III)", lac. cit., p. 90.
could not be sustained throughout a whole society which accepted nothing on

fai th. So now Eliot suggests tha t only theology - reasoning based upon

faith - will dissuade the intelligentsia as a whole from sliding naturally

into heresy: i.e. into the abstract extremes of "pure reasoning." Thus

only can we avoid the individualism which ends in humani tarianism. By

itself, says Eliot, wisdom is not enough, still less will it ever rule the

world:

"1 consider that only Christian and Catholic thought, operating in

the sphere of sociology, can save us from these extremes which 0 nly
create worse confusion when they meet. The heresy is often more true
plausible, more apparently rational, and also more expedient at the
moment than the true faith. For wisdom is IlOt arrived at by a strictly
logical conclusion from agreed premisses; you have often no means of
compelling qy reason those to accept who do not want to accepte It is
obvious that the second half of the Summ~ of the Law is a delusion and
a cheat if you erase the first halff but how willyou prove that to the
enthusiast and the system-bu:ilder?"
2
But a liberal like Lord Keynes, Julien Benda, or Ortega y Gasset

will admit the di ff icultY of maintaihing a 'negative ideology'. They

express no confidence in the free market of ideas; theyadmit that 'wisdom',

dis arme d, faces a precarious fight for survival. One might even agree that

in certain countries the natural fruit of liberalism had been

totalitarianism, where 'wisdom' by itself had indeed been 'doomed to faille

And one m~ght even join in describing our present 'crisis in valuations'
as a serious one, perhaps the most serious problem of our time. One can do

ail this, and still remain a liberal. There are numerous reasons, and not

œrely the bitter fruit of experience, for lœeping faith out of poli tics.

We may bel:ieve that our residual habits and professions of Christianity

ought to be dissociated from politics, or at least not aQY more consciously

1
E.A.M., pp. 123-124. "lt is somthing which we lalow to be true, by
what may indeed be called worldly wisdom: for true worldly wisdom leads up ta,
and is f~filled in, and is incomplete without, other-worldly wisdom."
Benda and Ortega mqr not usually be characterized as 'liberals';
but l think that they may be numbered among the most intellectual exponents
of the viewpoint attacked by Eliot in this chapter.
associated with them than they are at present. Or we may believe that

today Chr~stianity ~ no longer be so associated; and we can think of no

better faith to replace it. Or we m~ simp~ believe, or believe that we

believe, or believe that we ought to believe, in no faith at all.

This is the political attitude which we ahall understand henceforward

by Qiberalism'. Eliot cannot chase these liberals sa easi~ up trees of his

own construction. heynes and Ortega have their own 'uncynical disillusion';

and are wary when in the woods of 'ideology'. It is on the level of

'culture', and not in any narrower delineation of 'politics', that Eliot

final~ cornes to grips with these men. Those, finally, who propose é3.I\Y"
kind of alternative secular faith, or the rationally planned manipulation

of older fai ths, we shaLl treat as departiilg from the l iberal tradition into

something which (following Eliot) WB shall call radicalism. l It is only

when this alternative faith appears as complete and self-contained, the

source of all significant social values, that we shall feel justified in

calling i t totali tarian. The radicals and totali tarians, also, will be
final~ met in, or on, the field of 'culture,.2
We have given Eliot's reasons for arguing that the most important

characteristic of Liberalism is its denial that our religion should affect

our politics. Had we time, we might have exrunined his claim that the

whole of English political histo~ in the 19th Century can only be

lA term which qy now should car~ no 'persuasive' connotation, either

Dejorative or eulogistic. l feel it important to spend so much time on
definition; especial~ in America, where many 'liberals' talk cont~nuous~
of the importance of ~ith, either in humanism, in democracy, or in America
(sometimes the dist~ctions are not ve~ clear) or even in liberalism itsalf.
2cf. post, Chapters X, XI.
understood from this sarne religious perspective.1 (Had we tllTle also, we

might have examined what Eliot considers to be the 'dogmatic' limitations

of the liberal perspective, such as the fallacies in international politics

of working for self-government above all other values, or expecting aqy

kind of major salvation from the League of Nations.) Unfortunate~, l can

only assume that none of this criticism will be of much interest to the

convinced liberal. For we seem to have concluded it is the common belief of

all liberals that in the domain of politics, religion is not very important.

But however little Eliot's remarks may affect the true liberal, he who

ignores or deplores all ideologies, l hope that we have done with those

intellectuals who would give liberalism an ideology of its OWTI. For when

liberalism ceases to be a critical attltude to politics, and becomes yet

another competing 'philosophy', it has not only lost its own special Vlrtue,

but it has become of aU intellectualizations, one of the least tolerable

to the intellect. Were it mere~ mediocre and dull, it would have a certain

virtue of hmnility. But its talk of the 'activity of tre reason', of 'man's

struggle for liberation' is ~ often a prelude to its own dogma and arrogance.

But it i8 time now for the l iberal critic to ask questions, to ask
whether Eliot's postulation of 'orthodoxy' will not also land him in a
dilemma, or series of dilemmas.

We have no time now for those to whom the idea of orthodoxy in itself

l"The English Tradition" ,Christendom, x. 40 (Dec. 1940) pp. 226-237:

According to Eliot, the most important change of this period Was the displace-
ment of the High Church by the Anglo-Catholic, dissociated from the Tory
Party, recruited from wider sections of society, and wi th a "critical
attitude, inspired by the increasing attention to problems of social justice,
to both of the political parties." p. 233.
There has been no corresponding political re-grouping to give either
Anglo-Catholics or Modernists a clear political affiliation. Especially
since the decline of the Liberal Party, the political element in the
formation of sects has diminished, which, says Eliot, helps te explain the
movement towards Church re-union.
 l
is either a joke, or a scandal, or a phantom, or a form of mental treason.

But the liberal, thinking back to the 16th and 17th centuries, will want to

know how the social recognition of 'orthodoxy' can be reconciled with that

'negative element 1 to which Eliot accords its due share of value. It may

be sil~ to associate orthodoxy with the auto-da-f~, but we want to know

what sanctions Eliot does have in mind for its institution and maintenance.

The free recognition of orthodoxy by independent minds is surely that very

Liberalism which Eliot claims has failed, and is doomed to fail; it is to

rely on the guidance of "the Inner Light, the most untrustwortlv and

l.rhough we can recall the argument of his doctoral dissertation, "a

philosopqy can and must be worked out with the greatest rigour and discipline
in the details, but can ul timate~ be founded on nothing but fai thll
("Experience and the Objects of Knowledge in the Philosoplv of F. H. Brad.leyll,
p. 211)
Eliot1s argument for orthodoxy, like Hulme's, is based on this
ineluctability of faith.
"Everyone, in a sense, believes in something; for every action
involving any moral decision implies a belief; but a formulated belief is
better, because more conscious, than an unformulated or informulable one. 1I
(A COIlllœntaryll, Criterion, XII. 48 (Apr. 1933) pp. 468-473 ip. 471rJl.'3),)
When it is objected that beliefs cannot be treated in this fashion as
if they were matters of conscious choice, l do not think Eliot would disagree.
He distinguishes between lpossessing 1 and lbeing possessed byl a belief; and
gives as an analogy to the moment of conversion, what Stendhal had called the
'moment of crystallization' in love. Like other literary cri tics such as
I.A. Richards and Basil Willey, Eliot develops Hul::ie 1s distinction between
'beliefs as held' and 'beliefs as felt'. We saw in the last chapter-that
'orthodoxy of sensibility' tended to be identified exclusively with the
latter; this means that an atheist like Babbitt, who appears at one moment
like a 'heretic 1 is described another time as lessentially a most orthodox
Christian'. Naturally such 1orthodoxy , i8 open to the charge of mere
formalism, cf. ~, pp. 3'0 -3'2..
An interesting chapter could have been written developing these
essentially higher notions of critical dogma and what Eliot caîls lorthodoxy
of sensi bil~ t.Y' • For this last phrase l would suggest the term IImetadoxy", a
discipline of the intellect and the emotions in accordance with right belief
something which does not actually presuppose the profess~on of belief. For'
etymological and other reasons, l do not think that the ideas of orthodoxy
and of fai th can or ought ta be d.J..ssociated in the way which El~ot desires.
In this way i t might also be shown that a metadox dogma need be by no means
unexamined, nor its believer either credulous or anti-intellectual.
deceitful guide that ever offered itself to wandering humanity."l To enforce

the profession of orthodoÀ~ qy any external punitive sanctions seems unlikely

and unacceptable, as archaic as the age of Sumptuary laws. To induee it by

the continuous habituation of religious education (assurning that such an

education could ever be established) would seem to induce a general conforrnity

of belief and behaviour, at the sacrifice of the complexity and tension in

modern society to which he attributed such value. Generally, the idea of a

society united in orthodoxy seems a regressive ideal, a wish to return to a

more primitive simplicity. The ideal seems impossible; and if it were not,

then it is unstable. For the fruit of orthodox Christianity as we knew it

in the past has been Liberalism as we know it today. It seems, to the

liberal, to presume a type of faith, a suspension of criticism, which cannot

and ought not to endure.

But Eliot's orthodoxy is not so easily shelved. Firstly, it is for

the intellectual classes at least, the fruit of criticlsm, and not its

extinction. For he believes that tod~, in the fog of liberal myths we have

examined, "the last refuge of the sceptic is in the clrurch". To be sure,

the acceptance of dogma is a termination and a surrender, just as liberal

Pyrrhonism as weIl as Communism is a termination and a surrender: i t i5 a

surrender we must learn not to be frightened to make.

Here Eliot's views have often been misunderstood qy his vigorous and

one-sided polemic against "Individualism", the cult of personality, and the

"Inner Light". He never denied that the IndiVidual, that rare bird who does

think and act independently, was the best as weIl as the rarest of persons;

l
. A.S.G., p. 59, Gf. supra, p.13 1 , And which, as EdWin Muir has tactfully
pOlnted out, was the inspiration of the great Christian mystics like St.
Augustine, as weIl as the betr~er of Rousseau and D. H. Lawrence.
we saw how his early criticism of democra~ was that it seemed to produce
l
fewer and fewer individuals. As such inchviduals are always rare, one was
not compelled to anticipate a soclety in which aIl col~ective social valua-

tions were replaced by indiVidual ones. And Eliot ridiculed as vigorously

as Arnold that : 'individualism' which meant simply the free market of ideas.

"At this pOlnt l anticipate a rejoinder from the liberal-minded,

from all those who are convlnced that if everyboqy says what he thinks,
and does what he likes, things will somehow, by sorne automatlc
compensation and adjustment, come right in the end. 'Let everything be
tried,' they say, 'and if it is a mistake, then we shall learn by
experience.' This argument might have sorne value, if we were always
the sarne generation upon earth; or if, as we know _, ·:·,'oé;.·.~clb the case,
people ever learned much from the experience of their eIders. These
liberals are convinced that only by what is called urirestrained
individualism e will truth ever emerge. Ideas, views of life, they
think, issue distinct from independent heads, and in consequence of
their knocking violently against each other, the fittest surVive, and
truth rises trlumphant. Anyone i-lho dlssents from this view must be
either a mediaevalist, wishful only to set back the clock, or else a
fascist, and probably both.,,2

The trouble with such an ideal is not that it is "undesirable",

but rather that such a world "does not exist". Nei ther the consumers nor

the producers of ideas are ever, at any given time, such divers men.

Therefore, to encourage such an ide~ is merely to encourage temporal

parochialism, to give oneself over ta the authors of the present:

lia mass movement of writers, who, each of them, tlunk that they
have somethlng individually to offer, but are really ail working
together in the sarne direction. 1I3

Eliot seems to balance orthodoxy, as a chscipline of ideas which

is timeless and therefore 'unpopular', against the natural or 'popular'

drift of opinion in any given age. Therefore, the result of educating by

the standards of orthodoxy in our century will not mean a primitive

l"Lon d on Le tt erl! Dial, LXII. 5
(May 1922 (,,5 11"l'here
) pp. 510-515/\ ): is only
one man better and more uncomnrm than the patrician, and that is the
Individ~l" "A Romantic Anstocrat", S.W., p. 32.
"Religion and Literature", ET.M.,1>p.I01i08 cf. Arnold, Culture and
Anarchy, pp. 124-12.5. --
310c • cit., p. 109: "IndiVidualistic democracy has come to high tide;
and it is more difficult today to be an individual than it ever was before."
conforrn ty of opinion: rather, i t will encourage, wi thin a basic uni ty,

far greater real di versi ty. It will provoke heightened intellectual

tension, rather than torpor. (For Eliot feels that such torpor, a laziness

of thinking, has been the fruit of the present age, when ideas have been

let 100se to proliferate like rabbits. And though we feel that as usual

he tends ta exaggerate the sins of the present, asopposed to al1 other ages;

yet it is hard to deny that the deterioration of thlnking, which he

cont~nually descrlbed, was a rea1 one.)

Eliot never denied the value of this diversity and tension within

a basic uni ty: qui te the contrary.1 And in 1934 he adrni tted that the

baiting of 'individualism', as of democracy or liberal~sm, CQuld be

carried too far:

l1There is something to be said, in these days, for individualisme

l do not mean what ordinari1y passes .1b'q' that name, simply a party of
folk huddling together to beindependent in company, Most' in di vidualists 1 ,
l dare say, have never he1d an opinion contrar,r to that of the other
members of their smal1 immediate society, nor have ever gone into the
wilderness for the purpose of making up the~r minds. A number of
eminent Liberals of all1\f~parties have recently signed a manifesto
in favour of 'democratic' g ove rnme nt. l have considerable sympatlwJo'i~ "'ft,.. ... ,
ui th reference to the recent events (i. e., in Germany) which cause T,hem
alarm; but l cannot fee1 that their convictions are fundamental enough
to cut much ice; and the juveni1e enthusiasm of their opponents may
only be heated to a higher degree by such pronouncements. To surrender
individual judgment ta a Church is a hard tlung; ta surrender
individual responsibi1ity te a party is, for maQY men, a pleasant
stimulant and sedative. And those who have once experienced this
sweet intoxication are not easily brought back ta the difficult path
of thinking for themselves, and of respecting their own person and that
of others."
"Let us therefore say a ward for di versi ty of opinion •••• "2

1E.g. liA Cornrœntarytl, Cri terion, XIII. 52 (Apr.1934) pp. 451-454

(p. 452): tiAn atmosphere of mverse opinions seems to me on the who1e
favourab1e to the matlU'ing of the indiVidual; because when he does come ta
a conviction, he does 50 not by 'taking a ticket', but by making up his own
mind. "
21oc • cit., p. 453",4-S~.
 Similar~ we should observe that Eliot never depreciated in itself
what Hulme called "that bastard thing", Personality, but only "the who le

movement of several centuries towards (its) aggrandisement and

exploi tation. ,,1 He cannat accept the heresy prevalent to-day that makes the

indiV1.dual the sole moral reality and source of value. 2

l
A.S.G., p. 53.
2~is the error of course of the New Humanism. Eliot asks
whether the humanist Ramon Fernandez, "by positing personality as the
ultimate, the fundamental reality in the universe, is really supporting
or undermining that 'moral hierarchy' of which he •••• is so stout a
champion. "
"The issue is really between those who, like M. Fernandez •••• '11ake
man the measure of all things J and those who would find an extra-hw,ail"
measure." (Mr. Read and If. Fernandez", Criterion, IV. 4 (oct. 1926)
pp. 751-757 (p. 755).
He detects and cannat regret a general histarical progress in self-

cansciausnessfbut he retu$es ta attach value ta this hietarical develapment

in itse1f. And to a generation of intellectuals who tended to attach the

highest value of se1f-consciousness to artistic self-expression, Eliot re-

phrased the paradox we saw in Bradley:

"What happene(ta the poet)is a continuaI surrender of himself as

he is at the JOOment to something which is more valuable. The progrese
of ~ artist is a continuaI self-sacrifice, a continuaI extinction of
personality.nl

But theaprocess of depersonalization" which he describes is clear1y, from

El.iot's point of view, the highest expression of the individual personality,

the peak of self-expression and self-determination. l think that there 15

no doubt that the return to orthodoxy should also Mean a rational and

voluntary surrender -- setting rational limita to reason, and voluntary

1imit5 ta the will.

There is after a11 a wide realm of tacit and sub-articulate

agreement between Eliot ani the liberal. Both wish the maxinrum diversity

which i5 consistent with stability. Both approve of an independent and

critical attitu~e, and oppose this ta a dreary confonnity.

Eliot i5 nat guarded about the value of scepticism:

nI believe that the sceptic, even the pyrrhonist, but particu1ar1y

the human1st - sceptic, is a very usef'ul ingredient in a world which
is no" better than it is ••• that hierarchy i5 l:iable to corruption,
and certainly to stupidity; that religious belief, when unquestioned
and uncriticised, is liable ta degeneration into superstition; that
the human mind is much lasier than the human body, and that the
COlIlDIU1lion of saints in Tibet i5 of a very low order. 1I2

Because the church has always failed in criticising itself from

within, it will always require criticiam from without. But, eays Eliot,

"Criticism, infide1ity, and agnosticism must, te be of value, be original

1" Tradition and the Indi vidua1 TaIent ", S. E., p. 17

2ltReligion without Humanism", in Hwnanis~d America, ed. Foerater,
(New York, 1930) pp. 105-106.
and not inherited. Orthodoxy must be traditional, heterodoxy must be
original. nl Scepticism has deteriorated in the absence of orthodoxy, and
its expression (as in Anatole France) ceases to be of much value. nThere
must be more orthodoxy before there can be another Voltaire. n2

Scepticism, in short, is critical thinking; and elsewhere Eliot

distinguishes this from Pyrrhonism, or the refusaI to speculate at aIl.
And Pyrrhonism, which manages to combine the worst features of confusion
with the worst of uniformity, is to Eliot the destiny of scepticism in
an age without dogma.
Ultimately, says Eliot, our problem turns out to be a religious
problen. One result of the Renaissance and the Reformation has been what,
in litera ture, ~iot has called "the dissociation of sense and sensibi11ty",
which is but a reflection of a wider separation of the intellect and the
eootions. We are aIl creatures of bath intellect and emotion: each of
these stands in need of discipline by the other. 3

For a few, says Eliot, this discipline may be achieved by wisdom

alone, but for most, and for any society as a whole, "true worldly wisdom
leads up to, and i5 fulfi1led in, and is incornplete without, other-worldly

wisdom. 1I4
~vi th the l'decay of Protestantism" we have s '.: en fltha t exaggera ted
faith in human reason to which people of undisciplined emotions are prone";
and similar1y the cultivation of spiritual and emotional expression without

1 ibid.'
2 ibid. cf. S.E. pp. 450 55., N.D 4 C., p. 27.
3 ê.:..!•. p. 288, E.A.H., p. 121, "Religion \Y1thout Humanism", loc.
cit. pp. 110, Ill.
4 E,A,N., p. 124
rational restraint. l

By thinking in terms of religion and orthodoxy" a society may be

able to see more clearly (to use a metaprur) where it should agree, and
where i t shoul d disagree. A' radical' social planner lilœ Mannhe:im or
Sidney Rook tends to agree with Eliot on this: that in a healthy society"
diversity of private opinion should be matched by sorne ultimate community
of faith. (Most social planners tend ta desire a more 'practical' faith;
but surely the most practical advantages of an 'other-worldly' religion;
is that it is 'impractical', and need not prejudice us dogmaticallyon
purely secular matters.)
Eliot' s distinction in the avant garde was in believing that a
positive answer existed: one which clearly came far closer than vitalis m,
primitivism, activism, or communism, to integrating all the higher values
of our existing culture. Scepticism was ta Eliot Ol'Ù.y t he preface to
conversion: "the removal of any reason for believing in anything elle,
the era8ure of a prejudice. n2 ~ond it lay orthodox Christianity, a

concrete supernatural religion, in which intellect and erootions, belie!

and values, could be reconciled.
What was possible for any free-thinking r intellectual', was also
possible, Eliot fel t, for society as a whole. That separation of the
intellect and the etOOtions, which had led the individual to sacrifice the

ly&., pp. 124-125. Thus, following Maritilàn, Eliot once pointed

ta Luther, who "separates faith and reason, Gad and man", as the author
of individualisme CA Review of) "Three Reformers", Times Literary
Supplement, 1397 (Nov. 8, 1928) p. 818). But it is most mIsleading to
trace such historie guilt to individuals. What Eliot means by 'individualism'
ia a natural tmdency at least as old as the Sophists, and which accompanies
the natural rational 'revoIt' against any faith.
This, by the way, must IlOt be confused wi th the Senecan
"individualism, this vice of pride", which Eliot detected in Elizabethan
tragedy. S.E. p. 132.

pp. 382-58~h[~t~~Jty and Communism", LiBtener, VII, 166 (Mar. 16, 1932)
 whole of himself to some part, had of course been reflected in the

community. The men of thoueht had been isolated from the men of passion;

and both from the men wh:> rule. The scientists, the philosophe~, the

artists, and the politicians, had lost even a common vocabulary with wbich

to understand each other. To the 19th Century, this increasing

differentiation was usua11y considered. both inevitable and a sign of

progresse Today we are accustomed to agree that it had gone too far, tbat

what Eliot calls the 'dissolution of thought' has resu1ted in crudity,

provincia1ity, perhaps even barbarism of thinldng. Today on a11 sides, we

see crude differentiation followed by cruder attempts at re-unification.

Eliot reminds us that even in the 19th Century:

"the dissolution of thought in that age, the isolation of art,

philosophy, religion, ethics and literature, i5 interrupted by
various chimerical attempts ta effect imperfect syntheses. nl

With this dissolution, fSOl non-technical branches of thought mve suffered.

so severely as philosophy.2 But philosophy, econamics, and po1itical

theory, aIl stand in need of a purely intellectual correction, by being

studied together in the 1ight of rœn's u1timate nature and purpose. In

short, our universities can afford to neglect theolagy no more than

Latin and Greek.

l"Arnold and Patern , S.E., p. 404, 405: "Religion became morals,rc.\'C;\O\l'\.o

'b~a:.wo.t. o.Tt) religion became science or philosoph;r; various blundering attelli>ts vere
made at alliances between various branches of tmught. Each hB.lf-propnèt
believed that he had the who1e truth. The alliances were as detrimenta1
all round as the separations." Shifting uncomfo~bltt, we remember that
Eliot considered political science as one of the more flagrant of the
e
half-prophecies. cf. s", Y"c.., Introduction, ~p. 1'1,7..0.
2What bas succeeded to the heavenly structures of Hegel and Bradley
i5 usua11y characterized, according to Eliot, by 10ss of insight and 10s8
of w1sdom (Introduction to Leisure the Basis of Culture, by Josef Pieper
(New York, 1952) p. 12, cf. S.E. p. 4lî) Eliot there exp1ains why he believes
"The root cause of the vagaries of IIDdern phi1osophy ••• to lie in the
divorce of phi1osophy from theo1ogyfl (p. 15).
 But more serious than the intellectual was the moral confusion:

"perhaps the chief malady of the modern liberal state", Eliot agreed"
l
ws its absence of any cornmon notion of the good life. But this was

only the social concomitant of a more widespread 'dissolution of value.'

Today it is a commonplace that this dissolution of value has threatened

EUropean civilization with the decline of Christian faith; moreover, tha~ ~L

intellectuals have been the midwives of at least this historical

deve1opment. To Eliot in 1927, it seemed not oruy clear that we were

threa.tened by this condition, but that, within the avant garde, the current

had already begun to flow the other way.2

And 50 Eliot apparently fe1t justified in concluding that what

'free-thinking' had overthrown, clear thinking might conceivably re5tore.

Like Hulme" Eliot did rely on an elite, but one which was primarily

intellectual, rather than political or clerical. (Though he talked of

orthodoxy being formulated by "the continuous thought and direction of the

Church," l cannot believe that he expected the proclamation of dogmas,

that curiously modern phenomenon of Roman Catholicism, to he a usual feature.

The Church's role, as described in the Christian Society, is not a very

positive one.) He seems like Rul!œ to hope for a new state of mind to

replace tœ liberal, and to believe tha t the disciplined thinking of a new

intelligentsia can,by correcting tbat of the old, clean up the litter after

the lone, scheol pic·mic of the Enlighterunent.

lItA Commentary", Criterion, XIII, 51 (Jan. 1934) pp. 270-278 (p. 277),
wherein he quotes V. A. Demant, God,Man and Society.
2 For Proust's generation, said ~iot, "The dissolution of value had
. itself a positive value", while for the younger generation (citing Ramon
Fernandez) "the recognttimoC value is of the utmost importance ••• an
athleticism, a training, of the soul." l'Mr. Read and M. Fernandez" , loc. cit.,
pp. 752-753. cf. T. E. Hulme. -----.----
 • r,

We cannot close without one final question from the liberal, from
that liberal to whom the progress of Secularism, whether good or evil,
seems the natural tendency of any civilization. It is not 11r. Eliot who
is the final optimist, in thinking that a discipline which is 50 patently
unpopular, can ever displace a tlaziness of thinking t which is only natural.
What alternative lies bctween the canonical sanctions which collapsed at
the Reformation, and the ideological free market which had, apparently,
collapsed in Eliot r S own time? Can '.orthodoxy' be adapted to the IOOdern
critical community, simply by dissociating it from the necessity of belief?
To these challenging questions we r eturn in our final chapter.
 CHAPTER IX

TOWARDS TOTALITARIANISM

No government has ever been, or

ever can be, wherein timeservers
and blockheads will not be upper-
most.
Dryden, Examen Poeticum

This chapter will examine, in various stages, Eliot's

pragmatic critique of Liberalism: that
"Libera1ism1! (that combination of "doctrine" and
"dogma" which held together during the _Nineteenth Cen-
tury) is something which 1eads (by what Fr. Demant
rather heavily cal1s enantiodromia) to modern totali-
tarianism, and is indeed a phase without an understand- l
ing of which tota11tarlanism itself cannot be understood.
l must warn the conversant reader that Eliot's approach to
this subject 18 again critlca1 rather th an systematlc. He
offers questions Rnd doubts froID a viewpolnt of which a far
clearer exposition will be found in writers as diverse as
Berdyaev, Dawson, Maritain, and even Karl Mannheim. It is
only when the discussion centres, not about political or
economic organization, but the social maintenance of "culture,"
that our attention ls directed to Eliot alone.

1
liA Cornmentary," (I),~ New Eng1ish Week1y, XV, 25
(Oct. 5, 1939), pp. 331-332, (p. 331). ElIot suggested that
L!bera1ism, as it was then known, cou1d not even survive the
war, an observation which cannot be immediate1y refuted.
 We have se en how The Criterion promoted the Ideal
of Europe as an organic community united in culture. In
the late twenties, the literati whose writings reflected
this Ideal became increasingly mina tory. "The future of
western civili~ation, indeed the future of mankinq, ls to-
day in jeopardy," wrote Ma!sis in 1924. 1 European culture
might be potentially threatened by America's, as even
liberals like Georges Duhamel or Gina Lombroso could point
out;2 but a still morereal danger came from Russia. Massis'
book described a "new assault by the East on the Latin inheri-
..
tano •."; by this lie did not mean the Red armles which had in-
vaded Poland, but the new fascination which Oriental art,
philosophy, and religion hald for the mind of post-war Europe,
particularly in Germany.3
Massis' apprehension at the Orientalism of the Russlan
experiment was taken up about this time by Eliot, to whom
political matters now seemed far more important than they
had in 1918. 4

l"La Ddfense de l'Occident," translated in Criterlon,

IV, 2 (April, 1926), p. 224. cç 1>0."'-' "~\é.~) l.e.. c.rise à.e \'~S~("·I~.
2 Georges Duhamel, Scenes
' de la vie future, p. 19, p.
240; Gina Lombroso, La ran~on du méchanisme.
3Massis describes intellectual phenomena only, such
as Count Keyserling's Yogi School of Wiàdom at Darmstadt, and
the intransigent anti-occidentalism of Hesse and Bonsels. He
quotes verdicts of Troubetskoi and E. R. Curtius which only
confirm, almost literally, that of Rathenau: "Night falls over
Europe; more and more everything forces us to look to the East."

4rn March, 1918, The Egoist, of which Eliot was

Assistant Editor, had printed only one article about contempo-
rary RUBsia. It was from Arthur Symons, describing the Quattro-
cento masterpieces, the Luinis, the Solarios, the Gianpetrinos,
which were currently on view at the Hermitagq in Petrograd.
 The cultural community of Europe faced a new threat:
not the nationalism which was already decrepit when President
Wilson discovered it, but the new variations of it, such as
Fascism, And in particular Bolshevis~:

The most important event of the War wes the Russian

Revolution. For th~ Russian Revolution has made men
conscious of the position of Western Europe as (in
Val~ry's words) a snell and is~lated cape on the western
side of the Asiatic Continent.
In 1927 Eliot was already convinced that the choice
between Communism and the existing politi&s of Western Europe
was a choice, not just between modes of government, but be-
tween opposing civilizations. For this reason he warned
those who criticized the Soviet dictatorship merely because
its Five-Year Plans did not work efficiently, and the Russian
standard of living was low; sueh people, recognizing only
the materialistic criterion of Success, might someday find
themselves without any further argument. But Eliot himself
was not confining his objection to COrrL.'11unism to the narrowly
"c~lltural" or "aesthetic" criticism which he made in 1925:
namely, that the art and culture of Soviet Russia appeared to
be that of a "New Bourceoisie.,,2 The cultural objection
to be made was 8 deeper one: after 1927, Eliot considered

l
"A Comrnentary," Criterion, VI, 2 (Auenst, 1927),
pp. 97-100, (p. 98).
2" A Commentary," Cri terion, III, 10 (Jan., 1925),
pp. 19 1 - 16 3. Eliot was reviewing problems of Life by Leon
Tr~tàky, · an'8.uthbr · towards whom Eliot continued to show
interest and respect. Eliot in this review refers to thec"~~Yeo~~
revolution as something "horrible at~orst, but in any event
fascinating. Such a cataclysm i8 justified if it produces
something really ~. fi (".l'l»
 ,,-.

that the essence of Communism was its complete political

secularism, its complete antithesis to the dual world-order
of Christianity.
As such, Conwunism no longer appeared to him as the
alien creed of the Tartar hordes to which he had alluded in
The Waste Land. l It was a philosophy more dangerous and more
challenging because of its roots in our own political life.
It waB but the secular culmination of theliberal "isms,tf
of collectivism and of humanitarianism, or "an excessive
love of created beings," which, as it becomeB more and more
sure of itself, will tend to become more and more oppressive
and cruel. 2 This danger is the greater in conjunction with
the modern perfection of the state legislative machinery,
and the modern tendency, which to many people becomes an
end in itself, of replacing customs by laws. This, says
Eliot
ia merely tearing down old fences which had happily
some holes in them, and building new berriers tQpped
with broken glass and charged with electricity.J
Eliot, in other words, is one of the many who view
with apprehension the spread of a more and more efficient
state machinery into every aspect of community life. Marxist

lLI. 366-376, reinforced with a citation from Hermann

Hesse. At this time communism was indeed losing more and
more of its eastern "bolshevi~" character, as it was studied
more and more by the .. local intelligentsia, including associates
of Eliot like Joseph Needham and A. L. Rowse.

2Reve1ation, p. 37. Cf. E. A. M., p. 119, supra p.ll~

3"A Commentary," Criterion, IX, 36 (April, 1930),
pp. 381-38,5, (p. 385).
critics have attempted to write th1s off as part of the
"capitalist" or\\bourgeois" propaganda which attacks etate
interference in the name of "free enterprise." But Eliot,
like the Christian Sociologists, is not worried about
the encroachment of the state power upon industry and finance.
These institutions have always come out on top in a liberal
democracy: indeed, they have themselves contributed to the
further decay of the institutions about which Eliot is Most
truly concerned: regional and rural patterns of life, the
village, and above aIl the church and the family.l Concern
for these institutions drove Eliot to attack as tyranny
bills which were ignored or indeed proposed by professional
foes of tyranny: such as the Tithes Bill, or the following
bill in 1930:
The Most conspicuous and Most monstrous example of
humanitarian tyranny is the Canal Boat Bill. a measure
which in the name of health and education wou Id destroy
the family life of its victims. Such are the fruits of
Liberty. 2

Like aIl Anglo-Catholics committed to the Thomistic doctrine

that the family was the basis of society, he was Most alarmed
et the assumptlon by the state of the ectivitles, duties,
and 11berties of the family, in the name of those of the
individual. (Particularly, as we shall see, this referred to

lIn: thfs respect Eliot must be distinguished sharply

from Babbitt.
2Ibid • The Canal Boat Bill, as can be imagined,
ple.nned to maintain children away from their migrant parents
for the sake of their education. Vd. The Times, Jan. 29, May
9, 1930. The Bill was later withdrawn, and floating schools
presented by the Grand Union Canal Company.
developments in patterns of education.)
Under these circumstances, Eliot with good reason
repeated the commonplaces of the 19th Century organic theorists,
such as the Lake Poets, and pointed to the real hè&rarchy
of communities within and beyond the state. The problem was
not merely to attack the concept of sovereignty, but te evalu-
ate our proper and partial allegiance to aIl of these communi-
ties: nationalism, in other words, could not be fought simply
with "internationaltsm" or with "pluralism." Many liberals,
of course, were aware of this same problem; but perhaps only
those who were interested in a Christian political theory
(as opposed to those Christians who were political theorists)
saw this problem primarily in terms of the family.l Among
the rest, there seem~d to be universal acquiescence in the de-
cline of the family, as more and more of its economic, social,
and educational responsibilities were taken over by the state.
About the fate of the family the Liberal showed no difference
in principle from the more thoroughgoing state secularization
of the Communist.
And Eliot detected the same Indifference towards the
fate of the rural pattern of life, and of the village commun-
ity. The Conservatives were, it was true, attempting to pre-
serve Britain's agriculture within an industrial economy, but

l
Eliot: "We are taught, in every modern nation, to
worship the nation.first, the district second, and the local
community third, and the family last; whereas we are only
capable of understanding the nation through its relation to
the famill." (liA Cormnentary," Criterion, XII, 49 (July, 1933),
pp. 642-647, (p. 645).) .
for reasons of economic and military expediency.l To Eliot,
on the other hand, agriculture and village community repre-
sented a mode of social organization which was inherently
valuable, and the only basis on which a truly Chhistian
society could be built.
For thes~ reasons Eliot showed sympathy with such
movements, largely intellectual, as the Tennessee "neo-agrarians"
~

(led by John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate) among the so-called
"Fugitive" group of poets, or that variety of Scottish nation-
~lism rep;esented by~~y~~ Macpiarmld~(C. M. Grieve). He waB
well aware that the industrial economie system had little
patience with such ~oets and contemplatives; yet this made
their values aIl the more worth striving for if they were ends
in themselves. 2
Eliot's interest in regionalism and the village is
not comparable to that of Charles Maurras, who as a youth
stirred his fellow-poets to street violence for the cause of
better Provencsl canals. He was in the Anglo-Saxon tradition
of the Lake Poets and Ruskin: like them, he refused to ac-
cept the consequences of industrialization which he abhorred,
even when the solemn voice of the politieal eeonomists

l
E.g. Lord Lymington: Ich Dien: The Tory Path.
2"It will be said that the whole current of economic
determinism ls against them, and economic determinism ls to-day
a god before whom we fall down and worship with all kinds of
music. I believe that these matters may ultimately be de-
termined by what people want; that when anything.i~enerally
accepted as desirable, economic laws can be upserA~O achieve it;
that it does not so much matter at present whether any measures
put forward are praetical, as whether the aim is a good aim,
and the alternatives intolerable." (After Strange Gods,pp.n~8.)
informed him that they were inevitable. In chall~nging

the progress of industry Eliot ran the risk of appearing

ridiculousj and we still smile at the attampts of those
country-walkers, Wordsworth and Ruskin, to hold back the
railways of Lancashire and Wales. Eliot never became a
fanatic for the preservation of wild flowers or rural foot-
pathsj but his determined Indifference to the Iron laws of
economics led him to voice sentiments and statements which
at times souilld a little hollow. "Man's natural community is
the village" does not persuade us; and the regionalism of the
Welsh, Cornish and Manx is indeed by itself a pallid formula
for the re-integration of the modern industrial community.
And so, to his credit, Eliot admitted.
On the other hand, after the Lake Poeta and Ruskin
judged that the effect of the industrial system on living
conditions was Intolerable, hiatory came belatedly to agree
with them; in retrospect it is the strict Malthusians of
the "dismal science" who appear'the more ridiculous. The
blindness of a Lord Shaftesbury to economic 'lnecessity" ttirned
out ta have its own raIe in the economic determlnatlon of
history; so perhaps Eliot, as weIl as the Lake Poets, will
eventually be pardoned some of his eccentricities.
The flght agalnst the Gradgrlnds and the fourteen-
hour day was a purely humanitarian one, appealing to no
specifie or dogmatic set of beliefs. When in this century
the Church of England joined in a similar war, some of its
demands were purely humanitarian. So one might construe
the Church's condemnation of llnemployment, and Archbishop
Temple's famous letter of 1933, on the composition of which
Eliot had been consulted. l But the fight to preserve the
British land could not be justified from purely humanitarian
motives; for it implied in the 20th Century that agriculture
might be a thing worth preserving in i tself ', something whose
value could be balanced against aIl the increases which
industrialism could offer in the way of a material "standard
of living." From such a point of view aIl the parties were
"industrialist." The Conservatives were no better than the
LiberaIs and Socialists: their expedient of subsidizing
agriculture for military purposes was not sufficient. Ac-
cording to Eliot:
The essential point is that agriculture ought to
be saved and revived because agriculture is the founda-
tion for the Good Life in any society; it is in fact
the normal life. 2

Eliot agreed with the long tradition of French theor-

ists to whom agriculture was the only possible basis of true
patriotism and consciousness of tradition:
It is hardly too much to say that only in a primarily

ITemple's letter to the Times, on March 5, 1933,

hoped for a common desire among churchmen that in the event
of a budget surplus, the restoration of the cuts in the
Unemployment Assistance allowances should have priority over
the remis sion of the Income Tax. An earlier letter on Jan.
23rd had talked generally of the need for "redistribution of
power and of wealth." ,
Those to whom such statements seem innocuous should
remember how violently Liberal churchmen, such as Lord Brent-
ford, opposed this attempt to make people think politlcally
"as Christians."

2"A Co~entary," Criterion, XI, 42 (Oct., 1931),

pp. 65-72, - (p. 72). -
 agricultural society) in which people have local attach-
ments to their small domains and small communities, and
remain, generation after generation, in the same place,
ls genulne patrlotlsm posslble: not the artificlal
patriotism of the press; of political combinations and
unnatural frontlers and the League of Nations. l
Today, It ls true, the cities have partly heeded the
natural beautles of the box hedge and the marigold patch
so that the significant new community is the suburb. Eliot
did not deny that the idea of the suburb offered a possible
solution; but he saw no improvement in so many developments
of the day "an endless line of houses along a ribbon road
over which passes a ceaseless stream of ce.rs." "I wonder,"
- .
continued Eliot, "what &b.rl: of organic unit y can be left, what
sort of local patriotism and activity fostered.,,2

In watching the continuous urbanization and suburb-

anization of England, the overwhelming and swallowing up, not
only of old rural churches and manors, but of entire village
communities, Eliot was moved to repeat the unpopular prophecies
of the Lake Poet tradition. Here was a fundamental change of
society which was still continuing in a fashion which he con-
sidered almost uncontrolled and undiscussed. True, there was
local town planning for "green be1ts" and park faci1ities; but
the underlying transition from country to city was uncha11enged.
For this was the Inevitable consequence of a capitalist (or
soci&list) society whose sole aim was to raise the material

lIbido Eliot refers the reader to the recent work of

(Robert) Aron-and Dandieu: D~cadence de la Nation Franyaise.
2"The Search for Moral Sanction,"Listener, VII, 168
(March 30,.1932), pp. 445-446, 480 (P. 4~O).
standard of living. Furthermore, the patterns of this transi-
tion were wholly consequent on private motives of profit, or
else "dependent UfO" the vagaries of a body like the London
County Council."l Eliot called for the expansion from a local
to an overall community planning (he neglects to say by whom),
to control 13.11 changes in population-distribution. Then we
must ask, if the lsrge towns should become larger:
whether it is healthy that the mind of the whole
netion shou.ld become urb~n. And in asking such ques-
tions we are questioniniAt~e assumptions of our society
for man y generations pasto
How gravely Eliot considered this problem is evident
from the following paragraph:
The two Most serious long-distance problems we have,
apart from the ultimate religious problem, are the prob-
lem of Education and the problem of the La.nd -- mea.ning
by the latter the problem, not merely of haw ta grow
enough food, but of how to obtain a proper balance be-
tween country and town life. 3
The mills of capitalism have constructed the new

l
If A CO!runentary,1f Criterion, XIV, .54 (Oct., 1934),
pp. 86-90, (p. 90). In 1938 Eliot pointed te the power of the
profit motive in the speech of a railway director to the
British Railway Stockholders Union, which reported cheerily
ju.st how profitable the intense suburbanization of south-
eastern England had been. ("Who ContraIs Population-Distribu-
tion?"(A Letter to the Edi tor), " New English Weekly, XII, 23
(Marc.h 17, 1938), p. 4.59: "Other p..uthorities, l believe, have
expressed alarm at the concentration of such a large proportion
of the population in south-e a stern Enr:land.")
2"A Cormr.entary," loc. cit., p. 90.
3"A Commentary," Criterion, XVII, 68 (April, 1938), pp.
478-48.5, (p. 482). Eliot evidently considered that the urbaniza-
tion of societv had revolutionized the conditions of parlia-
mentary repres~ntation as well: "How Many of our legislators
can really be called 'country gentry'?" Cf. A. S. G., p. 20.
 citiesj but at the sarne time the decline of reli gion has re-
moved the reasons for remaining on the land. And so, Eliot
warns, the rural church must be saved from its present de-
cline, or "the decay of the English rural cqmmunity will pro-
ceed apace,,,l leaving only the urbs, the suburbs, and the
beauty-spots for hikers. Thus Eliot bitterly . opposed the
Tithe Bill of 1936, suggesting that the rights of the Church
to its revenues from land were at least as valid as those of
the private land-owners. For, echoing T. H. Green and R. H.
Tawney, Eliot asked "what private 'right' there is in land
at aIl, unless the 'owner' is working that land for the com-
mon good.,,2

To remove tithes would strike at the skeleton of what

still remained of rural community life: the church in its
parochial organization. And this was to be deplored: in the
nS.tura l communi ty, ft just as the centre of human life i s the
family, so the social unit is the village."3

But by 1940, Eliot considered that (even though Eng-

land knew nothing of the urban temperament of Paris, but

l"A Commentary," Criterion, XV, 61 (July, 1936), pp.

663-668(p" "') ,
2Loc • cit., p. 666.
3"The Search for Moral Sanction," loc. ci t. i p ,4<aO).
Eliot 8eems to have been slightly embarras8ed by his own personal
liking for an obviously more cosmopolitan existence. Repeatedly
he describes London, the city of his choice, as attractive
because it was, or had used to be Ifa eollection of villages
the borders of which touch, each retaining a local character
of its own.'~,Cf. "The English Tradition: Address to the School:
of Soci 1:l10gy," Christendom, X, 40 (December, 1940), pp. 226-237,
(p. 226,). _

, :
 310

remained "stubbornly attached to the parochial"), neverthe-

less it was necessary to adapt the church and society to
modern urban conditions, in which "the parochial system
(was) in full decay":
The parochial system implies a system of land
tenure • • • everything that the tendency of indus-
trialism is to destroy.l
""'c.
And in"Christian Society Eliot admitted that "an idyllic
picture of the rural parish"
appeara to offer no solution to the problem of indus-
trial, urban, and suburban ~ife which ls that of the
majority of the population.
Eliot did not share Penty's ideal of renouncing the indus-
trial experiment. His advaluation of those corresponding
institutions, agricultu.re and the family, fell short of such
a drastic conclusion. Nevertheless it strengthened his cri-
tique of industrialism, by offering other objections than the
purely humanitarian:
We are being medl3 aware the the organisation of
society of the principle of private profit, as weIl as
public destruction, is leading both to the deformation
of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the
exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal
of our material progress is a progress for Which suc-
ceeding generations May have to pay dearly.~

IHere again the correct solution lay neither in

Utopianism nor in mere conformity to a secular urban environ-
ment. It was again "the problem of trying to strike the right
balance between urban and rural, between agricultural and. indus-
trial life, and the problem of the future system of the Church
is bound up with that." "The English Tradition," loc. cit.,
pp. 227-228. ---
21. C. s. , pp. 29, 30.
3E. A. M. , p. 132.
41. c. s., pp. 62-63: "1 need only mention, as an
 For though the poverty and suffering which had been
the price of industrialization were undeniable, yet these
might someday be alleviated. But agriculture, the small
organic cornmunity, and the family seemed necessarily to be
doomed under the present system, by what Eliot we_nt along
in calling the revolutionary qctivity of the bourgeoisie. l
Therefore i t simply was not true ths.t the li beral
capitalist society left each free to develop as he might
choose. Its environment was the most ruthlessly formative
hitherto known, while the first demand of its faith was that
we should not criticize this environment with religious
conviction. Such a combination could only accelerate the dis-
solution of the old social hierarchy leaving no community
around the individual but the gross one of the Nation:
We sometimes refer to modern society as "nomadic ll :
but this term veils its horrors by an analogy with the
past, and there is no analogy. For any past society
that could be described as nomadic was a society thqt
moved about compactly, carrying its religion and its
culture, such as they were, with it. We are tending
to become nomads of a different kind, spiritually
still more than in space, and ~ach man moving by him-
self, from nowhere to nowhere.

instance now very much before the public eye, the results of
'soil-erosion' -- the exploitation of the earth, on a vast
scale for two . generations, for commercial profit • • • . A
wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewllere, a wrong atti-
tude towards God, and • • • the consequence is an inevitable
doom. For a long enough time we have believed in nothing but
the values arising in a mechanised, commercialised, urbanised
way of life: it would be as weIl for us to face the permanent
condliiions upon which God allows us tolive upon this planet."

l"The bourgeoisie is timid in thought, and revolution-

ary in act~. Nothing is more revolutionary than the two-
seater." ("Mr. Barnes and Mr. Rowse," \ loc. cit., p. 687.)
. 2"The English Tradition," Christendom, X, 38 (June,
1940), pp. _101-108, (p • . 105). .
 This spiritual nomadism is in fact partly the product
of our lack of roots. Though other societies have been ex-
ces8ively fixed, "our peril at present is rather that of ex-
cessive mObility."l
But such a society not only destroys the social
condit~ol'ls ·of orthodox Christiani ty, i t facili tates the rise
of a positive ideology in which faith is replaced by prop~-

ganda:
The more highly industrialised the country, the more
eesily B. materialistic philosophy will flourish in it,
and the more deadly that philosophy will be • • •• And
the tendency of unlimited indugtrialism i8 to create
bodies of men and women -- of aIl classes -- detached
from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible
to mass suggestion: in other words, a mob. And a mob
will be no less a mob if it f8 wel~ fed, weIl clothed,
weIl housed, and weIl disciplined.
As long as Liberalism can find no religious objection
to continued industrialization, then this tendency will be-
come more and more likely to imperil the conditions of Liberal-
ism itself. But the exclusion of final and religious considera-
tions from such policy decisions was encouraged by another
Liberal phenomenon: the incraasingly influential and occult
study of Economies. 3

lLoc. cit., p. 106. Cf. p. 105: "Communal religion

needs settled communities in which to flourish; and once com-
munal religion goes, most individual religion goes. It is
the exceptional man who can retire to the desert to pray --
and the still more exceptional man who ean maintain his de-
votional life in a railway waiting-room full of strangers. So
true 18 it that in the Faith we are members one of another.
Readers of CHRISTENDOM do not need to be reminded that the
.s grlcu1tural cOID.'11unity i8 the most stable."
2 1. C. S., p. 19.
3The idee. of a neutral area of social problems "to
 At , the end of the 1920 t s, even before the depre s-
sion, it was becoming a matter of general agreement that
the political ailments of the period were grounded in
economic problems. 1 Like many other intellectuals, notably
Ezra Pound, Eliot attempted to master the hieratic of
political economy" a subject which in this period enjoyed
an immense "scientific" vogue, succeeding to Freud and Ed-
dington even in the newspapers. 2 But Eliot had no patience
with those authors, notably Professor Laski, whom he accused
of simply bringing the "facts" of politics back to the "facts"
of economics, and leaving them there. In seeking to deter-
mine "human wants," or the communal "standard of liv:Lng,"
one could , not rest content with purely material considera-
tions. 3 Instead, Eliot first became interested in the activ-
ities of the Christian Sociologists, who repudiated
a position which allows an economic sy~ to be a
form of government, 1. e., to determine Wh8,~ human
desires should or should not be satisfied.~ -

which Christian social ethics did not apply • • • perhaps

was not fully established until political economy came to be
regarded as a normative, rather than a purely descriptive
science." Eliot, "The English Tradition,1f Christendom, X,
40 (Dec., 1940), pp. 226-237, (p. 236). -
lBy 1927 Eliot himself was warning against the fal-
lacy of isolating politics from economics. (Political Theorists,
loc. cit., p. 69.) L~ter he criticized Bertrand Russell for
putting "the political cart before the economic horse." ("A
Comrr..entar:y," Cri terion, XVI, 63 (Jan., 1937), pp. 289-293, '.
(P. 291).) -
2Robert Graves, The Long Week-End, pp. 258 ff.
l '~ .... _- _: - _ ","'"
•
av.
A. Demant, This Unemployment, quoted by Eliot:
"A Comment2ry," (Jan., 1932) loc. cit., p. 272.
 The substance of this repudiation was not merely a
moral distaste at "materialism," but an attempt to show
that the deficiencies of orthodox economics as a "science"
lay in Its materialism, in its attempt to ignore moral con-
siderations. Briefly, the failure of capitallsm in 1929
was due to the fact that it had succeeded: succeeded in its
own end of producing more and more material Goods. When sur-
pluses of income .and of production were the problem, it was
no good to calI for a return to more and more production.
Instead, economics had to re-examine the ends toward which
the existing capitalist mode of production was geared. This
was the hour of glory for J. A. Hobson, who for almost fifty
years had attacked orthodox economics for its attempt to ig-
nore social ends and Ideals, by crudely taking the material
social product as a criterion of social welfare. Outside the
walls of the universities, if not within, Hobson gained a
popular hearing for a new ethical study of economics on the
model of Unto this Last. l

With such ethical criticism of economics Eliot was

in general agreement, "for the true 'standard of living' •

lCf. his John Ruskin, Social Reformer (London, 1899):

"a vindication of Mr. Ruskinls claim to have placed Political
Econom~ on a sounder scientific and ethical foundation • •• "
(p. lx). .
Eliot would agree with much of this book: "Neither
order or progress is possible or conceivable without Ideals •
• • • For the false short-range expediency of passing pleasures
and pains must be substituted a Just and orderly conception of
social well-being. Thus the praetice of Political Economy de-
mands an Ideal alike of the individual and the social life: a
Just ordering of life which will lead to happiness." (Po. 8LçtlS·)
Here, if you like, is the Coleridgean again_belaboring
the Benthamite. Hobson's (and Ruskinls) attitude towards
Original Sin ls, of course, another matter.
ràises moral and spiritual, ·as weIl as economic questions."l
The current faith that economics alone could solve
our problems was part of the 3eneral desire to shift the re-
sponsibility for our xoral decisions to one or another
"science.,,2 Eliot related that his own experienc~ in the
banking world had confirmed his belief that the economic
"experts" understood the economic malaise of society no bet-
ter than the layman: and no f9.ult could be attributed to
this, except the presumption of scientific knowledge.
l concluded, finally, that a large part of our dif-
ficulty arises from a prejudiced notion of what consti-
tutes "science." l do not calI into question the ob-
viously respectable sciences of mathemàtics, physics,
and chemistry, which do no harm to anybody, but the
prejudice that certain "sciences" are more scientific
than they are, and that.others are not scientific at aIl.

l
"A Commentary," Criterion, X, 38 (Oct., 1930), pp.
1-4~~Wls the British worklng men, in other words, very much
better off than the French or German or Ite.lian working man;
and if so, are the ways in which he 13 better off ways in
which it ia good to be better off?"
2 c"':+c.l":o",
!fA Commentary,"AX, 39 (Jan., 1931), pp. 307-314,
(p. 30~): ."Eè'lcation in Political Economy is vain, an 'unearthly
ballet of bloodless categories', 50 long as it is offered as a
pure science unfettered by moral principles. l am not depreoeting
the importance of Economics, but on the contrary elevating it.
We need more and better Economies. We need another Ruskin."
(The quotation of course is from F. H. Bradley.)
Needless to say, nslther Eliot nor Hobson were much
impreased by Ruskin's solution of moral regeneration, br, get-
ting "s sufficient quantity of honesty in our capbains.' (Unto
this Last, p. xv.) This again was undue faith in mankind; as--
false a method of salvation as the "Smith-Ricardo" faith in
machinery. "Neither statistics nor revlval meetings will save
us, and we seem to have a much keener consciousness th an either
Carlyle or Ruskin, that we stand presently in need of salvation."
(Eliot, "Political Theorists," Criterion, VI, l (July, 1927), _
pp. 69-73, (p. 69).) .
As Eliot is always maintaining, a re-Integration of our
moral intelligence, not increased morality, is the solution.
It is the same tendencK we have already examined, of making
the "dogmas of scieTIce' serve the purpose of religion.
 Thaology (as an exact study, not as the seven-and-
sixpenny Lenten effusions of popular preachers) i9
conc9ded to be a science on the same footing as the
sci9nce of Heraldry -- a little lower, that i8, than
Palmistry and Phrenolcgy. Ethics is a champ libre
for.: sentimental essayists, or a champ clos for suppos-
edly useless but ornamental university pundits, but
has no "scientific" standing whatever. Meanwhile,
Political Economy boasts itself as a science as Physics
is a science, and Physics is too busy with its own job+o stop
to repudiate the claims of Economies. And in fact Eco-
nomies is a science, in the humane sense; but it will
never take its due place until 1t recognizis the
superior "scientific" authority of Ethics.
None of this eriticism of eeonomics is, of course,
Christian; and we know that Hobson as much as Ruskin re-
jected any attempt to bring such matters back to "dognia."
In his detailed critique of both capitalism and economics as
the mirrors of eaeh other, Eliot shows much more similarity
to whet we might c?ll the "C~ristian Marxist" critique of
- ...
another Ruskinite, Mr. A. Penty (and, g~nerally, to
Temple, Tawney, and to Pe~ty's colleagues amone the Chris-
tian Sociologists). It was about this time that Eliot first
admitted th@t "no one who i9 seriously concerned can fail to
2
be impressed by the work of Karl Marx."

IliA Comment&ry," (Jan., 1931), loc. cit., pp. 3l0-31l.

For en el'..lcidation of this important passage, èf. "Religion
and Science," loc. cit., P. 429. Eliot, we remember, attribu_
ted this false division of man's self-know1edge into "scienti-
fic" and "non-scientific" to the tendency of the modern world
to separate the intellect and the emotions. (E. A. M., p. 117.)
2
44
"A Col11.t.'l1entary," Criterion, XI, (April, 1932),
pp. ~.67-4 73, (pp. 467-8). Penty must not be interpreted as
another Middleton Murry: his debt to Marx was eonfined to the
economic observations of Das Kapi tal.
 ,:, 1 ,

According to Penty, the orthodox economists, even

" ...
Keynes who was the best of them, still ignored the largest
factor in economic development: the unrestrained intro-
duction of more and more mRchinery. They aIl shared the
faith that the "standard of living" would continue to rise
with increased capitalization. For this reason, they ac-
cepted a system which not only encouraged but virtually re-
quired the over-capitalization of industry for the sake of inter-
est return; and discouraged such livelihoods qS agricultu~e (as
too risky) and re-forestation (unprofitable). Even Keynes
would drop the remark tha t we must continue to he ~tusurers,"

apparently insouciant of the evils attendant on an economy

geared to interest. l Now, finally, our economy has reached
a stage of chronic indigestion from its "industrial gluttony":
We, because we produce too much, fail to benefit
by our vast producti~n, and càll out for more pro-,
duction as ~ remedy.
Hence, Eliot cannot agree with HObson or Keynesthat
the evil of capitalism lies simply in too large an ~llocation

of the total social production of the "non-workers.,,3 The

remedy i3 not continuous re-distribution of incorne towards

the elimination of "non-workers" as a class; but the removal

l
Interest "blocks the way of MOst things that are
worth doing, because things that are worth doing will not
yield a profit in most cases." Penty, "The Philosophy of
Mr. J. M. Keynes," Criterion, .XI, 44 (April, 1932), p. 392.
2 .
Loc. cit., p. 397.

3"A Commentary," Cri tarion, XI, 43 (Jan. J 1932),

pp. 268-275, (p. 270). .
of those economic forces "which prevent the non-workers from
consuming what the workers produce." l To Eliot it seemed
most curious to propose the social idea1 of eliminating the
so-ca1led "leisured" sections of society, just when it was
becoming MoSt evident that "work for aIl" wou1d never appear
again. Eng1and now seemed to have acquired as permanent e1e-
ments in her economy not only the rentiers but the unemp1oyed. 2
The main difference between these two classes was apparently
that the former had at least sorne tradition and education,
which might possibly fit them with a sense of the responsi-
bility and use of leisure. The re-distribution of work, Rnd
leisure, not mere1y of money-income, was the real problem
confronting capitalismj and this problem was clearly not only
economic but cultu.ral, and in the final analysis, religious.
For it is leisure, not work, which forces us to face the final
problern of our existence. 3
We remember that Penty's solution to the prob1em of
work in the coming "Leisure State" was the weaning of society

l
Loc. cit.~.p. 271. It is true that "'surpluses' ot
incorne" arethe problem. "But is not the real moral error the
general assumption that money is most virtuously used when it
is used 'profitab1y' -- to produce more money?" Cf. Penty,
loc. cit., p. 392.

2Loc • cit. Cf. "The Se arch for Moral Sanction,"

loc. cit.,p. 4Cl"1J: "There .is no difference whatever between
tnOse-wfio live on the incorne provided by their ancestors and
those who live on the income provided by the State. They are
~ll useful members of the community in so far as they can
consume what the workers produce."

3Loc • cit. Cf. "Notes on the Way (IV)," Time and

Tide, XVI,~(Jan. 26, 1935), pp. 118, 120-121, (p. 120):
wwnat we need, l think, is to revise our notion~ of 'work'
and of 'leisure': notions which seern to me to derive from
the industrial view of society of the nineteenth century."
from utilitarian conceptions of investment, and the redis-
covery of the arts. The capital which was fro~en by the
exigencies of the interest rate should be released into a
flowering of building and crafts -- a solution admittedly
inspired by Unto this Last. l

Eliot was not so specifie, but he joins the neo-

Ruskinites in asking for social promotion of other forms of
investment and work rather than thepurely remunerative. One
form of final consumption which should clearly be increased
is art. However, Eliot warns against seeing the artist as
another type of "worker": it is as important to guarantee
him in lei sure as in work. The public subsidy of "works of
art" will be capitalism again, leading to further over-produc-
tion of "art" FiS a commodity, of books that should never have
been written. While public subsidy of the artist in the civil
service May be still worse, annihilating his last independence

l
Penty, "Means and Ends," Oriterion, XI, 42 (Oct.,
1931), p. 13: "Expendi ture on the arts ~-and crafts is as neces-
sary for our economic as for our spiritual and economic (query:
'cultural'?) salvation, for such expenditure acts 'ilœ an econ- .
omic safety-valve, to prevent internaI complications • • • •
It i8, I think, no exaggeration to say that there ia no single
thi~g which is responsible for the economlc contraection
,th~œt has taken place so much as the general unwillingness of
people of aIl classes to spend money on the arts." Cf. P. E.
T. Widdrington, "The Coming of the Leisure State,~ Christendom,
I (March, 1931).
Another who expected social salvation from the arts
was the sculptor Eric Gill. Gill had a fondness for quoting
St. Thomas Aquinas, but was more ready ths.n Penty to accept
the challenges to our originality offered by industrial inno-
vation. This Penty could not forsive. Cf. Eric Gill, ~eéut,
Looks After Herself (London, 1934), and Penty, "Beauty Does
Not Look After Herself," Criterion, XIII, 52 (April, 1934).
and innate contrariety. Eliot would like us ta dissociate in
our minds the idees of "work" and of "pay," and envisage "a
society in whlch more unremunerative -work'; was recognized."l

We need, in short, rsco cnition of the social importance of

the "non-worker." But this recognition must not take the
form of centralized planning, under which flexibility, diver-
slty and orlg1nality would suffer. The final independence
of contemplation and scholarship, freed from aIl public duties
of teachlng or writing books, demands, in Eliot's opinion,
the continulty of the monastic orders. But clearly, if leisur~

Is not to be allocated by fi. centralized authority, then the

role in society of the existing leisured classes must also
1
be recognized.
But it would be foolish to conclude that Eliot wished
to cure depressions by increasing the purchasing power of
artists and aristocrats. Nearly all of u~, in any case, need
sorne form of daily work to provide order and disguise the
futility of our existence. But work should not be regarded
as a fixed social quantity to be re-apportioned. Instead,

l
"Notes on the Way (IV)," loc.ci. t., p. 120.
2Cf • infra,pp.6G6ss. When Eliot talks in thls con-
text of the aristocracy, he seems to recell his "modest
country families," rather than the Press Barons whorn he so
much disliked. Cf. "A Commentary" (Jan., 1932), p. 275.
Many would agree with Eliot's argument that the present div-
ision of labour is unreasonable, as the majority "have to
work too long or too hard." But Eliot wishes to see, instead
of one hard-working domestic servant, "a large staff of
servants, each doing much lighter work .but profiting by the~e~~ J~
cultured and devout atmos phere of the home in which they
lived."
humanity is called upon to devise
new and l hope pleasant forms of work beyond what
is recognlzed at present as productive labour; indeed
to civilit~ itself much more.
To conclude, Eliot agreed that under-consumption was
an Inevitable concomitant of the amoral capitalist mode of
production, as long as it recognized no ends but final con-
sumption and profitable re-investment. This explains his
"sympathy" with the Distributism of Chesterton and Belloc
(for aIl its abstract "Romanism"), and with Social Credit. 2
Already in the 1920's, through Ezra Pound, he had met Major
Douglas and A. R. Orage; and he became a much closer friend of
Philippe Mairet. After 1934, Eliot became a frequent contri-
butor to Orage's new review, The New English Weekly.3 But his
interest in Social Credit (as in Distributism) was not for
the technical computations of Major Douglas, (which so fas-
cinRted Ezra Pound that he wrote them into the verse of his

lLoc. cit., pp. 274-275. Even organized football is

one new exëiiÏple--01 such "civili2.ation"j but he warns prophet-
ically that our new forms of eml;loyment must provide activity
for audiences as weIl as "producers." Ye8.rs later, Eliot was
to attack the introduction of television into England under
any circumstances: uThe Television Habit," A Letter to the
Editor, Times, London (Dec. 20, 1950), p. 7.
2E.g. "Catholi~ism and International Order," E. A.
M., p. 127: "I .. am instinctively in sympathy • • • for l have
no gift what9ver for abstruse thjnking, with some kind of
credit-reform and with distributism." Cf. "Last Words,"
Criterion, XVIII, 71 (Jan., 1939), pp. 269-275, (p. 273).
3After The Criterion ceased publication in 1939,
Eliot transferred his "Commentaries" to The New English WeeklYi
and became an Associate Editor under Philippe Mairet. By
this time, however, the Social Credit leanings of the review
had far less significance.
Cantos), but for the general attempt to criticize "orthodox
economics" with moral considerations about the distribution of
income and property.l Eliot admitted that the idiosyncratic
and heterodox charecter of the movement would probably hasten
its passing out of date. On the other hand, "we should have"
such theories, to offset the tendency of "orthodox economies"
to "become completely dominated by the 'facts'; so they become,
like politicians, merely instruments for keeping the machine
going from to-day to to-morrow."2
In other words, Eliot was sympathetic to the non-tech-
nicel approach to economics of an Orage or a ~airet. But he
thoroughly disliked the allegatièn of Many Social Creditors,
including Douglas and Pound, that financial or economic action
could .of itself cure the ills of our society.3 Such people
were no better than the orthodox economists; they failed to

IThis interest was shared by Many prominent Anglo-

Catholics at this time, somewhat analogously to the Catholic
interest in Distributism and Corporatism. Eliot, we remember,
was one of those who successfully opposed the attempt to win
Anglican support for credit-reform in the Church Assembly of
1935: cf. supra, p. lZ.\ •

2"A Commentary," Criterion, XVII, 68 (April, 1938),

pp. 478-48$, (p. 484). It still seems a paradox to Many that
Eliot, whose years of banklng and publishing experience had
won him the highest financial reputation in the City, should
have given serious consideration to the Social Credit move-
ment. But it is not enough to have fun at the expense of .
Major Douglas' statistical illus'ions -- the fundamental economic
fictions of Malthus, Proudhon, even Marx, were perhaps not less
absurdo
3E•g • "Modern Heresies," (A Letter to the Editor),
New English Weekly, V, 3 (May 3, 1934), pp. 71-72, (p. 71):
"It is nnly a step from asserting (what appears to be true)
that the economic problem must be solved if civilisation is
to survive, to asserting (what l dispute) that all other prob-
lems may be or ought to be neglected until the solution of
the economic problem."
see that our economic error lay at least partly in our choice
of ends.
It was for this reason that Eliot believed that the
economic problem of the depression was in the long run not
only moral but religious:
We have to-day a system, or lack of system, wh1ch
Christianity cannot possibly accepte And we need a kind
of economics which will ask the question: Why? What is
it good to do? And to answer thislquestion we .must find
out what is the meaning of "Good."
At the time of the depression, it seemed much clearer
that c~pitalism and liberalism suffered from a common de-
ficiency; and that the so-called "liberation" of economic
and political from religious questions, had left society
without any purpose. Since then, the planning of economists
has succeeded at least in sorne degree to the chaos of indivi-
dual profit-seeking. This hasmeal'lt. l think, that capitalism
has become more consciously linked with humanitarian Ideals,
with the reduction of scarcity, and the maximization of
material goods. As long as poverty is real, and of primary
concern to those who suffer it, then economists will postpone
the admonitions of Ruskin. Today, if It Is suggested that
we are approaching a state of "secular stagnation" at home,
economists can still point to more distant goals, the "under-
developed areas" which are today so much in view. But the
faith which we set in this goal will depend on our faith in
the patterns of living which we have, willy nilly, helped ta

l"The Search for Moral Sanction,'" lac. cit., p. 480.

Cf. "Christiani ty and Communism," loc. ill., p. m.
establish aIl over the world. In 1935, even the London
Times (that "house-organ of Threadneedle Street") seemed to
have lost this faith: reporting on the discovery of a new
lost tribe, it wondered how the dislocation of its way of
life could be prevented. And this occasioned Eliot to ask:
How Many lower peoples have been, on balance, really
helped by European intervention? And until we set in
order our own crazy economic and financial systems, to
say nothing of our phl10sophy of life, can we be sure
that our helping hands te the barbarian and the savage
will be any more desirable than the embrAce of the Ieper?
Perhaps Most economists would agree that the question
of ends cannot be postponed, though it will be Many a year
before the whole world has enough even to eat. Certainly,
at home in Europe, a sim.;> le reduction of 'ooverty (whatever
this May have meant to the working classes) seemed to have
only furthered unrest and discontent among the growing class of
:tntellectuals. They chaf~d with impatience at the liberal in-
dustrial society, not simply because it left men poor, but be-
cause it left them with no common goal to strive for. The
human needs which it strove to satisfy ignored one which was
for su ch people, latently or not, one of the highest: the need
for a sense of importance, even of sacrifice. 2
In this 108s of a COnID,on good worth striving for, only
one new social ideal had emerged as an alternative to the

l
l "A Commentary," Cri terion, XV, 58 (Oct., 1935),
pp. 65-09, -(p. 68).
2 Cr;-\--ey\o"," 1
"A Commentary,""X, 38 (Oct., 1930), pp. 1-4, ~p. 2.-3):
"The rot in Par1iament 18 on1y a symptom of the rot withoutj
and outside also mediocrity of mind and spirit is to be fOlmd
conspicuous. The need is for causes for which sacrifices can
be made." Even higher taxes would be an exciting sacrifice,
were there sorne end in sight.
Christian; indeed, only one such alternative existed. This
was the ideal of the perfected earthly society; in which the
diminution of ienorence and material poverty would lead
to a diminution of sin. If such an ideal were possible, then
it were truly worth sacrificing for. And so, in theory, Com-
munism was preferable to liberal humanitarianism~ in that it
had recognized the consequences and sacrifices necessary to
such an ideal. It was, in short, one in which the "âme collec-
tive does dut Y for GOd.,,1 Others, notably Berdyaev and Chris-
topher Dawson, had âlready described the ~ppeal of Co~~unism

to those who found in liberal democracy no objects worthy of

sacrifice. 2 But to Eliot the superiority of Communism over
other synthetic religions did not lie merely in its efficacy
as a Sorelian Itmyth"; on the contrary, its difference lay in
recognizing a primacy of intellect.
Communism is at least 8. respectable politicAl theory,
with its own standards of orthodoxy, in the eyes of those
who agree with Jose2h de Maistre that toutes les institu-
tions imaginables r~rosent ~ ~ . ~ r~lg1ëüse, ~ ~
font que passer. It appears to recognize a primacy of in-
tëTIeCt; rather than of hysteria; and in times like ours
we need ideas, not only our own, but antagonistiî ideas
aeainst which ourown may keep themselves sharp.-

l
"Revelation," p. 14.

2That this deficiency of democracy uould lead to its

overthrow was admitted by sorne whose position was ultimately
liberal, notably Ortega y Gasset: "For the sake of serving
something that will give a meaning to his existence, it is
not impossible that the European may swallow his objections to
Communism and feel himself carried away, not by the substance
of the faith, but by the fervour of conduct it inspires."
("The RevoIt of the Masses,1l pp. 199-200.) Cf. Dawson,
Religion and the MRdern State (LRndon, 1935), especially pp.
viii-xxi.

3"A Connnentary," Criterion, XIII, 51 (Jan., 1934),

pp. 270-278, (p. 273).
 That is to say, the discipline and devotion exacted
by Communism was for a cause that was intellectually plausible,
,
unlike the goose-stepping power-worship of Hitler and Musso-
lini, which seemed merely to b~ a form of emotional release
for its own sake. (Indeed, it is a commonplace that the
presence of such a cause turned masses of the intelligentsia
towards Communism: probably no political movement has even
conformed so little to an orthodox "class-analysis.,,)l

But the strength of Communism as a religion is not

merely its appeel to the intellect, but the polymerity of
ways in which it can be approached:
The great merit of Communism is the same as one merit
of the Catholic Church, that there is sometting in it
which minds on every level can grasp. Marx may not be
intelligible, but Communism is. Communism has what is
now called a "myth." It interferes with people's private
lives, and therefore excites men as sensible economists
never excite the inhabitants of Poplar and Hoxton. It
interferes Just as much by giving people licence in ways
. . which they had been brought up not to expect, or else
by telling them th~t the way in which they instinctive1y
behave is the right .way, as oy restraining them in ways
in which they were not accustomed to be restr~ined.
People like licence; and they 1ike restraint. They like
surprise. The one thing they do not 1ike is boredom. And
COliL.'TIunism is successful so long as it gives people the
illusion that they are not bored; so long as it can give
them the illusion that they are important. For it has
been shown again and aeRin ,in history that people can

lEliot recognized, however, that an individual, like

Middleton Murry or André Gide, might approach Communism for
intellectual and religious reasons which transcended the stated
aims of the party itself. Gide had claimed humanitarian mo-
tives for his conversion, "but they do not seern quite adequate
by themselves." Marxism, in other words, had developed its
own mysticism QS weIl, along with other 20th Century movements.
("Revelation," (ed. Baillie), p. 14.)
2
Cf. Charles Whibley, Studies in Frankness (London,
1910), p. 3: " • . • life is made interesting by prohibition •
• • • To dll'8am of licence with equanimity is impossible."
 Q;\. ,

put up wfth the absence of aIl the things that econo-

mists tell us they most need, with ever! rigour, every
torment, so long as they are not bored.
It was true that from one point of vjew Communism
was completely worldly. Indeed, like Fascism, it provided
no revolution in its teleology fram the tendency of existing
society, but was only a more ruthless pursüit of humanitarian
Ideals. In its faith in industrialization it was, indeed,
(as was suggested to him by a footnote of J. A. Hobson) "the
culmination of capitalism.,,2

Yet Communism was a coherent religion in these re-

spects: 1t provided a clear and comprehensible idea of a
goal and purpase for life; and it seemed capable of arousing
And m~intaining enthusiasm. (In other words, it apparently
supplied the great deficiency of liberal societies in what
Charles péGUy had called a mystique.)3 The presence in con-
cert of this idea and this enthusiasm provided an opportunity
for the individual ta find peaee between his intellect and
his emotions, and to participate in Communist activity with
his whole being, as a sort of Crusade.
To avoid confusion, l should suggest that Eliot is

lIrA Commentary," Criterion, XII, 49 (July, 1933),

pp. 642-647, (p. 644). ..
2 Ç6~cr'o""
"A Commentary,'\XI, L~3 (Jan., 1932), pp. 268-275,
(p. 273). _Cf. "Mr. Barnes and Mr. Rowse," loc. cit., P. 691;
"A Commentary," Cri terian, Xlr, 49 (July, .lm), pp. 642-647,
(p. 642): "Communism and Capitalism are only forms of the
same thing. 1I
3
l suspect that Eliot, in 1932, may have been the
first to use this already tired and overworked expression.
"A Commentary,1I (April, 1932), loc. cit., p. 467. -
viewing Communism, not in the light of its special and
slightly eccentric origins, but in its most general sense,
as it appeared in the early 1930's, as a rigorously absolute
and de-sentimentalized pursuit of the ideal totalitarian
society. He saw it as the perfection of religions of this
world, and as such (in the long run) the only alternative for
those who denied Christianity. Conversely, he proposed, if
communism was repugnant, it could only be fought with Chris-
tianity, a return to a Christian organization of society.
nyou can never fight a religion except with another religion. nl

Tt was true, Eliot admitted, that such choices were not only
extreme but indeed contrary to human nature: "The majority
of us do not want to choose either; at least, we do not want
to go very far in either direction.,,2 But for the individual
concerned with the meaning of his existence, and wishing to
organize his life and thought after sorne principle, there were
only these alternatives: the perfected kingdom of this world,
and that of the next. And the same was true of society, which
in the long run could only maintain its faith in itse1f by
adherence to one or another principle. 3 Eliot 8eems to have
att.8.ched much to thi s pragma tic argument: tha t in 8. drawn-out
conflict a society of trimmers could not survive against a
society committed to certain ultimate ends.4

l''Christianity and Communism," loc. cit., p. 383.

2 Ibid .

3dr. , ! b nA Commentary," Cri terion, IX,

; ,

27 (July, 1930), pp. 587-590, (pp. 589-90).

4Cf • "A Commentary," (Oct., 1931), loc. cit., p. 71:

 But one must not be misled by Eliot's courtesy toward
secular relieion trium9hant, by his suggestion that:
the Tory of to-morrow and the Communist of to-morrow
will perhaps lov! each other better than they can love
the politicians.

Communism ia the most complete of the attempts to live with-

out God; and thus the most unacceptable. It is evil in a
way not understood by those "to whom cO:tnmunism means primarily
inconvenience, discomfort, poverty, and privation.,,2 Nor is

its evil to be measured by blood and violence: "The ends to

be achieved by violence are Wh«\; W\~'. .œ than violence i t-
self.,,3

Again the political theorist must try to understand

what we have called Eliot's inhumanitarian bias: for we are
naturB.lly prone to consider ten million dead Kulaks a more
grievous fault th~n R~ error in theology. But Eliot is right
in sug~Asting that someday Co~~unism may no longer be noted
for violence, poverty, and inefficiency. Then, as Eliot says,
we sh~ll hear more about what Communism doea to men's souls;
and we must decide whether our objection is to their having

"The Bolsheviks at any rate believe in aomething which has what

ia equivalent for them to a supernatural sanction; and it is
onlv with a genuine sup~rnatural sanction that we can oppose
i t. f,
In The Idea of a Christian Society a more moderate
Eliot no long~r Inslsted on the Inevitable extinction of the
Trimmer, but pointed to our weaknesa against the totalitarian
nations in lacklng any prlnciple worth fighting for.
IliA Commentery," (July, 1930), loc. cit., p. 590.
2"Christianity and Communism," loc. cit., p. 383.
3 Ibid •
only one D8rty-list on the ballots. Nor are we superior
in having "liberty": nearly aIl of us have lost true liberty
and independence for small amusements and suburban comforts.
The Russian, et least, resigns his liberty in favour of
something. l

The trouble is that the object of communist social

endeavour and individual sacrifice - ig not worthy enough. It
provides an end for each individual man and woman; but the
building of dams Bnd mechanization of agriculture i3 still
not an adequate answer for the end of mankind. As Thierry
Maulnier observed, the Five Yeer Plan had a goal which was
inferior to the self-sacrifice involved in pursuing it: the
end was not 'Ilorthy of the means. 2 Cornmunism satisfies the
repressed desires of the individual for devotion and sacrifice;
but as it begins to ~ucceed, it will be seen to contain no
snswer to the modern danger of bord.*'m. Its goals and satis-
factions, like those ofFascism, Rre too much like those of
the bourl3eois industrialist: the continued and accelerating
mechanization and urbanization of society. With such goals,
it has transcended industrialism with still further collectivi-
zation of thought, reaching a "mystical belief in herd-feeling,
which • • • is one of the most disquieting superstitions of
the day."3 (This belief was apparent in totalitarian

2"La Crise est dans l'homme," in Belgion, "French

Chronicle," Criterion, XII, 46 (Oct., 1932), p. 83. -

3"A Comn:entary," Criterion, XI, 4l~ (April, 1932),

pp. 467-473, (p. 470). -
 ~ .....

Nati onalism or Fascism as weIl as in Communlsm: "Indeeà ,

the two do not seem very far apart.")
And so Communism is unacceptable for the identical
religious, cultural and economic reasons as was Capitalism.
One t~st of society is the quality of its art; and this "can
hardly exist without a sense of individuality, a sense of trag-
edy, for which Communism does not seem to leav~ room."l Ex-
pressed differently, its religion is of a low order. For it is
a materialist, A. Philistine belief, another "faith in life";
when "faith in death is what matters."2 It believes in the
regeneration of mankind through an external, social salva-
tion: and thus it ignores the ~nduring truth of original
sin. M~reover, its philosophy suffers from the same de-
ficiency. It i8 of necessity monistic; it cannot accept the
Christian and dualistic view, that "the Oit Y of God is at

ILoC. cit., p. 471. Eliot seems here to suggest that

the capacity of-a-society or culture to produce great art will
depend largely on its social and political organization and
beliefs, a point made strongly in After Strange Gods. Eliot
i8 never consistent on this subject: he cannot reconcile it
with his belief as a Christian that ~p'erfection is as nearly
attainable for man here and now as it~~ill be in any future
in any place." ("A Commentary," Criterion, XII, 46 (Oct., 1932),
pp. 73-79, (p. 78~ He would appear to contradict complete1y
the sb ove remarks when he claimed that a Christian should
recognize th~t, one might be a Co~~unist and yet a great poet.
Here he was refuting Trotsky's claim that great 1iterature had
come out of Soviet Russia: "The chances for art are no better
than out of any other possi'b1e development of society." But
great poetry cou1d be written hy one "so inoculated with
cOInr'luni sm as to be able to t pnore i t. '.' "A Commente.ry," Cri terion,
XII, 47 (Jan., 1933) 1 pp. 244- 2L!-9 J (1 : j, p. 246). Cf. The
Use of Poetry, p. l3b.
2
"A ComInenta.ry," (Jan., 1933), loc. cit., p. 248.
best only realizable on earth under an imperfect likeness."l

In economics s.lso, Communism is only an imperfect re-

volt against Capitalism. It might appear for the time being
to have solved the problem of distribution of income; but it
effected no change in the distribution of work and leisure. 2
Here Eliot does not exa~ine the possibility that Com-
munism in a pre-capitalist c Ol1U1:un5.ty rr.ic;ht necessarily show a
far gre8.ter concern for rapid ind'lstrialfzation than would
otherwise be the case. Apparently he intended to sho~ that
Communism had no more thought out the ' dangers and consequences
of "economic progress" than had capitalism, and thus left the
man of the West in the same ideologicS.l dilemma.
It is clear that in .his contrast between Communism
and Christianity, Eliot ignores all matters of historie de-
tail for an aseetic81 skeletal analysis of their final ends.
(Elsewhere he has the usual observB.tions to make about "8

universal Russian imperialism," but this is quite different a

matter.)3 Ee hl?s done as he promised; he hs.s broucht matters

lllA Commentary," Criterion, XPJ, 56 (April, 1935),

pp. 431-436, (p. 435).

2"A Commentary," (Jan., 1932), loc. cit., p. 273: fil

sbould think better of Communism if there-eiisted in Russia a
decent lei sure class, but when the defenders of Bolshevism
tell us that Russia ls a beehive of industrial activity, l
am only the more convinced, with Mr. HObson, that the Soviet
system is simply the culmination of capitalism."
Today, from aIl reports, the "decent lei sure class"
has been reborn; and ls performing aIl its vital social fune-
tions, such as eating caviar with champagne, and attending
the ballet in evening dresse

3"A Commentary," Criterion, XVI, 64 (April, 1937),

pp. 469-474, (p. 4·74).
back at least to the threshold of theology; because of his
belief that we must above aIl set ourselves right on funda-
mentaIs. His aim in discussing the consequences of a "liberal"
economics and economy, one liberated from ethical and religious
limitations, must not be confused with that of R. H. Tawney;
for those who expect a detailed historical or sociological
argument will 'of course be disappointed.
We are left with a general picture of two religions:
of which the dogma of one dedicates man to a perfected life
in the next world, and the other to a life in this. In be-
tween is the society based on "liberalism"; one which has
lost some or aIl of its Christian commitment. Liberalism can-
not satisfy the ethical and religious aspirations of its mem-
bers (papticularly, indeed, of its intellectuals). No longer
dediceted to the difficult religious task of accepting human
nature, they have turned increasingly to the difficult social
task of remoulding it. And increasingly liberalism cedes to
radicalism or humanitarianism, which tend to forget why indivi-
duals were once protected against too thorough a nurture by
the state.
Communism, Eliot later agreed, cannot be considered the
sole form of this perfected religion. Nor was it to be seen
mérely in other totelitarian net~ons, but also in the increas-
ing plans for the total re-modelling of our society and culture
in accordance with pnrely humanitarian ideals. Without the
fixed limit,:ltions of a dogmatic faith, Eliot foresaw that
the Canal Boat Bill would be the prototype of future
1egis1~tion; and he derived no comfort from the fact it had
TI'
been withdrawn. The Idea of a Christian Society, pub1ished
in 1939, ls but the apex of Eliot's whole critique of
Liberàllsm; ten years of doubts and enquiries underlie what
points to a new idea for our society. It appeared amidst a
small flood of simller books at the outbreak of the war, sorne
of which had far greater material substance. l The authors
of these and other books began about this time to meet in a
small privat9 circle for informaI discussion. Most of them
were old-time assoct~tes; Eliot had long known Reckitt, Old-
ham, and Demant. They were joined by Ellot's still older associ-
ate, Middleton Murry, whose romance with Communism was now over,
and who became for a short period a prbminent Anglican layman. 2
But perhaps the most significant member of the group was one
whose works reached a wider and far different audience, the
distinguished sociologist Karl Mannheim.
It i3 hardly surprising that the Christian Sociolo-
gists should have derived such satisfaction from their con-
nections with Mannheim, even though Mannheim did not, llke
Voltaire, reconcile himself finally within the church. At
one point he had been perhaps the leading exponent of the

l
Of one of these, The Religious Prospect, by V. A.
Demant, Eliot commented that had he seen it, he would have
entirely rewri tten his Christie.n Society, "so sketchy and
superficial does my treatment of 'Liberalism' now seem."
("ACommentary (r?lI(oct. 5,1939), loc. cit., p. 331.) .
2 -
Soon he and Max Plowman became more concerned with
the "pacifist community movement," of whose ChristlanitTr
Murry admitted he had himself the .deepest uncertainty. 'Is
it Christian?", Theology, XLVI, 275 (May, 1943), p. 118.
Comtian the sis, that our understanding of society had pro-
gressed from theology through philosophy to sociolo8Y. But
his own life history seemed almost a progress in the exact
opposite direction. Certainly his later works, Man and
l
Society, and Diagnosis of Our Time, were, as Eliot pointed
out, the fruit of wisdom and contemplation as well as of
empirical study.2
Man and Society, as is well known, suggested that
the passage from liberalism to totalitarianism in cert~ln

modern societies was no accidenta.l phenomenon, but showed

"a change in the very structure of modern society."3 Laisser-

faire was no longer tolerable, not only in the economic realrn,

but in the realm of cultural and religious values as weIl.
For Liberalism had only been able to exist on "the traditional
conformity it had inherited from the Middle Ages." Now,
a new combination of social controls must be ~und to balance

lMan and Society in an Age of Reconstruction ( London,

1940) ; a translation, largely rewritten and expanded, of
Mensch und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter des Umbaus, (
1935) . biagnosis of Our Trme (London, 1943).
2" PlI=mning and Re ligion," Theology, XLVI, 275 (May,
1943), pp • . 102-106, (p. 103): "I Mean that the moment the
sociologist ceases to confine himself to description within
his oWn terms, and to offering dispassionate predictions of
the results of two or more alternative procedures, the moment
he betr~ys ~my emotional interest in what hashappened or
what will happen, elements too personal to be part of the
'science' come into play: they appear to us, when we disagree,
as preiudice, and when we agree, as wisdom. l think that Dr.
Mannhe m has a generous share of wisdom, and he would be a
singular human being if he had no prejudices; and, besides
being a sociologist, he has unusual intuition in matters of
art and religion." Cf. Mannheim, Man and Society, pp. 31-34.
Cf. Eliot's obituar;r letter, "Professor Karl Mannheim," Times,
London (Ja.n. 25, 1947). ï'l,;s Ie.it4\" ,'s oW\at~J ~ <3-o.l4 '& 'cib\io~~1'
3.QE. cit., p. 3
the claims of the indi vidual and the cornmuni ty: "There i 8
no longer any choice between planning and laisser-faire,
but only between good planning and bad." To Mannheim's goal
of "Planning for Freedom" as the only alternative to toteli-
tarianism, Eliot reluctantly assented, though with even more
misgivings thE'_n Mannheim himself. l

But the planning of culture involves far more prob-

lems than does tbe implementRtion of humaniterian standards
for the welfare state. Eliot suggests that even ivlarmheim
would not disagree with Dawson's observatièna:
The remoulding of human nature is a task -that far
transcends politics, and • • • if the State i8 entrusted
wi th this task, i twill inevi tably destroy hums.n freedom
in a more fundamental way than even the totalitarian
states have yet attempted to do • • ••
The planning of culture carmot be undertaken in a
dictatorial spirit, like a rearmament plan. Since it
is a much higher and more difficult task than any econo-
mie organization, it demands greater resources of powers
of knowledge and understanding. It must~ in fact, be
undertaken in a really religious spirit.

For Mannheim, as Eliot observed, could speak with another voice

than that of tbe professional sociologist. For~annheim clearly
felt that the planned organization of culture must allow also
for a religiou8 re-awakening, and recognize the social

~'What is the àlternative?'It can only be, l believe,

that which_we may calI the 'dark age attitude' -- waiting, per-
haps for many generations, for tbe storm of the machine age to
blow over; retiring, with a few of the best books, to a small
self-contained community, to till the soil and milk the cow.
Tbat, like extreme pacifism, ls an attitude with which there
i8 no argument." Otherwise, we must read Mannheim with equani-
mity. (liMan and Society," lAReview], ~ectetor, 5841 (June 7,
1940), p. 782. -
2
Dawson, The Judgement of the Nations,pp. 8l~jquoted
in Eliot, "Planning and Reiigion," loc. cit., p. 103.
importance of a church. l
It is not surprising that a social theorist like
Mannheim should calI for an institutionalized elite whose
task is the preservation of standards. This, we shall see,
was a social need envisaged by secularist "radicals," such as
Laski and Sidney Hook. But Manp~eim considers that only a re-
ligion which emphasizes withdrawal frol11 worldly affairs can
save the planned society from totalitarianism. Therefore
planning must proc8ed negatively to allow a religious re-awak-
ening to take place: not the experience itself, but only
"the conditions under which these deeper experiences will
flourish can be planned." 2

Eliot is apprehensive firstly of such talk of "experi-

ence" wi thout talk of dogma,
since a necessary condition of that feeling is a be-
lief that certain statements about the uni verse, about
Man and God, are true, and a religious "experience"
without dogma is v'Jry different from the experience of
believing a dogma. j
But the real problem is to know which needs come first:
l find a difficulty in the assertion that the condi-
tions for a religious revival (leaving the revival ltself

1
"There will, therefore, in every planned society, be
a. body somehow simllar to the priests, Ut'G.1:iHIS~
WhQSe~task it w1ll be
0,,,,6
to watch that certain basic standards areÂma n~ained • • • •
It will become more and more a question whether some-
thing correspondtng to the monastic seclusion:t sorne form of
complete or temporary withdrawal from the affqirs of the world,
will not be one of the great remedies for the dehum~r:dzinK_
effect of a ci vi liza tion of busybodie s." (Mannheim, "Towards
a New Social Philosophy: A Cha.llenge ta Christian Thinkers
by a Sociologist," Diagnosis of Our Time, pp. 119, 126.
Quoted in Eliot, loc. clt., p. 104.
2 Ibid •

3"Planning and Religion," loc. cit., p. 104.

 to the ~pirit) can be planned. If we build a house,
and await the appearance of an interior decorator of
genius before covering the walls and floors and pur-
chasing furniture, we know that certain thin~s about
that house are settled: we do not expect the decora-
tor to take it to pieces and reconstruct it according
to another plan, in the course of carrying out his
beautification. But if we plan society, leaving
space for religion to fill in when it turns up, how do
we k110w that the form in whichit may arrive will fit
the place that we have left for. it? Dr. Mannheim him-
self'may be quite prepared to accept the most drastic
alterations, but perhaps it will be too late?l
Which, in short, is to supply the essential pattern,
onels planning, or onels religion?
~~ich is the more basic -- the Christian vision of
life or the primary virtues of soci~l survival? This
seems to bring us bang to the question of natuna1.1aw,
upon whlch l am too prudent here to venture; but we may
ask whether . it Is possible to determine, establish, and
maintain these social virtues, unless there ~s sorne kind
of religious vision of life about the place.
One or the other must ultimately come first. To Eliot,
it is clear that ultimately our culture and our religion can
never be wholly ~lanned. Not only are they never wholly con-
scious, but the'1 themsGlves provide the aims and motivations
of such planning as we do attempt. To fit the needs of reli-
gion and of culture according to a plan, ls to turn the
organism inside-out, like an octopus, and, for those 11mited
needs of society which are visible, to forget about other needs
which are deeper still.
These conflicting demands of rationalization and of
orthodoxy Eliot attempts to reconcile in his two political

l
Ibid.
2
Loc. ~., p. 105.
books. They too contend that only culture and religion

can restore the balance against what Ort~has called

"total politicalism"; but that culture and religion, when

growing healthily, must be the soil and never the fruit of

planning. And so it is only an organic religious-cultural

whole, Sli0t believes, that can escape being, not only

wholly "rationalized," but totalitarianized.

 OHAPI'ER X.

DEMOORAOY, RELIG ION, AND OULTURE

nSo here l am, in the midd1e way, having had twenty yeara--
Twenty years 1arge1y wa.ted, the years of l'entre deux guerre8--

T. S. Eliot. East Ooker

The two main po1iti_a1 books of T. S. Eliot are, undoubtedly,

The Idea of a Ohrist1an Society, and Notes Towards a Definition of Ou1ture.

Together, they form the culmination of hi8 po1itica1 writings deacr1bed

h1therto. But they do not 1end themse1vea easi1y to eummary or analY81e.

Theira 1s the style, f1rst, of an aging man, writing with the eaut10n

and reeponaibi1ity, if not the evasivenea8, of a public figure, writing

to evince rather than to 8hock. Rere ia no longer the nreactionary and

revo1utionary", here, instead, ie a man who has admitted that the

democracy and liberalism he onGe attacked "must a1ways be the "polit1cal

1
religion of Eng1and" and that the democracy about which he had been 10

condelcending, must be one of the 8logans beh1nd which his nation united

for war. He ia 8earching for the voiee of wiadom rather than of bellig-

erence, for the mediate rather than the extreme. Hence these books are

difficult to follow at a single reading; the two sidee of every question

2
have a disconcerting habit of trooping into the Ark in pa1re.

1
liA Oommentary," Oriter1on, XVII. 66 (Oct. 1937) pp.81-86. (p.83)

2ft ••• a people ahou1d be ne1ther too united nor too divided, if ita
culture 11 te flour1sh." "for the purposes of thie 88say, l am ob11ged to
maintain two contradictory propositione, that religion and culture are
aspeot8 of one unity, and that they are two different and contrasted thing8. M
NDO. pp. 49, 68-69.
 The danger of theae books in apite of their concision, ia

dullnessl his earlier writings were often unfair but never dull. But

Eliot was writing at a time when the brilliant irreaponsibility of in-

tellectuals was conceded to have done much to obscure political thinking

and aggravate the oncome of war. Eliot'a literary hiatory appears as the

exact opposite of Burke'si he ia minatory in hi~ youth and moderating in

his old age • . But Burke wrote his leat works ta encourage a - pea.cef'ul

nation in war: Eliot, to encourage a warring nation towards peace. His

books, nonetheleas, would be clearer if they attacked more readilYI it

ia difficult to see the import of a perfectly balanced judgment unrelated

ta apecific problems of the day. Yet, after repeated readings, one con-

cludes (almost reluctantly) that these books ahould be studied by all

those eoncerned with the future of our society, who are concerned not

only for a framework of institutions but for a living culture.

Despite their different titles, the books can be said to dis-

euss the two sides of a single problem. They both begin from the premisa

which we have adumbrated in the leat few chapteral namely, that neither

our religion nor our culture can survive in health, except in orgenie

relation ta each other. (This premiss is assumed, it can herdly be proven.)

And where Mannheim in his books hed outlined the synthetic planning nee-

easary for the maintenance of religion end of culture in the new masa

democracy which threatens to do away with both, Eliot, in these two book.,

examines the organie conditions, still largely in existence, which must be

maintained and atrengthened against the innoveting pressures of industrial

democracy, in order that the Ohristianity and the culture of our society

may survive.
 The Christian Society, as we have seen, repeats the charge that

our Liberalism has led ua away from a positive communal oonception of a

life worth living. Now our culture ia largely negative, althaugh insofar

as it is still "positive," it is still Christian. Eliot continues,

"r "".J can remain negative, because a

do not think"it
negative culture has ceased ta be efficient in a world
where economic as weIl as spiritual forces are proving
the efficiency of oultures which, even when pagan, are
positive. "
And he repeats the thelie of our last chapterr

III believe that the choiea before us is between

the formation of a new Christian culture, and the
acceptance of a pagan one." 1

This was the choice, to many people a dilemma, which he had

outlined in "Chriatianity and Communism" eight years before: "you c:.o.Y\

n.~~ fight a religion except with another religion.,,2 His solution

then as now was not primarily to incite aIl souls to greater prayer

and holy living: the Savonarolas of history havealways achieved

(if anything at aIl) the reverse of what they intended: for they

base their reforms upon a false hope in the potential goodness of

the individual. Eliot's concern is not with "the conversion of the

world to Christianity, but with the organization of the world in a

Christian way, which is quite enother aspect.'"

1
I.C .S., p. 10

211Christianity and Communiam" Lhtener, VII. 166 (Maroh 16,

19'2) pp. ,82-,8, (p. ,8,). The Idea of a Christian Society oan
perhap. best be understood in the 1ight of the four talka Eliot
delivered over the BBC in 19'2, under the general heading "The Modern
Dilemma. Il
~ 'Ibid.
For the former haa never at any time been true, but the latter haa.

With thls purpose, Eliot had said, we should "study but not

imitate" the Middle Ages. l Such a preoaution had not been enough to

pree1ude his geners1 indictment for "mediaeva1ism,· slong with the other

charges of "clericalhm,' "Fa.cism," etc., with which the book 'lias greeted. 2

And such misgivings could be understood of a man who stressed the evils

consequent upon technological progrese, political emanc1pation, and the

limitation of the church's temporal juri8diction.

Yet, to repeat, Eliot never suggested that medieval culture '

could be considered preferable to our OWD. It 'lias important to point

out thst that age, as every other, had had its own valuea of civilization,

90 that in pa8sing on, certain valuea had been lost as weIl as gained.

If civilization is DOW more difficult ta maintain, it i8 becauae it now

stands for "aIl the thinge that we have gained, and 'liant ta keep" a.

well sa "the good things that 'Ile have lOliJt, and 'liant to regain." The

problem is to re-essert a Christian order of society in 8uch a way that

it can incorporate the best of modern technology, .mancipation, and

independence of thaught. It must be accepted that a willingness to make

mater1al and intellectual .acrifices ie a condition of sueh an order.

But part of the aUCCeliJ8 of Oommuniem has been precisely the prevalence of

liJuch a willingness for suoh sacrifice.

lIbido
2
Some ingenious critics managed to suggest that the book implied
both a theocraoy and the liJociety of Nazi Germany. vd. Joseph Ratner "T. S.
Eliot and Totalitarianiam," Saturday Revie." of Literature, (Jan. 6th, 1940)--
a review which ie far fram unrepresentative of American pres8 reaction.

'"Religion and Science," Lietener, VII. 167 (Mar. 2;, 19;2)

pp. 428-429 .(p. 429)
 3"4

The ev.lu.tion of our n:.aterial 4.nc.l liber •. l prof,re5~, in the light

of our spiri tuaI requireln.ent~, is indeed r:lore cOr.1pOU'lLL1e to total-

itariani~I,l than to medievali~m: that is to say, in the 1ight of con-

temporary revolts ac ainst ~pirituall~l neutr...1 liberal societie~,

Eliot ':5 line of thought seemed l!lOdern ra.ther than antiquariom.

But, as we bave seen, ':::liot considered totalitarianism a

l
returr. to rcIigiou8-~ocü.1 unit y on a more primitive level , where-

as he hoped to maintain the positive acruevcments of individualism

a.nd liLeralism in a. new religiou5 order: 1l00r task then i~ not

antiquaria.nism; it is just the permanent task of lnaking the permanent

truth~ live in us in our own brief and particular moment of time. 2

l
le C. S. p. 51, N. D. C. p. 68

2
Il Building up the Christian Wor1d ll loc. cit., p. 501.
 In the Christian Society, Eliot dissociated himaelf explicitly

from the des ire to return to Christianity by abandoning what Babbitt

used to call "the modern experiment. 1I It wss a suspect simplification,

he said, to insist, as Penty had done,

IIthat the only lalvation for society ie to return

to a simpler mode of lite, scrapping all the construction.
of the modern world that we can bring ourselves to dispense
with.' 1

This wal as much of an over-simplification as the opposite danger or

heresy: -to accept the modern world as it is and simply try to adapt

Christian social ideals to it. n2

But the charge of mediaevalism is ev en more inappropriate when

laid againat thi. particular book. For in the Christian Society, he .peci-

fically excluded all mention of such ideals as the strengthening of the

kingship, the family, or agriculture 1 theee were not at issue.' And in

particular he guarded, (as aince 1930 he had always done) againlt the

"dangerous error" of identifying Ohristianity with any particular form

of government. 4 For he was concerned, a. he afterwardl made clear5 with

only those minimal requirements needed, in order that our prelent neutral

LI •O• S., p. 30. Eliot Ipecifically names the "neo-Ruskinian

view,1\ which ws dso upheld by others of the Ohristian sociologista
and by many associates of the Townsman and the New English Weekly, plu.
Eric GUl.
2
I.C.S., p. 31

3This distinction had been clearly made in 1932, "Building up

the Ohristian World,u Listener, VII. 169 (Apr. 6, 1932) pp. 501-502
(p. 501) cf. I.C.S., pp. 32-33.
4I.C.S., p. 57.

511Christian Society," CA letter to the editor), New English

Weekly, XVI 15 (Feb. l, 1940) pp. 226-227
 .". 1

society might properly be called Ohristian. Indeed, the logical charge

to be brought against thi. book was that it propoaed so little reform as

to be incapable of bringing about any change at alll and something of

this charge was indeed made by Eliotls old associate, the Christian
l
sociologist M. B. Reckitt.

Eliot analyaed the changes necessary to strengthen the position

of Christianity and the chur ch in society under three headingsl con-

cerning the State, the people, and what with some misgivings he called

the • oommun it y of Ohristians. R Ooncerning the State his program WB8

most modeste Far from wishing either a ·theocracy" or an integration of

the Church into the State machinery, he was, as might be expected, in-

terested in maintaining a healthy dualism of atate and churcht that

state of tension which

His a disting~ishing mark between a Ohristian and

a pagan society.1I

To maintain thie tension it was necessary for the church to have "a

hierarchical organisation in direct and off~ial relation to the Stateclt

"the national faith must have an official recognition

by the State. It~

But thi. of course was the statua quo, albeit tenuoua, in England et the

time of his writingl hi. argument la rather against the possibilitiea

of Diestablishment. He does not argue againat the presence of seeta,

lSee liA Sub-Ohrietian Society?" New Engliah Week1y, (Dec. 7,

19~9) pp. 115-116. Of'. ~J Mt' ~'O'·r.3".
2 ~ .
I.C.S. p. /V. Eliot wholly subaeribed to the modern commonplace
that tension or a:ftiction. Il i'ormed the buis of .development towards higher

,
civili~ation, cf. N.D.O., pp. 2~, 58-59, 68.
.
I.C.S., p. 47, 51. Eliot of course was thoroughly opposed to
the -free ehurch in a f'ree state l proposed br liberal Oatholics such as
Actori and his disciple John Nevill FiggiB, along the model of Oavour.
non~Ohriatian creeda, and non-believerl; but rather against the aug-

gestion that the ent1re congeriel of private faiths should be granted

equal public recognition. l In the Notel, indeed, he went much farther

in grenting the positive value of thia lectarian diveraity in the pres-

ence of an official unit y, and in particular the value of Methodiem iri

revlving a aectarian spirituality after the Eatablished Ohurch had failed

2
in its mi8sion. Granting the possible value of diversity within unity,

it is not an essential condition of an orthodox Ohriatian society to

achieve the re-union of the ehurches, although the Ohurch must never

108e it. missionery ideel of converting the entire world. Eliot mede it

quite clear that the maintenance of orthodoxy and positive doctrine

Ihould never in any way be eompromised for the purpose. of- oecumenicity.~

In other wordl, his political program for orthodoxy was not

that only the True Ohurch .hould be allowed to exist, but thet the Tru.

Ohurch end it alone should be recognized by the State. England, in other

words, ahould consciously accept a Ohurch-atate relation which it had

preserved through inertia. 4

lEliot was quite explicit that u an eccleslastical unit y cannot

be imposed in the hope that it will bring about unitY of faith. N.D.O.
p. 18. '~ -.". . :~ ~.., _. : ": ; } .
2
N.D.O. p.82

~cf. especiaÙy Reunion br Deatruction. Reflectiona on a Scheme

for Ohureh Union in South India(London, 194~), in which Eliot thoroughly
attacked the loheme for it. "licentioua oecumenicity.- At one point Eliot
even apparently regretted the rejection of -the doctrine of the damnation
of unbaptized infanta,· a doctrine whieh, ae l underatand, the chureh ha.
never uphe4d. Revelation, 10c. cit., p. ~8n. -
Aa for the univerlality of the church, Eliot felt that oecumenieity
demanded work towarda inter-communion rather than re-union. The universa11ty
of the church was an easential factor in 1ts capacity to balance atate nation-
a11sm and strengthen Ohristians in their international cammunity, and Eliot
attacked Middleton Murry', tendency to talk exclusively in term. of a Nation-
al Church. But Eliot felt that the internationality of the church no more
relied on international machinery than the cultural unit y of Europe relied
upon European Union.
 Eliot has no word to say, as he should have, concerning the

liberal emancipetion of Raman Oatholics, dieaentere, atheists, and Jews. 1

It was clear that the nature of the Establishment had been substantially

altered by the secularization of Parliement. Eliot had affirmed this in

1928 when he bitterly attacked Parliament's intervention concerning revi-

sion of the Book of Oommon Prayer. 2

But it ie aleo clear that Eliot envisaged no positive disabilities

to encumber the non-Ohristiane in their exercise of politioal power.~

For it is not from the faith of the leaders, but from that of the people,

that the change must come:

"The Ohristian and the unbeliever do not, and cannot,

behave very differently in the exercise of office; for it is
the general ethoe of the people they have to govern, not
their own ~.ty, that determines the behaviour of politicianl •• : 4

To conclude, the change in the State in the new Ohristian Society

would apparently not be intrineic, but lie rather in ite conformity tG a

new Ohristian ethos in the people.

~e doea, however, emphaeize that society must find a place for

those who do not recognize Ohristian revelation. But if this society
"ie to be a Ohrhtian Society, this part of the population must be a
minority." "A Sub-Pagan Society'l" New English Weekly, XVI. 9 (Dec. 14,
19~9) pp. 125-1~6 (p. 126). l take 1t that thiIJ statement should suff1-
c1ently clar1ty Eliot'e uofortunate deciderat10n concerning that Blarge
nuœber of free-thinking Jews."

2To thoee who justified 8uch intervention by Rooker, Eliot replied

haughtily that Rooker had hardly foreseen a Parliement filled with Dis-
sentere, Free-thinkers, and Jews. "Parliement and the New Prayer Book"
A letter to the Editor, New Adelphi, l. 4 (June 1928) pp. ~45-~46. .
'nIt must be clear that l do not mean by a Ohristian State one
1n which the. rulere are chosen because of their qualification, still leu
their eminence, as Ohristianl." "What the rulerl believed)would be less
important than the beliefs to which they would be obliged to conform. And
a skeptical or indifferent statesman, working within a Ohristian freme,
m1ght be more effective than a devout Ohristian statesman obliged to conform
to a secular frame." I.O.S., pp. 24-25, 26-27.
4
I.O.S., p. 25
 UIt ia not primarily the Christianity of the statesmen
tbat mattera, but their being confined, by the temper and
tradition. of the people which they rule, to a Christian
framework within which they are to realise their ambitions
and advance the prosperity and prestige of their country.
They may frequently perform un-Christian acts; they must l
never attempt to defend their actions on un-Christian principles.·

Once again, it ia the 1etter Ithat giveth life.· We should

ask whether thia ideal would encourage an undesirable irony of the leader.

towarda the intelligence of their subjects, or whether theae conditions

in fact demand no more, perhaps les8, dissemblance th an ie currently

required by the vanity of public opinion. But for our purposes it i.

more interesting to note that the minimal changes for a Christian Society

will not lie in political organisation and leadership but in the "general

ethoe of the people.·

This distinction apparently baffled a generation of critics

accustomed to think of all social changes as induced by the manipulation

of positive sanctions. But like the Romantics from Coleridge to Arnold,

Eliot is more concerned for a Christian habituation of charactera

so that the true locus of the problem is not narrowly political but

rather educational in the broadest sense. And it must be repeated that

Eliot'e hope for change does not lie in training to be more religious

or "better Christiane, 1 but !Ii rather "the more modest hope that every

individual will be a Christian so far &S he is anything. 12

lIbid.
2-
l'Building up the Ohristian World,"loc. cit., p. 501. Similarly,
IIthe world l have in mind would merely be Chriatian so far as it wu any-
thing." Cf. I.O.S. p. ~~, p. 61. It ia underatandable that such remarks
should be construed in relation to other religions, particularly Judaeism.
But this is to obscure the reel object of auch remarks, which is to combat
the active and positive forces of usecularism" which have so far invaded
both our educational system and our deily environment. Generally, Eliot sesme
to feel that minorities can maintain their ldentlty within the integrated
whole: what 19 undesirable (for reasons of both religion and culture) ia not
8uch e atete of affaira, but the attempt to reduce the general athoe to
some kind of lowest denom1nator.
 This habituation of char acter will not demand changea in

our positive system of education alone. The Christianity of ordinary men

will be far lese a question of thinking than of behaviourj therefore,

their ordi ary social activities must be sufficiently conformable to

Christian principles, "so that the difficulty of behaving as Christians

should not impose an intolerable etrain. u1 The Church must be re-organized

to re-diecover the spiritual community of urban man in urban and suburban

society, a society to which the agricultural ,ideal of the parish (in

which social relationships were still largely personal) ie no longer

well-adapted. But at the seme time, it will be necessary to criticize

the paganizing environment of an unlimited industrial society.2

Nevertheless, we must keep in mind "the capital responsibility

of education" in re~olving this problem, rather than turning still

further to the obvioUB secularist solution -- "to subordinate everything

lI.C.S. p. 27 cf. Maritain1s etatement that it ie the busines8

of the social order to make the world not holy but habitable, 80 that
man iB not obliged to heroiem to live a Christian life in it. The
Thinge that ere not Caeser11i, quoted in Reckitt, "First Thinge Firat,1I
Chrilitendom, 1. 2 (June, 19,1) p. 141.

2Eliot considera it beyond his discussion to discuee the maans

of effecting change in this liphere. Yet it ia impossible to ignore,
"liuch problems as the hypertrophy of the motive of
~rofit into a social ideal, the distinction between the
~ of naturel resourcee and their exploitation, the
use of labour and its exploitation, the advantagee un-
fairly accruing to the trader in contrast to the primary
producer, the misdirection of the financial machine, the
iniquity of usury, and other featuree of a commercialiced
society which must be scrutini4ed on Christian principles. 1
I.O.S., p. ,2. cf. p. 62
 ~ ...

1
to political power. Il In concentrating on education as the locus and

meana of reform, Eliot has made it clear that the people, like the

government, are not to be considered the means of effecting a Ohristian

societyl

"The rulers, l have said, will, gua rulers, accept

Ohristianity not simp1y as their own faith to guide
their actions, but as the system under which they are
to govern. The peop1~ will accept it as a matter of
behaviour and habit."

1 I •C• S., pp. 41, 42: nA nationls system of education iB much

more important th an its system of government. 1I That Eliot doee not ex-
c1ude po1itical adjustment of such problems is obvious from his other
criticism, especially of Mannheim, see iY(I'I9, p. 336. Nevertheleu he is
confronted with the seme great dlfficulty which confronted the Romantio
and organicist critics of the Industria1 Revolution. Hia distaste for
the existing social order is matohed by a distaate for the obvious (i.e.,
po1itioa1, by the application of positive sanctions) means of adjusting
this social order. But Eliot does not go so far as Coleridge, Thomas
Arnold, Maurice, or Kingsley in attacking purely legislative reforme
Tp that type of mind which Ooleridge, Matthew Arnold, and
Eliot aIl call Jaçobin, this apparent dilemma has a purely vain and
personal foundation. But un1imited planning of 8uch adjustment is, as
Mannheim began by admitting, in the long run totalitarian; and the dilemma
is a real one. State provision for a tan-hour day ia not of the same
order of legislation as state regulation of the content of education.

2I •C• S., p. 34. Eliot admits the dangers from such heavy stress
on the forma1 aspects of orthodoxy, (or what we have oalled Imetad·oxy·).
From above you may have "cynieal manipu1ation u ; from below, ~intellectua1
letha\yand superstition." (ibid.) These tendenciea, a1so,_must be com-
batted by the Oommunity of Ohristians.
Reckitt (MA Sub-Ohristian Society?1I 10c. cit., p. 116) objected
that to treat religious life of the people aa a matter of behaviour and
habit wou1d reduce Ohri.tianity to Mlittle more than an official cult and
a code of mora1s." Eliot exp1ainedthat he had been seeking to express
merely the minimal requirements to establish a society aa Christian:
neverthe1ess he agreed that the fo11owing desiderationa II must be blue-
pencilled":
. "The religious life of the people would be largely a
matter of behaviour and conformity" (r.c.s., p. ~3)
lia community of men, not individually better than
the y are now," (llexcept for the capital difference of
holding the Ohrietian faith n ) (I.C.S., p. 61) (thristian
Sooiety· (A latter to the Editor) New English Weekly, IVI.
15 (Feb. 1, 1940) pp. 226-227, (p. 226)
As Eliot suggests at one point, this problem (of effecting a Ohristian

aociety) can be considered from the standpoint of the uproblem of

belief." And the belief of both rulers and ruled would, in the ideal

as in the present society, be largely embodied in conformity. The change

to be effected must come from the higher end more articular belief of

a much amaller group within societyl that which he calla "the Oommunity

of Ohristians." The Ohristian society will come about neither by con-

stitutional reform nor by some weve of conversion auch as Moral Re-arma-

ment, but by the patient activity and example of a small spiritual elite.

Such a group can and would be only nebulously defined. We

might observe that it would be an elite in which the intellectuels woald

again have some congress with the saints: it would consist of "the

consciously end thoughtfully praotising Ohristiane, especially those of

intellectual and spiritual auperiority.nl Eliot supplies the analogy

of Ooleridge's cleriay, a term which had been revived shortly befors in

a very bad book (The Price of Leader.hip) by J. Middleton Murry. But

this clerisy would not, as in Ooleridge'a theory, be comprised of aIl

the lettered clesles whose task waa that of preaching and instruction.

Eliot conceives of a considerably more select alite: nor, on the other

hand, would it be restricted to these occupations. nAnd," Eliot add.,

nit would include some of thoae who are ordinarily .pokan of, not always

with flattering intention, es 'intellectuals,.n2

Il.O.S., p. ;4
21 •0 •S., p. ;7
 No special social statue or eanctioned privi1ege ie enviaaged

in thie book for the Community of Chriatiane; eny more than ie auggeated

in the Notee for what Eliot there ca11s "the élite.· Certainly this

clerisy would not be granted any monopoly or patent -in education. l

In this respect they would be similer to Matthew Arnold's

elite of 'aliens', or the humanists referred to by Irving Babbitt:

(that ia, as a c1ass they are to be defined by their 'culture' rather than

their responsibility). But Eliot of course abstaine fram such analogies:

the e1ites of Arnold and Babbitt were intellectual merely, for whom

religion was a means to culture, and one which could apparently be

transcended. They made no special reference to the virtues of sanctitya

the concept of the pre-eminence of the saints, ta which Eliot refers

2
elsewhere, might almost be said to have been ec1ipsed in 19th Century

European political theory, until "it re-emerged, paradoxically enough,

in the praeter-Marxist writinge of Georges Sorel.~ On the other band,

though Eliot considered that the purely contemplative monastic orders

would constitute a necessary component of the Christian society, he

has nothing to say in this book about the saint as auch. Rather, his

lI.C.S., pp. 35-36: nThe personnel (i.e. of the educational

system) will inevitably be mixed: one may even hope that the mixture
may be a benefit to ite intellectual vitality. The mixture will inc1ude
persona of exceptionab1e abi1ity who may be indifferent or disbelieving;
there will be room for a proportion of pers ons profeseing other faiths
than Christianity.·

211A Comm~ntary,1I Criterion. XII. 46 (Oct. 1932) pp. 73-79(p- 1~),

3Therole of a spiritual rather than pure1y: intellectual elite

in Marxism itself might fruitfully be discussed, but such an elite
differe from Eliot' s in it8 exclusively . practical and political orien-
tation.
elite is to be composed from those " of superior intellectual and/or
l
spiritual gifts. M

The key to the new Ohristian society ie the establishment of

some kind of unit y and concourse between spiritual and intellectual

leaders on this level: the ending, in other words, of the udissociation

of thought ll which plagues the liberally-educated society. And Eliot

recognizes in the Ohristian Society as well as in the Notes that this

same condition obtains for the re-establishment and maintenance of a high

order of culture,2 as well as of religion. This presupposes, just a.

much as the party-system of politics, a common area of agreement, or

what Eliot calla

~a certain uniformity of culture, expressed in

education by a settled, though not rigid agreement
as to what everyone should know to some degree, and
a positive distinction -- however undemocratic it
may sound -- between the educatéd and the uneducated.·'

Thi. common area, moreover, must be po.itive, in re.pect not only to the

natural good life in society, but to man's supernatural requirements.

Eliot feele that higheet positive conception the West ha. evolved, and

the only one open to the maintenance of our culture as we know it, le

Ohristian.

To e.tablieh this agreement or uniformity,

"education must be religious, not in the sense that

it will be administered by ecclesiastics, still less in the
senae that it will exercise pressure, or attempt to in-
struct everyone in theology, but in the sense that its
aima will be directed by a Ohristian philo.ophy of life.
It will no longer be merely a term comprehending a variety
ef unrelated sub~~cts undertaken for special pur poses ~r
for none at all. 4

lEliot once'refer. to the "guardianship" of culture br this elite

("Oultural Forces in the Ruman Ordert'Prospect for Ohrlstendom,ed. Reckitt,
p.68) Neverthelesi, l would Warn against seeking acquaintance with thi. elite
from the f~iliar and slight1y patronising II guar dians" in Eliot'e plays.
I.O.S., p. 41; N.D.O., p. ,6
~I.O.S., p. 41
I.O.S., p. ,7
 On thi. point even the most intelligent of Eliot's liberal

critics seems peraistently to have miaunderstood him. The same difficu1ty

had arisen over After Strange Goda. There Eliot had luggested that

orthodoxy must be re-defined in each generation by the churchl and a

brief reference to the maintenance of orthodoxy had touched off referencel

to Torquemad~ and book-burning. Now his reference to the orthodox(

'direction' of education roused the same tempest. l Yet his position in

the book was as clear as in 19,2, when he explained that he did not wieh

"to detai! elergymen to .pecial subject ilupervision,

or that free seienfific enquiry ahould be hindered, or
the reaults mutilated to fit in with orthodoxy. But
the Ohristian -- seeing how every science, when there
ia no religion, tends to become a little religion it-
self, and feeling, as he must if he is really sincere
in his faith, that Ohristian theology ie the science
which relates and gives meaning to the several
Iciences -- must try and follow his religion out to
the bitter end."2
.
"My programme would not include the handing over
of educatioDal control to the Ohurch. A Stete Ohurch,
or any Ohurch, a. a bureaucratie authority directing
the education of the country, might turn out no better,
perhapa worse, or perhaps not very different from the
State it.elf; and we ought to aim to avedd, not promote,
centralization and atandardization. The taak of the
Ohurch is to christianlze the State and .oeiety, not to
take over any of the functions either of the State or
l'rivate groupa and foundationa. n.

IEven Lionel Trilling, in his intelligent and provocative

review of the Ohristian Society ("Elements that are Wanted," Partisan
Revlew, (Sept.-Oct. 1940) pp. ,67-,79) end. on thie same lame familiar
notel "the eccleaiutical instrument upon which he relies is, in 'the
practieal .phere', bound to be ma1eficent."

2"Building up the Ohrbtian World," loc. cit., p. 501. i • .;~. '

o~ "The Ohristian Ooncept of Education, Il in Malvern l 41 The Proeeed-
ings of the Archbishop of York's Oonference (London, 19 1 p. 212:
Wa may conclude that the re1igious ed~cation enviaaged by Eliot i&

ana10gous (on a different plane) to that moral education by which the

Arnold and Babbitt intended to e1ucidate and train the "higher self,M

eepecially when we remember that such training (as Arnold and Babbitt

envisaged it) had been Ihown to be 1arge1y meaningles& without a reli-

gious basis. (Of. supra, Ohapter IV).l

But even the di1utad re1igioua inclinations of Matthew Arnold

seem antiquated to many who are otherwise hie disciples; and Babbitt,

des pite his eagerness to be modern, appears to be neglacted in America

by aven the "New 00nservative8." l atress thia becauae the value and

efficacy of the Oommunity of Ohristians would derive fram their Ohristian

re-unification of our education and culturel

MIt will be their identity of be1ief and aspiration,

their background of a common syatem of education and a
common culture, which will enab1e them to influence and
ba inf1uenced by èach other, and co1lectively to form
the conlcious mind and the conscience of the nation. 12

Eliot ha. alwaya admitted the extreme difficulty of re-estab1ishing

voluntari1y auch a baaic agreement; but he still seema a 1itt1e .anguine

in suggesting that Ohristian theology cou1d re-unite rather than further

divide the alienated inte1ligentaia of to-day.'

lEarlier, indeed, Eliot had seen that the need for relating
religion to education app1ied chiefly to that education which was Mthe
finest training for the finest mind.,M as opposed to more general edu-
cation or training for everyone. "The theo10gica1background -- however
far back it may be -- i8 the on1y one that can provide the idea of order
and · unit y neaded for education." ("The Prob1em of Education,1\ Harvard
Advocate,OXXI. 1 (Freshman Number, 1934) pp. 11-12 (p.U)
2 I.O.S., 4,
;"Perhapa there will a1waya be incÙviduals who, with great
creat'ive gifts of value to mankind, and the senaibil1ty which such
gifts imply, will yet remain blind, indifferent, or aven hostile." 1 1 1
I.O.S., p. 4,. (Ita1ics, exclamation marks, etc., etc., a11 mine)
 The aociety he call. for His what Mr. Maritain calls a
l
pluralist societyll:by this atatement Eliot apparently recognizes the

necessity of tolerating a plurality of philosophies and creede in the

future. But Maritain'a conception of an ideal society is essentially

ditferent. Like Eliot, he admits that lino society can live without a

basic COmmon inspiration and a basic common faith ll , it ia wrong to

regard society as a IImere neutral boxing ring. n2 But a common faith to-

day can no longer be found in the religious sphere, and so must relate

to the temporal: i.e. democracy. This idealization of the American

statua quo extends to protecting the Iifree competition" of diverse reli-

giona. At firet glance, especially to a North American, Mr. Maritain',

idea appeare to have the advantage of greater realism.

Rere it ia possible that Europe and America muet be .harply

differentiated. America, a. Eliot adroits, is astate founded on religiou.

diversity (and perhaps one should add, temporal conformity). And even

Reinhold Neibuhr, for aIl his appeals to contrition and humility, exhibits

some of Maritain's buoyant calm concerning democracy as an object of

faithl a reliance in temporal matters that distinguishes him trom

Barth.' l wiah merely to suggest the prevalanca in America, aven among

raligioua figure., of that temporal confidence which Eliot 80 deprecated,

l1.0.S. ', p. 42
~aritain, "The Foundations of Democracy," Nation, (Apr. 21,
1945) pp. 440-442 (p. 440) An application of Mr. Maritain'e ideas to
the .ubstance of Eliot'" "~ot~" t: o~er1s e n .. f'i"]~t.io.., "f' ~1)1+y~." The
value of this critique i8 80mewnat diminiahed by the fact that Maritain
(aa he admits) had not read the essaye

'It must also be repeated that the theology intended by Eliot

is very much more related to the critical inquiry of acepticism and free
thought than that enviaaged by Maritain.
and whleh le so uneharacteristie of the intelleetuals of contemporary

Western Europe. More apecifically, l doubt whether more than a strag-

gling of candidates (moat of them poeta, and therefore unreliable) could

be found on this continent to eccept the difficult apprentlceship for

his proposed Oommunity. In no foreseeable future could sueh a oommun it y

command the respect or even the acèeptance it would require toward. the

fulfilment of ite functiona. l

This le not to be con.trued as an intrinsic criticiem of Eliot'.

bookl like Plato, or Ooleridge, he ie aeeking the Idea of our society,

2
Uthe que.tion •••• to what end il it arranged?" and thie ia ta be dil-

cusaed prior ta, and aeparately from, a programme of means of change.

The dlffleulty lies in the adjustment of the possible and the ldeel, a

problem which we have already dlscuased in Ohapter IV.' And the queation

remaina, whether ln England, lf not in America, auch a Christian elite

could establisn itaelf with suf'ficient respect to inform the thinklng

lThia ls weIl illustrated by the generie unsympethy of Eliot'a

liberal American critics. l would suggest thet the barrage of ' slogans
such as "mediaevaliam," "clericaliam, ft "fatelism," "withdrawal," "in-
tellectuel retreat" reduce in the end to one fundamental objectionl that
Eliot is asking ua ta order our life from a belief in God rather th an in
democracy. In the intellectual climate of this continent" one ie apt to
be simply incapable of underatanding how orthodoxy and theology might
conceivably lurvive in an atmoaphere of tolerance and free thought.
2 1 • 0 •S ., p.ij

'It ie perhaps worth quoting a comment of Eliot on another

upect of this book, which well illustratea the difficultyl "If you
design your Christian Society only according ta what your experience of
human beings, and the hiatory of the last nineteen hundred yearl, tells
you is possible, th en it must remain open to the cherge of being sub-
Christian. If' you design it beyond experience and history, you are eom,-
mitted to utopien plana. the impracticality of' which will expose you to
relapse into a Lutheran 'l espair of thia world." liA Sub-Pagan SocietyT Il
loc. cit., p. 126
and Bensibil1ty of the entire nation: -- whether, in short, the alterna-

tives of the neutral, the pagan, and the Ohristian society exist in

the relation that we described in the last chapter. For such an elite

has two requirements: that of Christianity and that of unit y, and ve

are far from convinced that the first is the surest guarantee of the second.

In any.case, a more logical criticism of Eliot'e Christian Society 18

that it ,is incohesive, rather than that it i9 totalitarian.

But the most .triking feature of the Ohristian Society, and

one which aroused criticism from Reckitt and other Christian sociologists,

is its extreme re1iance on the importance of form: it vas ea8y to con-

c1ude that Eliot expected more from a change of conformity then from a
1
change of spirit. This was Eliot's echo of the "hard dry cla.sicism-

of Hulme, Pound and Wyndham Lewis, adding a special excitement ta his

crusades into the perannial boglands of Murry'a romanticism. "The .pirit

kllleth, but the letter giveth IUe ll is a delightfu1 weapon of 1920"

polemic& still, it is only polemic. In the Christian Society Eliot

was concerned vith the vave. of undisciplined .pirituality such a •. Moral

Re-Armament which could on1y further debilitate the religiou. energie. of

the nation. 2 But that Eliot wa. unconcerned with a "change of heart"

is a charge emp1y refuted by a glance at his writings,' and his tamoul

pasaage concerning his doubt Hof the validity of a c1vi1ization,- dem-

- 4
on.tratea his immediate persona1 exper1ence of a re1igiou. contrition.

\ Jf. supra, p. l~~ '?C5.

2
Babbitt had wisely seid, l'What 1i diaquieting about the preaent
age is not ita materiali.m, but what it take. to be its spirituality.J
.
'e.g. · liA Commentary,- Criterion, X. ~9 (Jan. 19'1) pp. '07-,14
(p. '09) XI. 41 (July 19,1) pp. 709-716 (p.711)
4I.e .s. p. 65
 Nevertheleaa, we have seen that Eliot'e understanding of

"orthodoxy· would appear to be formal to the extent of rendering belief

irrelevant. One auspecta that the same might have been true of the

"Ohriatian education" which he now proposed, but there is no auggestion

of this. We are left confuseda Eliot might well be envisaging a future

alite of Babbitts and Joyces, whose agnostieism, or whose "suapenaion of

belief and of disbelief" waa amply clothed in the costume of Anglo-

Oatholic senaibility. The "Ohristian education" might train the "finest

minds, Il not in repentance and prayer, but in the Ohristian traditiona of

reason, soul, and freedom; and the teaching in secondary school of the

truths of Descartes)Wordsworth and John Stuart Mill, would be followed

by the teaching in univerltty of the truths of Paecal, Dante, and St.

John of the Oross. Such a course might, in an American university, do

better to cloak its affinitiea to theologYI indeed, that word reealla

the more arid controversies of Janseniats and Molinists, rather than the

reflections of Lactantius or St. Augustine. Moreover, it would probably

include the best of atheiat reflexion: about life and death aa weIll

Lucretius, Goethe, perhaps up to Nietzsche and Sartre.

Perhaps such a training could best begin with a course called

Weltanschauunga 101; on the otherhend, it would not ignore Ontology aa

it is now taught by Dr. Tillich. And finally, the training of en

"orthodox sensibilityll could not proceed too far without re-discovering

the Bible. Something like this doea not seem inconceivable in this present

day of the "0ivllization ll or "General Education" course, aometimes lmown

a. the "Occident Express." others have shared Eliotls apprehension about

 3'""

the breakdown of communication in this age of specialized di8ciplines. l

l need hardly add that aIl this 1e from my own incessantly

practical, "Anglo-Saxon" imagination. Nevertheless, we know that some-

thing like this, baeed on the classical heritage of Latin and Greek,

is what Eliot desired. Still, we must ask to what extent Eliot's society

(and its elite) is to be united about a common tradition, (or even what

he calls HorthodoxyM) and to what extent by a renewal of faith, la

his society to be Christian in the sense that Irving Babbitt "being a real

Atheist, is at the same time essential1y a most orthodox Christian. U2

-
Or are we tofollow an older Mr. Eliot who sounds more serious: "The

division b~tween those who accept, and those who deny, Chriatian reve1a-

tion. l take to be the most profound division bet~een human .being •• I '

Eliot should have reso1ved us further between these alternatives, even

at the risk of causing distress to people who by 1940 had become close

personal friends. One wonders just how great a change of heart he would

have expected in Hu1me, Joyce, and Babbitt, before they could have joined

him in the select company of J. H. Oldham, Alec R. Vidler, Cyril Hudson,

Miss Marjorie Reeves, Miss Ruth Kenyon, and Oharles Smyth, to pray,

write, and confer with St. Deinio1's Library, or the League of the Kingbm

of Godf 4

1 11 1 observed in America, that with a very high 1evel of intelligence

among undergraduates, progress was impeded by the fact that one could never
assume that any two ••• had studied the same subjects or read the same book.,
though the number of subjects in which they had been instructed was 8urpr1~ing.
Even with a smaller amount of total information, it might have·been better
if they had read fewer, but the same books. In a negative liberal society
you have no agreement as to there being M'('\ody of knowledge which any edu-
cated person should have acquired at any particu1ar stage: the idea of wis-
dom disappeara, and you get aporadic and unrelated experimentation n (~.,
. p. 41)
211Why MT. Russell ia 8 Ohristian," Oriter1.on, VI. 2 (Aug. 1927)
pp. 177-172 (p. 179)
~evelation, ed. Baillie, p:;'l.. :'-2 ' .
4To put the seme matter differently, in Eliot's transition fram the
first world to the second, there is undoubted1y a large personal or idiosyn-
cratic motive of change, which he sometimes appears to identify intrinsically
with the progress of wisdom. Being young, l know nothing of wiadom, but l
 We are left confused. But we remember that, in the midst of

Eliot'a fulminations et "a society like our~, worm-eaten with Liberalism,·

he aasured us that the correction of heresy was not a matter of beliefa,

1
but of Morthodoxy of aensibillty." Was this a false distinction; or

can we diatinguish a third way between naive credulity and naive Pyrrhonism,

which might help our culture in its so-called 'crisi. of belief,,2

On the whole problem of belief, where he refers us obliquely

to Meinong and Scheler, and on Hulme'a crude distinction between belief.

as 'held' and beliefs as 'felt', wa can only wish that he had said more.

A great deal more.

Many of these doubts and speculations remain in our minds when

we turn to the Notes towarda~Definition of Culture; for this book raises

many of the same questions from a cultural, rather than a religious

point of view. Although 'culture' and 'religion' are not terms which can

be identified, neither do they exist in external relation to each other:

Eliot epeake of Uthe culture of a people as ~ incarnation of its

religion."

footnote continued from previous pagel

can observe that Eliot'e particular path of entry into Ohristendom is

cl.se to unique. How much of hie own spiritual experience does he wiah
to eatablish as a pattern for aIl of ua'
l
A.S.G., pp. 1;, ;8, cf. supra,f.2~"

2And steer us out of our 'dilemma' a8 it is described to us,

for example, by Dr. Jungs " •••• in modern tim~ ainee there is nothing
beyond belief without understanding but doubt and skepticism, the
whole Christian tradition goes by the board as a mere phantasy. l
consider this as being a tremendoua 108s for which we are to pey a ter-
rifie price. The effect becomes visible in the dissolution of ethica1
values and a complete disorientation of our Weltanschauung •••• • (New
Republic, OXXXII. 8, (Feb. 21, 1955) p.~,) .
; N.D.C., p. ;2, cf. p. 27
 And so it is not surprising that in the second book we return

to the prob1em of re-unifying our communal thought and sensibility through

the presence and activity of a specia1ly qua1ified elite.

"Notee towards a Definition of Oulture is the studied, condenaed,

and polished product of a wise and cautioua mind; yet it iB, l think, a

disappointing book. l am not sure that Eliot did not intend it as the

chef-d'oeuvre of his non-critical prose; yet l think there is progres-

sive deterioration in the successive published versions of this work

(of which, in the case of the firet chapter, there were five). These

versions show progressive over-articulation in their detail, and progres-

sive over-simplification in their central argument, until, in the final

book, a forest of pedantic caution surrounde a 8mall inner ring of

apparent1y outrageoue assumptions. l

The main fault of the final book is ft flagrant and continuous

passage from the descriptive to the normative: a common fault which

2
he had once himself criticized. The opening paragraph tries ta sound

innocuousl

"My pur pose in writing the following chapters ia

rwh.•. to
outline a social or political philosophy; nor 18
the book intended to be merely a vehicle for my observa-
tions on a variety of topics. My aim is to help to define
a word, the ward culture.~

1However l must repeat, as before, my belief in the importance

of thia book. And lest l give the impression of having attempted to
summarize or dispel the whole substance of its argument, l must add
the warning of a more hostile critici "if we would understand it
(the Botes), not one of ita hundred pages can safely be omitted.-
Herbert Read, (N.D.O., A Review) Hudson Review, II. 2 (Summer 1949)
pp. 285- 289 (p. 285)

2A Review of Hopousia, by J. D. Unwin, (a socio1ogist and

Oredit Reformer in whose writings Eliot showed much interest), Purpose,
XII. )/4 (Ju1y/Dec. 1940) pp. 154-158 (p. 158)
~ N.D.O., p. 11
 This, l think, is a bare-faced lie; a carry-over (with the

title) from an earlier and quite different article. In two pages he ha.

passed to "three important conditions for culture, /1 conditions which

certainly command our serious consideration, and indeed, in a general

way, our agreement:

"The first of these is organic (not merely planned,

but growing) structure, such as will foster the hereditary
transmission of culture within a culture: and this re-
quires the persistence of social classes. The second is
the necessity that a culture should be analysable, geo-
graphically, into local cultures: this raises the problem
of Iregionalism l • The third is the balance of unity and
diversity in religion -- that ia, universality of doctrine
with particularity of cult and devotion. nl

From this, as from Christian Revelation, we might draw a

number of conclusions. But Eliot reverts immediately to his old sport

of applying what ·w. H. Auden calls the IIhotfoot treatment" to the

humourless Enlightened: 2 For if these condition.

"conflict with any palsionste faith of the reader --

if, for instance, he finds it shocking that culture and
equalitarianism should conflict, if it 5eems monstrous
to him that anyone ahould have ladvantages of birth l --
l do not ask him to change hie faith~ l merely ask him to
stop paying lip-service to culture. l /

Fortunately the argument is not yet finished: indeed, it has not yet

begun. So the liberal ie advised to contain his wrath and continue.

The condition of an organic society ("not merely planned,

but growing") implies, as Eliot points out, a basic divergence fram

Mannheim. Important alpects of our social structure can and must be

IN.D.C., pp. 13~

2w.
H. Auden "Port and Nuts with the Eliots,· New Yorker
(Apr. 23, 1949) pp. ~5 - al (p. iS,)

~N.D.C., pp. 14-15

p1anned -- even such fundemental questions as the balance between
l
town and c?untry. Nevertheless, the propagation and transmiasion of

culture is not something that can be deliberately p1anned for: like

happiness, it is something that becomes most insecure when it is the

conscious aim of our activities. 2 For we shall never be wholly conscioua

of more than a small part of our total culture; and a thorough planning

of society would impose restrictions felt most heavily by those whom

V~nnheim had ·referred to as the "creative elements." Eliot is not at-

tacking aIl government subsidization and piecemeal planning the

British Oouncil is a good thing --; but he warns against letting this

piecemeal activity eneroaeh too far upon the wholea

dCulture can never be wholly conacious -- there ia

always more to it than we are conecious of, and it cannot
be planned because it 1s also the unconscious background
of all our planning.' ,

~.D.C., New English Weekly, XXII. 15 (Jan. 28, 194,) pp. l29-l~
(p. 1,0) Chapter l of the Notes was originally published in the New
English Weekly for the fo1lowing datesl XXII. 14 (Jan. 21, 194,) pp.
117-118; XXII. 15 (Jan. 28, 194,) pp. 129-1,0; XXII. 16 (Feb. 4, 194,)
pp. 136-137; XXII. 17 (Feb. 11, 194,) pp. 145-146. These citations are
hereinafter referred to collective1y as "N.D.C.h)" The four parts were
reprinted in Civi1ization and the Partisan Review with minor corrections;
and then, after extensive revis ion, as "Oultura1 Forces in the Human
Order" in Prospect for Christendam, ed. Reckitt, cited as uN.D.C.(b)'
This was still further revised before final publication as Chapter I ~
of the Notee.

I.e. s., p. ,9
2N•D•C., pp. 18, 65, 96. The seme point had been made in

'N.D.C., pp. 96, 95. cf. "Civilisationl The Nature of Cultural

Relations" in Friendship, Progreae. Civiliaation; Three War-time Speeches
to the Anglo-Swedish Society, Semple et al. (London, 194,), p. 19.
In this address, Eliot emphasizes the importance of 'unp1anned ' , 'natura1'
cultural contacte between nations: "Europe can be artificially divided,
but it can only be naturally united." (p. 20) The importance of the small
unofficial organlzation in this roleis again stressed in Elior's Presi-
dentiel Addreas to "Books Aeroes the Sea," March 9, 1948 (unpublished).
And he has warned against too great an officialization of 'culture'
through the activities of UNESCO.

. .. ~ ' ~ .. '
 Eliot makes it quite clear, moreover, that he doea not expect

to establish his three conditions of culture by reliance upon deliber-

ate organlzation, as such planning would likely defeat ite own end. l

Eliot, we might say, ie inatead supplying another ideal -- The Idea of

a Cultural Society. Or as he originally put it: he doee not provide a

plan, but II something which l think should be at the back of our minds,

or rather, which should affect aIl our value-feelings, in each of the

departments of intellectual design. 12

We muat keep this in mind when we examine the conditions

which Eliot adumbrates as neceasary for the uhereditary transmission of

culture within a culture,\'which, as he told us "regutres the persistence

of claases.' Eliot here is not so much worried by the present structure

of society (which, after aIl, like aIl other major social structures

in history, makes no secret of ite class basis), as by the conflicting

ideal of a claesless society; an ideal which has so long ceased to be

revolutionary as to be now an "id~e reiue, Il lia comtllonplace of contem-

porary thinking.' ,

~.D.C., p. 18& nA class division of society planned byan

absolute authority would be artificial and lntolerable; a decentra11sa-
tian under central direction would be a contradiction; an ecclesiastical
unit y cannot be imposed in the hope that it will bring about unit y of
faith, and a religious diversity cultivated for its own sake would be
absurd."

~.D.C. (a) p. 146. It i8 wholly regrettable that Eliot

later abandoned this more open approach.

'"The Olau and the Elite" (henceforward uN.D.C. (c)")

which appeared in the New English Revlew, XI. 6 (Oct. 1945) pp. ~9-509
(p. ~9). Later revised as Chapter II, (p. ,4)
 ,..- .

Perhepa we should egein point out thet Eliot is egein et-

tecking, not the cherecteristics of our democratic society itse1f, but

the "idea· which so meny intellectuels have seen conteined in it.

Those who commonly propose Q " c1essless society" do not usually

advocate e eociety with an ideal equality of statua (which was the

'idee' of 19th Oentury anarchiste and syndicalista) but a society with

perfect "equality of opportunity.M Here agein, it i8 the ideal condi-

tion of equality which Eliot criticizes, and not the adaptation of the

educational system to find room for "exceptionsl individuels Il of e11

claases. l

The notion of "equel opportunity," in ite strict or dogmatic

form, proposes to suppress al1 distinctions of birth and background,

and to distinguish between men on the basis of ability end echievement

only. Aa a dogma, such a view would of course call either for the closing

or for the opening (i.e., the 'netionalization') of restrictive insti-

tutions such es the British Public School., whose whole essence and vir-

tue is their organization on a class basisj and there has in fact been Q

loud if frustrated undercurrent of opinion ta such an end since the

second World Wer. And a society with such en end would see distinctions

and responsibilities of cless replaced more and more by elites selected

on the basis of achievement, or what Professor Lasswell (a typical Ameri-

can proponent of this idea) calls a "hierarchy of skil1s.·

lN.D.O., p. 103. cf. N.D.O. (b), p. 671 "The present agitation

for educetional equelity is mostly impelled, l taka it, not by a belief
thet everyone should have the same degree of education, but by a balief
thet what i8 considered superior education should be bestowed upon those
who have the native ability to profit by it, rather than merely on those
whose financial adventages make it possible. Ta this balief, steted in
this way, l do not see how enyone can take exception.·
 This replacement is to Dr. Mannheim not only the inevitable
tendency but the "important contribution" of democracy. From the aris-

tocratic society based on distinctions of blood, through the bourgeois

society based on distinctions of property, we have arrived at the

rationalized democratic society, in which "the achievement principle in-

creasingly tends to became the criterion of social success. ll

Now Eliot agrees "in a rough and ready way" that there has

been this historical process. But he wisely points out that aIl three

bases have been present in all three forme of society: -- at least in

England, where the Middle Ages were what they were because of the demo-

cratic element in the Ohurch; and bourgeois society was what it was,

becauee of "the existence of a class above it, fram which it draw some

of its ideals and some of its criteria, and to the condition of which

its more ambitious members aspired." 2 In other words, the most important
-
innovation of the classlelilS society, the society "dominated exclusively

by alites,' would be its selection by a single and rationalized set of

criteria: the criteria, in short, of succeas.;

~an and Society, p. 89. Quoted in Eliot, N.D.O., p. ~7.

(italics mine)

~.D.G., p. ;8
;The totalitarian dangers of such planned selection, admitted
by Dr. Mannheim, are adumbrated without comment by Eliot, 'Such a society
must not be content to be governed by the right peoplel it must see
that the ablest artiste and architects rise to the top, influence taste,
and exeeute the important public commissions; it must do the same by
the other arts and by science; and above all, perhaps, it must be such
that the ablest minds will find expre.sion in speculative thought. The
system must not only do aIl this for society in a particular .ituation
it must ~ doing it, generation after generation •••• " N.D.O.,pp~144
 Eliot's objection to thia ia that of the organicist in politi-

cal the ory: he denies that any such set of criteria could ever deteet all

the intangible qualities which make up leadership. The old aristocracy wa.

itaelf an organic group, refreshed from below from generation to generation.

In Mannheim's elites this organic unity would have disappeared.

And so Eliot took issue with a Times leader of April l;th, 1944,

which called for the popular post-war ideal of "an aristocracy drtnm from

all sections of society." Eliot considered this an abuse of the tradi-

tional meaning of aristocracy:

"The traditional use of the word implies, l believe,

an emphaa1s on inheritance: not merely the inheritance of
property, however important that may seem to some, but the
inheritance, partly through biologieal transmission and partly
tthrough environment, of other less tangible values. In other
words, the unit of aristocracy, in the sense in which the word
has been used in the past, is not the individual but the family.
In the new sense of the word (and the phrase 'the new ariatoc-
racy' is acquiring currency) inheritance is ignored, and the
family implicitly depreciated. We are to have an aristocracy,
not of families, but of individuals; and the8e individuals
will have been turned into aristocrats, not by their parents,
but by their schoolmasters, employing some system of selection
to be elaborated.Ml

Notwi th'standing these last remarks, it would be wrong to con-

clude that Eliot was plumping for a strengthened political aristocracy;

essential to Eliot's perèpective is the innate conviction that "politie.

is the profession of the second-rate. M2

lIlArietocracy" (Letter ta the Editor) Times, London, 49832

(April 17, 1944) p. 5& nI suggeet that this may be a more vl~lent mutation
of meaning th an any word ought to be required to undergo. It will not do
to appaal, behind the back of tradition, to the etymological sense of the
word; for government by the best men ia Burely the aspiration of every
society, whatever its 80clal organization." But thia use of the word
'aristocracy', whether desirable or not, la by no means such a violation
of tradition a. Eliot suggeata. Over fifty years ago, Lord Mortley COlll-
mented of Greg: "His ideal, like that of most literary thinkers on pol1tie.,
was an aristoeracy not of calte, but of education, virtue and public spirit •••
the old dream of lofty minds from Plato down to Turgot. Il (Quoted in Barker,
Politica1 Thought in England, 1848-1914, (London, 1915), p. 178.

20harles Whibley, "The Trimmer, Il Quoted in Eliot, "Oha.rlel

Whibley," S.E. p. 458. cf. N.D.O., p. 84. But cf. infra, p.
 ~,

If the British aristocracy were to dieappear~ ite 10es would

not be felt in the field of politics so much as in the field of culture.

In this field planning can do little or nothing to aid the creation of

1
culture, but it can do a very great deal to destroy the only means by

which culture can be properly transmitted. Fpr education can never wholly

replace the importance of family contacts and an inherited sense of res-

ponsibility in the paesing on of culture from one generation to the next. 2

IThe incompatibility of planning and genius had been recognized

in a general way by Mannheim, and Eliot does not waste time on the point.
He does, however, state the problem very neatlya "If we are looking for
a way to select the right people to constitute every elite, for an in-
definite future, by what mechanism ere we to do this? If our 'purpose'
is only to get the best people, in every welk of life., to the top, we
lack a criterion of who are the best people; or, if we impose a criterion,
it will have an oppressive effect upon novelty. The new work of geniua,
whether in art, science, or philosophy, frequently meets with opposition."
(N.D.O., p. 46)
This observation needs to be kept clearly in mind, especially
since "planning for culture" has proceeded at such a gallop (though with
many beneficial results) ainee the last war. 1 refer especially to
ever-increasing academic and cultural activities (eapecially in North
America) of the Foundetions, extending aven to the endow'went and glossi-
fication of what used to be Little Magazines. Behind the Punch-and-Judy
of the Reece Committee was a serious intellectual argument not stated.
The impartial reader can discern some of it by reading dispassionately
and severely Ezra Pound's embittered outpourings against universities and
foundations.
At this point we may also observe Eliot's atteck on the "Mute
Inglorious Milton Dogma", "the proposition that we have lost a number of
Miltons and Cromwells tbrough our tardlness in provlding a comprebensive
state systèm of education." (N.D.C., p. 106)

2Eliot felt that Mannheim had not taken sufficiently into account
the seriousness of his gloomy admissions "We have no clear idea how the
selection of elites would work in an open mass society in which only the
principle of achievement matte~ed. It i8 possible that in Buch a society
the succession of the elites would teke place much too rapidly, and social
continuity which iB eseentially due to the slow end graduaI broadening of
the influence of the dominant groups would be lacklng in it. M Mannheim,
op.ctt., p. 87. Quoted in Eliot, op.cit., pp. ~8-~9.
 When this question of transmission ia raised, we think im-

mediately of Matthew Arnold and Irving Babbitt& their concern for thoae

who Charles Whibley called the lllight-bearers" of wisdom and learning,

who in eaeh generation must "hand on to their successors the lampsltl

But these men had placed their reliance in improved education; and thia

reliance is precisely what Eliot most fears in our progress towards an

elite society. To explain this difference of opinion, we can postpone

no longer the problem of proceeding "towe.rds a definition of culture. 1

For Eliot began his discussion by distinguishing between two

important meanings of the word culture.' · There il; "culture" as the rare,

difficult, and precious object in life about which Arnold was so concerned&

the possession of an individual, or atbest a very small group (whom

Arnold significantly calla laliens') in society. Tbi. Eliot define. a.

essentia11y restrictive in its occurrence& "a refinement of living, in-

cluding appreciation of philosophy and the arts, emong the upper levals

of society." 2 But there 1&1 also "the general or -anthropological sense

of the word culture," as used for exemple in the phrase "primitive cul-

ture" :

),IIThe Lattera of an Engliahman,' (London, 1911) p. ix.

2N•D•C• (a), p. 117. In the final definition, Eliot dropped

the adjective 'upper' as needless and prejudicial to his catie. Arnold
had always considered culture the g~eat leveller, being open to a
select few of all classes: an important observation with which
Eliot, as we shall see, is in partial agreement.
 .o ••

nIt 18 the whole complex of behavlour, thought,

and feeling, expressing itself in custom, in art, in
political and social organization, in religious structure
and religious thought, whlch we can perceive most
clearly as a whole in the less advanced societies, but
which ia equally present as the peculiar character of
the most highly developed people or nation. ul

In this way we distinguish between "cu lture" (individual)

which is normative and desirable, and lia culture," (anthropological)

something which, as it has just been defined, ia as ineacapable an aspect

of any civilization as its social structure, or ita economy. But thi. is

not the point at which Eliot wishea to arrive. There is e sense in which

lia culture Il can be something absent and so alao normative: Eliot con-

siders that the culture of Europe as a whole has been visibly diBintegrat-

ing aince the RenaisSiance, a11 the time that the individual Il culture Il

of some of its member. has been increasing. This to Eliot ia a source

of concern: for "it is part of my thesis that there ie no 'culture'

without la culture,.u2

And so a further distinction must be introduced, between the

culture of the whole, a bed-rock complex which is "equally present" any-

where, and that group-culture which we must struggle to maintain at the

centre. Thus in the book we are no longer given IItwo meanings,1I but

"three senses" of culture; that of the individual, of the group, and of

society as a whole. And theae can be distinguished, as Eliot auggests by

the degree to which they can significantly be considered "desirable, Il

or to which they can be consciously aimed at.'

l
N.D.O., p. 20, N.D.O. (a), p. 117

,2 Ibid •

N.D.O., p. 20
 010

The first sssay had distinguiahed between tw~ intensional

meanings of "culture," between a condition of society and its refinement.

Now thie mediate or 1 group-culture 1 ia not so much a third meaning as a

1
third exemple of 'culture'. It is a partly-conscious refinement of

the manners and traditions of the culture as a whole. At the same time,

Eliot considere, it is itself a condition for the attainment of the high-

2
est individual refinement.

As a culture becomes more and more highly organized, it fol-

lows that the cohesive importance of this mediating group-culture will

increase. But at thia point Eliot le no longer pre-occupied with defi-

nitions. Re is more concerned with the disintegration we have already

described, of which the "dis8.olution of thought" ls only the intellectuel'.

exemple. Our society has neglected to strive consciously for the main-

tenance and improvement of this 'group-culture'. Rence it has not

II hope it ie not pedantic to suggest that Eliot could have

distinguished between his two 'intensional' and three 'extensional'
meanings of culture. l think it is clear that the concept of group-
culture adds no new inteneional meaning, but exhibits properties of
both. That la, it ie both a "refinement of living," and, at the seme
tlme, a "whole complex of behaviour. 1I Thia mediating qua lit y is essen-
tial te it.
But in turning to 'extensional' meanings, Eliot'a purpoae ia
no longer primarily one of definition. l think it ia mOSt unfortunate
that the original title and intention were retained; they .eem to have
led to .trange criteria of determining what was and was not within the
scope of the book.

2We are reminded of the Paldeuma proportion of Frobeniu.

PI ,P 2 , :P2'P~
In common speech, thie means that the soul and growth of Culture per se
ls to the soul and growth of a particuler people, ae the latter ls to
the soul and growth of an individuel emong that people.
 ., ..

improved with the growing complexity of the whole. On the contrery,

RWe cen assert vith some confidence that our own period
ia one of declinej that the standards of culture are
lower than they vere fifty years ago; and that the evi-
dences of this decline are visible in every department
of human activity. l see no reason why the decay of
culture should not proceed much further, and why we
may not even anticipate a period, of .ome duration,
of which it is possible to say that it will have ~
culture. III

After detecting this third "group" litense of culture (which

he calls "Oulture BI) Eliot feela he can detect a serious lack in the

most prominent theoriea about culture, notably those of Arnold, Babbitt,

and Mannheim. These are concerned only with individuel refinement

and training; they ignore or deny that a background of refinement

ia normally a condition of individuel perfeotion. And 80, to Arnold,

Eliot objeots that individual reflnement ie not enough. To Mannheim

Eliot is more polite, but suggests in effect thet he has not tapped

the main cultural problem at all: namely, that of disintegrationl

"Oultura1 disintegration ia present when two

or more .trata so separate that these become in
effect distinct cultures; and a1so when culture at
the upper group level breaks into fragments each of
which represents one ou1tural activity alone. If
l am not mistaken, some disintegration of the cla.ses
in which culture ie, or should be, moet highly dev-
eloped, has already taken place in western society --
as well as some cultural separation between one
level of society and another. Religious thought and
practics, phil080phy and art, a11 tend to become i80-
lated areas eultivated by groups in no communication
vith each other. 2

lN.D .0., p. 17. Italics Eliot 18.

2N.D.0., pp. 24-25. Of. p. ~61 "1 have sugge8ted elsewhere
that a growing weakness of our culture hes been the inereasing isola-
tion of elitel from each other, .0 that the political, the philosophi-
cal, the artistic, the scientific, are 8eparated to the great 10s8 of
each of them, not mere1y through the arrest of any general circulation
of idess, but through the lack of those contacts and mutual influences
st a le88 consciou8 level, which are perhaps even more important than
ideu."
 In Mannheim'. theory great importance is attached to the

training of the varioUB speoific elites, Ithe politlcal, the organising,

the intellectual, the artistic, the moral, and the religious." He

would, in other words, systematise the growing "departmentalisation

of elites," which, according to Eliot, i. already partly here, and

partly a good thing. But he mekes no provision for the transmission

of "culture" as an organic, only partly-consoious whole, as oppo.ed

to the transmission of special skills. Or as Eliot pute it, "Dr. Mann-

heim i8 concerned rather with elites then with an elite. ul

Great liberal apprehension has been raised concerning 'the

\" Il
elitel! which Eliot now discueses. Yet the elite would be by no means

predominantly political, although it would require that a dominant pro-

portion of the political leaders come from, and to some extent remain

in, a common cultural milieu. 2 Nor ie it pre-eminently scholerly, or

ethical, or genteel, or artistic, or religious, eny more then 8cientific

or administrative.' It is much like that residual unit y of social

2Eliot states en passant that this elite should include Pthe

leading members of all the effective and recognised political groups.1
He doea not ~~~L balance the admitted importance of 'dining with the
opposition' egainst the equal importance of a representative diversity
among parliementary leaders. (~., p. 85) Yet in the deys of the
National Government he had had much to say concerning the evils of a
Parliament in which the financial wolves had Iain down with the socialist
lambs, cf. supra. pp. 1'2.5 J 1'3.4.
In the ~, Eliot tends to stress the importance of unity, at
the expense of divereity, within the elite. His commonwealth, as de-
scribed on p. 85, might easily become another "republic of pals.·

'Unlik~ the American New Oonservativee such as Russell-Kirk,

Eliot has no word at all concerning the importance in this elite of the
leaders of induatry and commerce. But despite hie earlier grudgea
against such a class, l suspect that he would ask them to share rather
than relinquish their present pre-eminence.
pre-eminence by which North Amerioane, from Missouri or elsewhere,

are still so impresaed in England. But Eliot establishes two positive

desiderata. Firatlyl the group-cultural unit y of this elite, being

only partly conacious and explicit, cannot be wholly provided for by

syatematic education. Matthew Arnold had ignored the essential organic

background necessary to auperior educationl to Eliot, Uthe primary

channel of transmission of culture is the famUy. Ml

Speaking with the assurance of one in concordance with Ari.-

totle, Aquina8, The Ohristian Sociologista, the neo-Thomists, and

Charles Maurras, Eliot attaches immense cultural and religioue import-

ance to the familYi and he warns that "when family life feils to play

its part, we must expeet our culture to deteriorate." 2 The State may

be more efficient in the provision of material services, but it ls

futile to expect that the state, or eny positive system of education,

can replace the family sense of orgenie tradition and statua.' Beceuse

of the organic and only partly-con.cioua nature of -group-culture,"

it follows that the family is the most important "channel of transmission

of culture," et aIl levela, but partlcularly et the most hlghly-developed.

IN.D.O., p. 41
2N•D•O., p. 42

~or 18 Eliot merely asking that children spend more of their

time at home. The famlly he apeaka of ia not that of the edvertise-
mental "two parents and one or two young ohildren." MWhen l speak of
the family, l have in mind a bond which embraees a longer period of
time then thi_: a piety towerds the dead, however obscure, and a solici-
tude for the unborn, however remote. Unless this reverence for past and
future le cultivated in the home, it cen never be more than a verbal
convention in the community." N.D.O., p. 42
It ' is of course fruitful to compare the many observations in
The Family Re-Union.
 -..

This role c&n never be whOlly taken over by the eonscious education of

the schools. This organie group-cammunity could never be adequately re-

placed by the congress of elite., united only by their special capacities,

and divided by their cultural backgrounds. l

This 18 not a IIdefence of arietocracyll (a one-sided emphasb),

but a plea for lia forro of society in which an ariatocracy should have a

peculiar and essential function. 1I2 The organie requirements of society

demand that it should not become too exclusive: it has failed in its

function when it becomes a caste, or even when it 10se8 touch with the

levels of culture beneath it. At the Beme time itmust always be

IN.D.C., p. 46, IIThe elites, in consequence,will cons,iat

solely of individuals whose only common bond ~ will be their profes-
sionel interest: w~th no 80cial cohesion, with no social continuity.
They will be unite8:'ôY a part, and that the most conseiouspart, of
their personalities; they will meet like committees. The greater part
of their 'culture' will be only what they shere with all the other
individuels comprising their nation."

~.D.C. p. 471 Eliot adds the following embiguous amplifica-

tion of its politicel significance: "The levels of culture mey also be
seen es levels of power, to the extent that a smaller group'at a higher
level will have equal power with a larger group at a lower level; for it
may be argued that complete equality means universal irresponsibility;
end in such a society as l envisage, each individual would inherit greater
or lesa responsibility towarda the commonwealth, according to the posi-
tion in society which he inherited -- each class would have somewhat dif-
ferent responsibilitiee. A democracy in which everybody had ~n equal
responsibility in everything would be oppressive for the conscient10us
and licentious for the rest." l confess l cannot say what Eliot had in
mind by !lequal powers"; elsewhere he has made it clear thatthe social
pre-eminence of sueh a elass in modern society would depend on the res-
pect and pre.tige it oould win for itself. Besides his continuous res-
pect for England's "modest country familie." and their role in the rural
community, we must remember his continuous irritation at the modern Rouee
of Lords, the Press Barona, and the Conaervative Party.
One of Laski's best essaye waB that on The Danger of Being a
Gentleman;. (London, 1932), in which he sketched that tribe'e "political
failure." This theme of Arnold's i8 only borne out by the eerlier writing.
of Eliot.
pOisible for the most deserving to enter freely into the composition

of elites and even the elite. But the elite must continue, as it always

has done, to be informed by its basic connexion to a dominant class.

As he haQ said earlier, the elite, though basically hereditary in compo-

sition, must alwaYi be

Mrefreshed by the addition and assimilation of new

members -- provided that the rush of new recruits is
at no time so numerous as to be overwhelming, by the
adoption of those individuals of exceptional gifts
who posseis the sole qualification of achievement."l

AlI thii does not strike us as a criticism of existing democ-

racy, at least as it is found in England; but aa an attack on that ideal

of a cla8s1es8 society which iO many intellectuals would wish to see

imposed upon it. Eliewhere Eliotls criticism has been more immediate,

especially in regards to education. He feel. that what Coleridge had

warned against has largely come about, and that education has been largely

replaced, for utilitarian purposes, by instruction in various facultie.

and skills. Like Babbitt and More, he is waiting for the re-establish-

ment of the Clas.ics as the ba.ia of higher education: a reaction

against the educational ideals of C. F. Eliot, John Dewey and other. of

2
the late 19th Century, which seems at last to be gaining ground.

IN.D.C. Ca) p. 1)6. Cf N.D.C., p. 4~

2Eliot expres8ed intereat in the classical educational experi-

ments of Canon Iddings Bell in America. But alas, to the wild .train.
of Hindemith end the Modern Denee, Berd Col1ege hes taken over the
buildings of St. Michee1 1 •• Bel1 1 a ideei have, however, reoent1y
received publicity in this country through the writings of Dr. Neatby.
Cf. IlThe Problem of Education,1l loc.cit., p. 11.
 O"

He haa attacked the current overwhelming emphaais on maas-

education for its contribution to a fact we cannot contesta the con-

tinued deterioration of univeraity educational standards through the

1ast generation. And he has repeated1y auggested that it is time we

asked whether, in the interests of 'equality', we were not in fact

giving many people too much educationl more, that ia, than they either

desired or could profitably assimi1ate into their 1ater 1ife.

But in the Notes, he avoids such bitter1y contested ground for

more limited observations. He warns against the danger of always plan-

ning education towarda stated ends, which nec8ssarily prejudge the

nature of education -- whether the end be "the full development of pers on-

ality" or membership "in a democracy." Here indeed ia the beginning of

that conacious manipulation of education, which to Mannheim may be

totalitarian but is nacessary. He warn. aboya aIl againat too heavy a

reliance on the ideal of education for everybody, and against the

prevalent aesumption "That Education ia aomething that everyone wante.· '

He warna against the growing divorce of one'e education fr om onele future

atatus in life (so that Education "has become an abstraction"); and the

resulting phenomenon, which he claims is uniquely modern,of the "half-

educated. ul

1N.D.C., pp. 102, 108 "In earlier ages the majority could not
have been .aid to be 'half-educated' or lesa; people had the education
necessary for the functions they were called upon to perform. M Though
l am large1y in sympathy with the import of such remarka, l must obaerve
that hia use of the past ia egain es a~. l do not know at whet age
an educational system waa ever idea11y adapted to the social conditions
around it; and l suspect that Eliot'; remarks would apply only to that
population which had had no positive education at all.
 i, 1
, "

And all of this leads to the ultimate warning against concluding tram

the cultural disorder of to-daye "that · education for everybody is the

1
means we must employ for putting civili.ation .... together again."

This disheartening stress on the limited value of education,

even for the maintenance of urbanity and "group cUlture," ia the domi-

nant note of the book, and what distinguishes it moat from Eliot's

earlier writings. Then, like Babbitt, he had pointed to educational

reform as the most we could do towards the conscious preservation of

our culture. Now, disturbed by the growing and pernicious identification

of culture with what can be transmitted by education, he is exclusively

2
occupied with depreciating what can be done through thia means.

In this way he faila to maintain the tradition of Ooleridge,

the Arnolds, and the New Humanists, for whom education was the urgent

challenge in the battle to preserve our civilisation. He does not even

re-iterate his own remarks, at the point where we would expeot them,

ooncerning the importance of eetablishing unit y in our educational

systeml a unit y built about those two great mainstaya of our higher

culturel the Olassics and the Ohurch.

lN,D,O., pp. 108-109.

2
Eliot opened the notes with the profound observation that
the "three senses of culturel! "can be best apprehended by asklng how
far, in relation to the individual, the group, and society as a whole
the conscioua aim ta achieve culture has any meaning." (N.D.O., p. 20)
By this the mediate quality of group-culture 18 weIl distinguiahed.
It ie organie and hence largely unconsoious; at the seme time, the
importance of education cannot be denied. Oonaider, for exemple., the
Public School, the First and Fourths at Oxford, even the Grand Tour and
the dinners at AIl Souls'. But in this book Eliot wishes to talk only
of the organio background~ the groupa of the family and never of the
school. This bias ia not found elsewhere, e.g. N.D.O. (b) (p. 68).
 g8'

And this leads us to one of the most .triking anOmalies of

the bookl that in an entire chapter on "Education and Oulturel he does

not make one reference to "the first important auertion" of the bookl

namely, the relation of culture and religion. We saw in the Ohristian

Society how the problem of a unified Ohristian alite devolved upon that

of a more unified and Ohristian education. In the early Note., the

problem of a re-unified culture is eeen to re-open the seme prob1ems

"We need, in fact, if we are to renew a Ohristian

culture, to supply our Oulture B with a lait y (to
say nothing of the priesthood) of men and women whose
intellect and senaibility qualify them for a higher reli-
gioue education than is at pre.ent, for the laity, ob-
tainable. The Ohrietendom of the future cannot afford
to do without an élite among the laitYJ and if we really
mean Ohristendom, . and not merely a body of cultivated
church people, these will ' ! be the seme people in
whose guardianship will repose Oulture B in the seouler
aenae, for it will, necessarily, be the seme culture."l

Of a11 this, in the final Notes, there ie not a wordz pre-

sumebly becauae we are not establishing any norma, but merely defining

a word~ (Instead, we are given the not very memorable observation,

that there muet be a "balance of unit Y and diversity in religion")

lN.D.O. (b), p. 68. (I must warn against drawing conclu.ions

from the differencea between this and the final versionl the former
having been written specially for inclusion in a volume of church
essayl.)
Eliot proceeds to distinguieh between the religious education
of children, which will be largely unconscious, derivin~ from the
family and environment and the culture of eociety ae a wholej and the
religious education of those of more adult years, for whom "a procass of
conscious re-integration of religion and culture i8 appropriata." We
require "higher standards of training of the religious intellect.and
sensibility among the lait y, a higher standard of culture emong the
priesthood. "
 Yet we are told that gradations in society are necessary to

the preservation of a healthily unified oulture, and that "Equality of

Opportunit1 ia a dogma. But his important argument conoerning the in-

terdependent unit y of culture and religion is not related to education

at aIl, but is used only to underline the cultural .ignificance of one'.

early life in the family. And so, l feel, Eliot's .tress on merely

'dafining' culture leaves us with an unbalanced pictural he has .tressed

the (undeniable) importance of the family, while saying nothing about

.bat can and perhaps must be done through education. In this respect

the Notes do not supplement the Ohristian Society; and they have been

frequently criticized for their obvioue neglect of the higher institu-

tions of cultural transmission. (One of the most important of these ia,

or was, the Ohurch itself; which as Eliot has always insisted wae once

the prime exemple of an elite.)

Should we then conclude that Eliot's political writings have

ended, "not with a bang but a whimper?" One ie tempted at fir.t glanee

to say this, when one recalls the vigorous polemic of the Commentariea in

the Criterion. But we must judge the value of the Notee fram their

content, and here there are three crucial questions to be asked. The

first, how far do we agree that the maintenance of a higher and basically

unified "group culture" la neeeeeary for the health of culture aa a

whole? The second: how far is the maintenance of this higher restricted

culture dependent on the maintenance of higher restricted privilege of

birth? The third: can the unit y of this culture, and of culture a.

a whole, only be maintained as a religioua unityT

IThe alert reader will obaerve that l neglect Eliot'. obeefva-

tions concerning regionalism. l teel that their role in the Note. il
ancillary, and that we have already dealt with them adequately. Of.
supra. pp. 30'J 5$.
 l would auggeat that on the first point Eliot cannot be contra-

dicted. The Notes are of immense value, if only becauae they point to

one of the chief deficiencies of present culture and education. And in

an age when we have heard so much about planning for "elites", he haa

rightly directed our enquiry to the problem of maintaining "the elite. nl

On the second question there will be (and has been) violent disagreement.

l feel that Eliot is right in .tressing that the transmission of higher

culture can only be part1y consciousj and that we cannot afford to

destroy the organic background of auch a cultuée, auch as the family

life of aooia11y pre-eminent individuals. But perhapi such observations

ahould have been dieaociated from talk of 'aristocracy' and 'privilege',

which auggeat a ichematic rather than a natural stratification of aociety.

From another point of view, Eliot'e observations would suggeit that

gredations of culture end social responaibility are endemic in so fer

as they are not conaciously planned againat: in any type of society,

because of the orgenic importance of early childhood, the children of

the pre-eminent will to a greater or lesa degree tend to 'inherit'

(or acquire) a senae of personal responsibility as weIl es sooial

recognition. 2

lEliot refers this problem to Mannheim' s "sociology of the

intelligentaia," (N.D.O. (a), p. l;6~ though, aswe have seen, Mann-
heim has fai1ed to deal with this p&rticular prob1em.

. 2.rhus, to attack . in an unqual1fied way, Il A democracy in whlch

every~ had an equal respons'ibility ritl· everything" (N.D.O., p. 47)
18 to attack a ohimaera. Eliot seems here almoit deliberately to be
confusing the issue.
 ;;1 • ..,

From thia very fact, it is quite possible to advocate "equa1ity

of opportunity" without intending to .ubatitute for c1aases lI a1ites

of braine, or perhaps on1y of aharp wita"; and Eliot of coursa admita

1
thia. Neverthe1ess, l think it ia unfortunate that he haa raised such

a hue and cry by a frontal attack on such a wide1y-he1d slogan. As

with the attack on 11ibera1ism l , E1iot t s object seems to be the pre1tm-

inary one of bruieing our prejudices, provoking not criticism eo much

. 2
aa a cry of engulsh. Eliot might eaai1y have distinguiahed here between

lN.D.O., p. 10;. Eliot mekes it c1ear, but perhaps not c1ear

enough, that he i. attacking only the dogmatic and uncriticized form
of thie idea1; aS80ciated with "the belief that supariority ls a1ways
auperiority of intellect, that some infa11ib1a method can be deslgned
for the detection of intellect, and that a system can be devised
which will infallib1y nourish it." (p. 105)

2There ia a sense in which Il equa lit y of opportunity"( espedially

in education, where he attacka it) forms an integre1 part of Eliot/iii own
idea1. The virtue which he exto1s in medieeval and 17th Oentury educa-
tion was its democratic qua1ity of "level1ing-up," providing a meane
whereby brilliant co~onere of lowly birth, such as Thomas A Becket,
could rise to the top.
Renee l wiah Eliot, (for the sake of c1arity and at the
.acrifice of his love of 1eg-pu~ling) had not suppressed from the Note.
the distinction which he had drawn between the dogma of Equa1ity and the
idea of Equality of Opportunity. (N.D.O. (c), p. 509). At that time he
quoted with approval the fol1owing sentence fram a 1etter to the Time.
of Dec. 21, 1940, signed by the Archbiehopa of Oanterbury and York, the
Cardinal Archbishop of Weetminster, and the Moderator of the Free Ohurch
Oouncill "Every child, regardless of race or c1ase, should have equal
opportunities of education, euitable for the development of his pecullar
capacitiee. Il
I_do not believe that, by the final version of the Notes,
his fundamenta1 views had changed. But alas, if we are to take the
wry-faced master aerious1y on p. 10; of that volume, then the four
above aignatories are a11 of them guilty of IIJacobinism in Education.·
opening the opportunitiea of euperior education to thoee of euperior

ability, and restricting the opportunitiea of superior education to

those of superior ability. The former aeeme to be desired by everyone

to-day. The latter, under the guidance of the Dents and Happolds whom

Eliot attaoks, has already been partly true of English education since

the var. And many have found cause to agree with Eliot that

UThe proapect of a .ociety ruled and directed only

by those who have paased certain examinations or eatis-
fied teat. devised by psychologists ie not reassuring. U
1
Here for once his language might have beenconsiderably .tronger.

Finally, as we have seen, the observation "that no culture

has appeared or developed except with a religion," raiael many queltions

about Eliot's political theory that are wholly ignored in the Notea. 2

If the remark appIiea to the historie genesis of cultures, then it ia

of course not only true but wholly innocuous. But nearly aIl the

IN.D.O., pp. 103-104. We cannot leave Eliot'. desiderata

concerning a "dominant clals,M without yet another reference to his
anti-humanitarian bia81 his suggestion, for example, that the dis.o-
lution of the Irish ari8tocracy, the 'flight of the wild geeae'
"is perhaps a aymbol of the harm that England has done to Ireland -- more
aerious, from thia point of view, than the maaaacres of Oromwell, or
any of the grievances which the Irish most gladly reeall." (N.D.O.,
p. 45) And l do not ha.itate to commend to the humanitarian the con-
sideration of the senle in which this valuable remark il true.

2Eliot's warning again.t the identification of 'culture' and

'religion' has not always been taken seriou8ly. Yet he edmitted the
posaibility that uaome inferior or materialiatic religion, might bloaaom
into a culture more brilliant than that we can show to-day. That would
not be evidence that the new religion was true, and that Ohristianity
WBI falae. It would merely prove that any religion, while it la.ts,
and on its own level, gives an apparent meaning to life, provide. the
framework for a culture, and protecta the mas. of humanity from boredom
and despa1r u N.D.O., p. 32.
tearned pretenders to Kulturgeschichte and Kulturmorphologiel Marx,

rrobeniu8, Lamprecht, Spengler, Brooks Adams, and the rest, detect a

progressive seculerizatian of a culture, the diminution of it, religioua

character, as it advances in age. Eliot feela that this is only true

of a culture on its conscious level. Subconsciouely this binarity of

culture and religion cannot be extirpatedl Uit is that upon which ve

bUild. 11 And 80 it ia true, as he said before, that too great a contra.t

between culture and religion becomel Intolerablel if it ia not resolved

in a more complex unlty, it will alvays tend ta revert to a simpler.

This is again offered as the explanation of tota11tarianiam. 2

So far this ia an enalyais with which most intelligent liberal.

(such as Ortega y Gaseet) would regretfully egree, while still holding

them out the hope that our religiou8 impulse can be disciplined and

confined, without being socially re-integrated. To their left are thoae

who share Mannheim's faith in the social planning and regulation of this

religious impulse, or in the replacement of e aupernatural by a positive

religion. Thaae latter men of course show far more interest in Eliot'e

lN.D.C., p. 68

2I feel it ia worth repeating Eliat's remarks at this point:

"Ta the unconscious level we constantly tend ta revert, a. we find con-
ecioueness an excessive burdenj end the tendency towerds revers ion may
explein the powerful attraction vhich totalitarien philolophy and practice
can exert upon humanity. Total1tarianismappeala to the desire to
return to the womb. The contreat between religion and culture im-
posee e strainl we e.cape from this strain by ettempting ta revert
ta an identity of religion end culture which prevailed at a more primi-
tive stage; as wBen we indulge in alcohol as an anodyne, we consciou.ly
.eak unconsciousnesl. It i8 only by unremitting effort that we can
per.ist in being individuels in a society, instead of merely members
of a dieciplined crowd." (N.D.C., p. 68; cf. I.C.S., p. 51)
desiderata concerning the need for a common faith. l

But no more than the liberals will they agree with the old

man who, gently but firmly, suggest~ that the religioua basis of our

culture is still Ohristian, that the re-unification of our consciouB

culture must return us to ~k~logy, and that

"without a common faith, a11 efforts towards

drawing nations closer together in culture can
produce only an illusion of unity.1 2

Still, the liberal, the radical, and the Christian theorist

are standing together on the deck ,of the same battered ship, aeeking to

aail between the sudden aharp rocks of totalitarianism, to the wind-

ward side, and, to the lee, the perennial shoals of anarchy. All three

are faced with the same problem of unit y which Eliot raises. Perhapa

each, in his own way, might agree with a note which Eliot had sounded in

19;0 -- a note on which l think it fitting to end this thesia,

KI believe that at the present time the problem of
the unification of the world and the problem of the uni-
fication of the individual ~ , are in the end one and the
aeme problem; and that the aolution of one is the solu-
tion of the other. Analytical psychology (even if ac-
cepted far more enthuaiastically than l can accept it)

lSuch a8 Sidney Rook, who looka forward however to a damo-

cratic soc1alist society, in which Mit will be the teacher dedicated
to the scientific spirit and the democratic faith, and not the prieat,
who will , béar the chief responsibility for strengthening and enrich-
ing a common faith.· ("The Dilemma of T. S. Eliot," Nation, Jan. 20, 194;,
pp. 65',=-1' (,_.11).) _
, It would be tedious to ask again whether the critical rather
than the ar~irmative attitude ie not the only basis of both science
and democracy. It ia more interesting to observe the intereat shown
in the Notes by the left-wing avant garde (in the Partisan Review,
the Nation, and the New Republic. inter alla) while they were almoat
ignored or derided the popular and liberal press.

2N• D. C., p. 8;
 ::ta.

can do little except produce monstersj for it is at-

tempting to produce unified individuals in a world
without unit y; the social, political, and economic
science. can do little, for they are attempting to
produce the great society with an aggregation of human
beinge who are not unite but merely bundlea of inco-
herent impulses and belief.. The problem of nationa1-
ism and the problem of dissociated pereonalities may
turn out to be the same. Ml

1
"Religion without Humanism, 11 in Foerster, (ed.) Humanism
and America (New York, 19,0), p. 112 (cf. "Catholicism and
International Order," E.A.M., p. 12,.) In thia article Eliot promised
"an extensive seque1,· but this, perhepa, could never have been written.
Instead, we conc1ude,fittingly, with Eliot'e final sentencel "The
relevance of this paragraph to what precedes it will, l hope, appear
upon examination. M
 CHAPl'ER XI.

CONCLUSIONS

"Opinions is all right, 80 long as people

donlt start acting on lem n
Old Man, in G. B. Shaw, Candida

At the end of the last chapter, l suggested that the problem

of unit y, or the re-interpretation of order in a mass-society, was a

common problem facing all of us. And l suggested that the liberal, the

radical, and the Christian theorist had this further element in commont

the most far-sighted of them that looked beyond a narrowly Ipolitical l

solution of this condition of our society and culture, ta the under-

standing of this problem in the light of some broader whole.

It is important ta understand the broad basis of accordance

between Eliot and Liberalism, before we examine the differences. For

this we can do no better than compare him with culture-minded LiberaIs,

auch as Croce, Benda, Lord Keynes, Olive Bell, or above aIl that exul
l
immeritus Jose Ortega y Gasset.

Ortega and Salvador de Madariaga, as free-thinkers from a

Oatholic country, wrote like Eliot in the defence of culture against

its two modern enemiesl the "general flattening" of mass society and the

revolt of the individual against external discipline. They bath, and

Il include Croce for his obvious resemblances ta Ortega. But

weshould not forget his recent easay, "Why We Cannat lielp Calling Our-
selves Christians" (1943). In My Philosophy, ed. Klibansky, pp. 32- 47.
especially Ortega, spoke of the importance of preserving Europels

"difference within unitylla a problem which waB cultural and presupposed

l
the intercourse of cultural elites. And Ortega like Eliot has referred

to the general deterioration of thought, especially in politics, which

has followed on the modern habit of speaking urbi et orbi in the absence
2
of a defined audience whose cultural training can be taken for granted.

But Ortega and Oroce had the misfortune to live in those countries

where liberty and democracy were sacrificed in the name of order. In

times of political violence where there is still something to be pre-

served, the intellectualls preoccupations will naturally be directed

towards practical problems. As active liberals, Croce and Ortega exhibited

the working coherence of their ideas. Despite their fears of the mass-

society, they defended liberal democracy; for democracy was still the most

effective way of organizing (if we preserve the original meaning of this

word egainst its connotations of meetings and uniforms) the mass. And

their suspicions of the growing faith in "self-expression," did not abate

their fight for liberty. So far, of course; Eliot could:'nOt, have diàagreed

with them. The crises faced in England were less immediately a question

of political power than those in Italy and Spain; still, Eliot shared some

of Ortega 1 s apprehension concerning the "cur ious facilityll with which

- 5
Liberalism (or for that matter democracy) could snobbishly be denounced.

The lasue was elsewhere.

l
Long passages of Ortega sound much like Eliot: cf Towards a
fllilosophy of History, esply pp. 47-55. In part, this can be attributed
to their common debt to Max Scheler.

20r tega, loc. cit., p. 47. cf. Eliot, N.D.O., p. 89.

5cf. supra, p. 1~4 .

 We recall Paul Elmer More had objected to the aeathetic

philosophy of both Oroce and Ortega, that it left an unreconciled duality

between the values of the intellect and those of the imagination -- or

what Eliot was to call a dissociation of sense ~ sensibility. And l

think we might say that Ortega's later writings show the pressure which

this dueliam exerted on his politicel thinking. We Bee how deeply he

respected the Bame ideal as Olive Bell of tlcivilized man Il , -- the Stoic,

the hidalgo, or the English 'gentleman'. Like Bell, he saw this as more

than e higher form of cultural activity or life; it wes a 'calling l ,

manls"praeternatural destiny."l Yet he was more concerned than Bell with

the awerensss thet the extreme cultivation of Buch values might lead (as

it did for Babbitt) towarda something like Buddhiam, "the living negation

of Nature'l; and that in any case they did not ieem to fit the man of in-

telligence for participation in technologieal society; tllf one gives

himself up to meditation and ecstasy, it is not likely he will discover

the automobile. Il

l can do no more than hint at what Beem to me to be the orgenie

difficulties of the liberal theory of culture, as outlined for exemple

by either Ortega or Olive Bell. But Buch a relianee on values which the

individual determines for himself, appears oppressively to restrict the

Beope of 'culture'. Indeed, it seemB almost to limit culture to that

which ia irrelevant to society and ita upkeep, creating a conflict of

pursuits which is difficult to resolve.

lMeditaci6n de la tècniea. (trensleted Schelk) (Stuttgart, 1949)

 If this liberal attitude towarda culture ie to predominate, it
ie possible that the phenomenon of Bloomsbury,l of the artist-intellectuala

for whom culture, like religion, has become a private affair, will become

more and more prevalent. And that maintenance of the tradition which

Arnold and Babbitt had seen aa such a great public responsibility, might

indeed become a amall private ritual in isolated country manors, unrelated

to the work and entertainment of the masses outside. This indeed was

the fate of liberal bourgeois culture predicted by Marxist critics between

the warst they could rightly observe the growing deficiency of any social
2
background to the art of the twentieth century. It was possible, too,

that the bias of "culture" against " soc iety ll would be followed by an

increaeing reaction of society against Buch culture. We have already

seen the word Ihighbrow l become a term of aocial opprobrium even in

Englandt a Fourth Leader in the Times of Mar. 25, 1941~ expressed just

Il repeat that the individuals of Bloomsbury had (through Keynes,

Harold Nicolson, Leonard Woolf, and "The Nation") the cl08est intimacy of
aIl Britieh intellectual groups with the working of practical politics.
l refer to a conflict between the values by which they lived; l do not
wish to suggest that in practice they "rejected" or "withdrew" from
society.
Nevertheless l believe that the conflict between their social
and cultural values (so perfectly illustrated by Bell's book) wes a
very reel one. In this respect l agree wholeheartedly with the Marxist
critic D. B. Mirsky rather than with Hr. J ohnstod 9 recent book.

2cf. especially (Prince) D. B. Mirsky, ~"rhe Intelllge~tsi~of

~eat Britain"; liT. S. Eliot et la 'in de la poésie bourgeoise, EGhw-cvs 5
t\)e(: •.'~1,O"f~N.~.(an article, as Eliot said, whose importance is vastly
greater t a an thet which would be suggested by its nominal subject).

~tlThe Eclipse of the Highbrow." p. 5

such hostility in the name 1I 0 f the common man ll ; in thie case /lthe common

man" turned out to be Lord Elton and (as Eliot asserted, and the cor-
·1
respondence amply proved ) the common English upper middle-class man.

Such phenomena are not encouraging. They do not in themselves

condemn or show an inconsistency in a liberal organization of society

or of education; many liberals are indifferent to the fate of b~lles

lettres. But they do suggest a serioue weakness at the core

a liberal philosophy of life and politics, as expressed in the writings

of Bell, Benda, Croce or Ortega. For such authors will not admit that

IIthe poetry is un important Il ; in the absence of a worldly or other-worldly

creed to fight for, they defended the way of life they knew in the name

of 'civilization,.2 And aIl of their writings show a dichotomy, indeed an

antithesis, between civilization as~an individual and as a social way of

lire. Of such liberal" Eliot would, l think, say (as he did of Arnold

and Babbitt) that they try to make culture a substitute for religion (which

is to exaggerate its importance); but that, without an organic social-

religious background, their culture becomes a negative phantom, Ilan empty

shell.n~ l suspect that the political commitment of such liberals was

lThis atteck wes the more alarming, coming from th et cless in

which Russell K:yk places so much feith. But it wes echoed not only by
the genteel, but by the scholarly. It is not out of place to recall the
suggestion of so well-read a person as Prof. Laski that Eliot was not only
undemocratic but sharing "the treason of the intellectuals ll because most
people could not underst~nd his work.

2There were in the 1940's liberel intellectuels to whom the

most certain criterion that Nazi irrationality and violence were undesir-
able, was the inability of Germany to produce good art. cf. Eliot's firet
opinions about the Russian revolution, supra, p. ~OO.

~(A Review of) "Civilisation: 1928 Model/l Criterion, VIII. ~O

(Sept. 1928) pp. 161-4 (p. 16~/
tempered in many casea with irony -- a deeper resignation to the fact~~

the popular scribblers of decadence were right, that our civi1ization

had indeed entered on its last stages of dissociation, and that we

should face the world with what Eliot ca11ed the ,ddark age Attitude"

the same apatheia as the well-read Stoics and Epicureans of the later

Roman Empire. l

The radical, or he who believes that we can plan and reform

ouraelvea out of such a situation, also appears to attach great im-

portance to the future of 'civi1ization' or 'culture'. The 'civilization'

envisaged by a Professor Laski or Lasswell, however, derives its values

2
from its orientation towards the sooial rather than the individual.

lr wish r cou1d quote more at this point from Lord Keynes'

delightful re-examination of G. E. Moore's Principla Ethica, and the
philosophy underlying Olive Bell's Oivilisation. ("My Early Beliefs,"
in Two Memoire, (London, 1949) (pp. 7;-10;). His remaining comforts
from this philosophy are voiced a little ominously:
IIr see no reason to shift from the fundamenta1 intuitiona
of Principia Ethica; though they are much too few and too narrow to
fit actual experience •••• That they furnish a justification of experience
wholly independent of outside evants has become an added comfort (!!),
aven though one cannot live to-day aecure in the undisturbed individua1ism
which was the extraordinary achievement of the early Edwardian days •••• "
IIThat ie why l Bay that there may have been just a grain of
truth when (D. H.) Lawrence said in 1914 that we were 'done for'"
( pp. 94, 95, lO~).
2cf • Laski, Faith, Reason, and Oivilization (London, 194~)
Laski, however, does not equal the enthusiasm of Prof. Lasswell'
IIIn a full democracy the songs, poetry, anecdotes and dramas portray and
reinforce the democratio ideal" loc. cit., p. 15
And Laski had far more sense of the importance of tradition
te a civilization than ie suggested by the unfortunate quotation
which ia belabeured by Eliot, N.D.C. ': p. 15
And we find that these culture-radicals l discern the seme deficiencies

as Eliot in the purely negative culture which Eliot calls liberaliam.

Our culture to-day ia in momentary decay because we lack the necesaary

social cohesion for a higher culture; and this can only be found in a
2
unifying faith.

Laski, furthermore, will agree that the faith on which our

civilization was once based waa Christianity; but it ia clear that thia

faith, being unreasonable, "has crumbled before critical examinationi"

80 that now no form of religioua organization l'can hope to effect the work

of renovation. n' This ia both the opportunity and the justification for

planning: it must re-eatablish on a rational basis, the social unit y

and positive dynamic power which religion once supplied. And so Laski

looks forward to the same "new civilization, Il inspired by the same

values and elite, as Sidney Rook: one in which

nit will be the teacher dedicated to the scientific

spirit and the democratic faith, and not the priest,
who will bear the chief respon~ibility for strengthening
and enriching a common faith. N4

IFor want of a better word. The Laski-Lasswell approach to

culture, becauae it is so widely held to-day among university political
theorists, has received many names, mostly derogatory, such as scientism,
gnosticism. l have sought not to prejudge the issue by the use of
pejoratives; and the word 'radical' has by now a reassuring note of 19th
Century respectability. Becauae l find it difficult to treat Professor
Laaki's and Professor Lasswell's views of 'culture' with respect, l feel
l should make it clear that l intend no judgment concerning their more .
specifie contributions in political science. To us, they are chiefly in-
teresting because, like Eliot, their analysis of the problems of 'politics'
turns to the problems of 'civilization l •

~aski, lac. cit., e.g. p. 79, L~well, like many American

political theorists, provokes our curiosity by using the Sorelian term
'myth': loc. cit., e.g. p. 4l.

'loc. cit., p. 79 (Thia ls where we came in: cf. Introduction,

p. I~ )

4Rook , "The Dilemma of T. S. Eliot,1I Nation, Jan. 20, 1945,~.b"-1' (f.l~

 .,1 . . . . .

Not a11 who plan for lia common faith ll intend that the City of

God should really be replaced by the Seventh Heaven of the Intellectuals.

To many, the bride of Christ is still intriguing:her proposed successor,

a bony blueetoeking. The rational faith suggested may be limited, rather

than total. And to-day we hear much talk of IIfaith in life, Il "faith in

man,1I or IIfaith in demoeraeyll -- even by devout Catholics euch as Maritain,

who see in humanism our only poesible eOmmon denominator for the future.

There ie indeed a limited as weIl ae a total senee of the word Ifaith l ;

and l do not see how Eliot could contest the value of that very real but

limited Ifaith l in democracy, shown by liberals like Lord Keynes, or

Christians like Reinhold Niebuhr. l But a Ifaith' which ie expeeted to

become the basis of our civilization, or the Bouree of what Professor

2
Laeswell calle lIour baeic goal-values" is eomething very different. From

the liberal point of view, it is an example of mispleced eoncretenees,

or what you will; from a Chrietian point of view, it is blasphemoue. And

Eliot ie right, l think, in suggeeting that such a faith beeomes what he

calls 'totalitarian l -- that ie, insofar as it ie suceessful, it will

eliminate the II confliets and tensions ll which have eharacterized our civi-

lization hitherto. For insofar as a faith in "human dignityll ~ provide

our basic goal-values, th en it ia indeed very silly and irrational to

continue to believe in God. And though moet American humaniste are affable

lEspecially in the new world, l think faith in, or love of,

one's country, can have a large role in providing meaning to our life.
Canada and America are still essentially unrealieed 'ideas l ; France and
Germany are cold political realities.

2The choiee of possessive pronoun is Professor Lasswell1a.

 :)-" 1

enough to allow people to believe in God if they want tOi l think it

is clear that most of them (including Professor Lasswell) show no

awareness of any particular reason why they should. That is why l am

tempted ta agree with Eliot that, as soon as we begin to talk of ultimate

fai ths, there are only two to choose from: what Eliot calls UFaith in

life u and "Faith in death, Il a religion of this world, and one of the

next. Radical and Ohristian agree that when a faith is called upon to

provide the basis of a civilization (and not merely inspire that fidelity

which is expected of marital partners and dogs), then that faith mUit

be unified. And insofa~ as a faith in man, or democracy, or anything

else of this world -- as soon as that faith is adequate; then a faith

in things invisible becomes quite ridiculous. 1

l must confess that l find considerably more solace from the

liberal ideals of criticiam and detachment, which hitherto have survived

this wide-spread, growing, and a1arming talk of "faith. Il (It is now

common to hear of Ifaith in liberalism', by which ia intended a 'faith in

criticism' and 'faith in detachment' J in short, ~'. ' a 'belief in un-

belief'). l cannot agree with Sidney Hook that either 'democracy' or

the 'scientific spirit' are benefited by those who approach them with a

spirit of "dedication, Il rather than with an open mind, and the seme,

Eliot points out, holdi true for culture. We are now at the level of

11 am not of course criticizing the very practical faith --

seasoned by a deal of what Eliot calls Iluncynical disillusion ll - - which
informed the lives of great democrats like Lincoln. One can only dep10re
this faith at the point when it becomes a substitute for religion. This
a1so ie a vice of intellectuals rather than practical mena and there is
no danger of confounding the voices of Lincoln and of Prof. Oor1iss Lamant
po1itica1 theory, where the true friends of democracy are not its

Idedicated l but its critics. l l have tried to suggest earlier (Ohapter

III) that herein lies the value (and the source of the irascibility)

in E1iot's earlier writings. Like Hulme, Wyndham Lewis, and so many

others, he was impelled by his distaste at our tendency towards be-

lieving in ourselves. His call to the politica1ly-minded for a 'dis-

sociation of idees' only criticized democrecy et the point where

'democrecy' (like 'culturel for Ortega and Oroce) became a substitute

for religion.

But in thia long digression on current professors of political

theory, we have so far failed to do justice to the intelligent radical

case. For the atheist-humanist, ev en the Marxist, religion ia cepable

of considerably more, perhaps infinite, sophistication: both Marx and

Lenin echo an older tradition in their ability to murmur, "But the end

is not yet. II And Trotsky, Eliot pointed out, can draw "the commonsense

distinction between art and propagande, and to be dimly aware that the

material of the artist is not his beliefs as held, but his beliefs as

felt (so far as his beliefa are part of his material at all).2

II think we can detect and deplore a tendency, chiefly among

American universities, but not unknown in England, to neglect the most
outspoken critics of 1ibera1 democracy, not from ma1evolence,but from
sheer inertia heving to assimilate an alien point of view. Perhape thia
justifies us in talking of the 'university perspective' of contemporary
political thought.

2The Use of Poetry, p. 136& "And he is sensible enough to aee

that a period of revolution is not favourable to art, since it puts
pressure upon the poet, both direct and indirect, to make him overcon-
scious of his baliefs as held. He would not limit Oommunist poetry to
the writing of panegyrics upon the Russian State, any more than I$~uld .
limit Ohristian poetry to the composition of hymna. u
 l have already expressed my opinion that no other writer of

thie school hae undertaken the planning of culture in a new society

with as much care as Mannheim; and Mannheim, we remember, planned for a

culture based on a religion that allowed and encouraged withdrawal from

the ~ffairs of this world. And l also suggeeted, fol1owing Eliot, that

Mannheimls thinking (like Ortegals) a1eo exhibited an unresolved anti-

thesia between senee and eeneibilitya in this caee, between the epirit

of planning and the spirit of religious ineight. For he seeme at the end

of his life to have faced the limitations of the radical approach and

to have faltered before a dilemma. The choies confronted him of making

culture and religion form part of onele planning; or of making onels

planning conform to onels culture and religion.

l agree whole-heartedly with Eliot, where Mannheim could not

afford to agree, that culture and religion, far more than the etate, can

only exist when rooted deeply in the organie traditions of the people.

So that what Burke said of the laws of a nation ie even more true of

planning in this sphere: that it can "go only a little way." And if

those radicals are right who say that the future unit y and vitality of

our civilization i8 at bottom a question of a "common faith,'1 then the

fate of our politics can no longer be divorced from that of our Ohristian-

ity. There are etill a few goods for which all manufactured substitutes,

all Isynthetics l , are inferior. The summum bonum (whether it existe

or not) ia one of theae.

l go no farther at thie point than t .o suggest two things.

Firstly, that Eliot has been more succinct than either the liberal or the
radical in datermining the requirements and conditions of culture.

This does not in itself refute the liberal and radical arguments: we

are not now at the level where arguments can be refuted. The great weak-

nass of an Ortega or a Mannheim is the importance which they attach to

a certain kind of culture: a culture which seeme likely to decline or

disappear under the political systems which they desire.

Secondly, the liberal and the radical seem both to exhibit

that dissociation of sense and sensibility, or separation of intellect

and the emotions to which we have so often referred. They separate

the activity of ima~ination and of reason, what Shelley called fO ~OLEL~

1
Unfortunately, it has not been within the scope of

this thesis ta suggest how this dissociation, in the individual, is a

dissociation of religious sensibility. (We have, it is true, referred

to Eliot's interest in Hulme's Oritique of Satisfactions, of which l

think it can be said that it sought to effect such a reconciliation,

intellectually, by the re-indenture of philosophy as a handmaid of theology.)

But we have referred at greater length to a corresponding dissociation in

2
society, what Eliot has called the dissolution of thought. Here

Eliot has pointed to one of the most serious weaknesses of bath present

liberal civilization, and any ideal society of plural elites: and this

is why we must take his desiderations of a re-integrated cultural-religious

elite 80 seriously.

lu A Defence of Poatry, n p. ~O. (The latter verb will not be

found in Liddell and Scott)

2S •E., p. 404, I.O.S., p. 38, N.D.O., pp. 24-25, 36, 86.

 l now suggest that in this "separation of the intellect and

the emotions,1I he has also indicated one of the most serious weaknesses

of contemporary political theory. We have observed this in the comments

of liberals and radicals upon culture and politice -- as a failure

properly to relate ends and means. And we began by obeerving the per-

severing dialci ::tic between two alienated approaches to politics, what

Mill called the Ooleridgean and the Benthamite -- the imaginative and

the practical. Eliot's contribution to political the ory would indeed

not have been very original or eignificant, were he merely another of the

po~~-critics who angered at bourgeois democracy. His aignificance was

primarily as a man of thought and secondly as a man of affairs; who, as

his life went on, sought more seriously and responaibly to challenge

the 'ideas' of our society. We might use a Romantic phrase, and say,

he sought to react as a whole man; if we remember that for Eliot, the

wholeness of man lies in perceiving that he is not whole.

If such words sound pretentious, we must remember Eliot's two

special claims to attention. He was, l think, without doubt one of the

best-read persons of any in his time who undertook such a taskl beside

the catholicity of his reading, the tastes of even a Babbitt or a Leski

(because of their special prejudices) seem quite provincial. (1 have

suggested that his reading in the history of political theory, narrowly

construed, was unbalanced and erratic; but we have seen that his true

significance relates to more general problems.) On the other hand, even

the man who had read and assimilated everything, would have thereby ac-

quired a perspective that was one-sided if not eccentric, as well as

un-natural.
 The lecond claim l think cannot be eonteated as to fact,

though it will be aa to import. And that is, that Eliot has written

aome of the beat English prose on political queationa ainee Matthew

Arnold. (Indeed Eliot, like Coleridge, may some day be read a~ much for

hia prose aa his poetry) And it is true that the unit y of a manls think-

ing will be seen in his style.

But it ia also true that Eliotla two political books, where

he seeks to impresa this unified vision most impartially, form a eurioualy

disappointing conclusion to his Commentaries in the Criterion, and to

those various promised sequels on our fundamental problems, which

aomehow were never written. The two last books seem at a loss when they

seek to transcend destructive criticism. Impartiality has not been won

by the sacrifice of invective. The common man is still hard put to

recognize the aspects of society and of culture which are important to

himl even if far too much has been written about the importance of

science and democracy in informing our way of life, it is still difficult

to graap the preaent relevance of a book in whieh theae are virtually

ignored. And he is dismayed by Eliotls blasphemy before the gods which

the common man holds sacredj especially by the "anti-humanitarian bias"

against his decent, neighbourly and thoughtful love of his fellow. 1

1
How seriously would Eliot have us receive the value-judgment
implied by his statement that New England was "ruined n by industrialism'l
He never shows hia curious indifference to such evils as witch-burning
more elearly t~an when he recalls the old Malsachusetts Bay Colony. He
·cannot but feel that in that isolated, cantankerous, often narrow,
bigoted and heretieal society there was more intellectual and spiritual
f1owering, more beauty of manne~ architecture, painting, and decorative
art -- and a local and peculiar beauty at that -- than is possible in
New England ta-dey, when Boston is five hours from New York by train,
and no distance at a11 by air. liA Commentary," Criterion. x. 40 (April,
19,1) pp. 481-490 (p. 484).
 One does not have to j oin an ~thical Culture society, or talk

. of "our civilization" in terras of w~nder drugs ane:. central heating, to share

tLel'le mil'lgivings. Certainly the youn~er Eliot s e<:'EiS to have used culture,

individual culture, as a !:leans of individual salvation: in the way he

afterwards regrettèd in the lives of Pound and babLitt. And that early

cosmopolitanisID seeras never to have been llholly re-integ ra~3d with his

organic background: it was impol'l~ible to r eturn ta the fanüly home after'

the G-rand Tour. '~le feel t hat J:;liot never quite adjusted this :iJ.:r.,ense anti-

thesÏ5 of his early lUe; and He feel (.thouSh the e~uple is clearer in the

case of Pound) that his culture did not prov icie him \'fith as much bah,nce as

he claim13 ta be ne cessary. In the strup,gle to orcanize, \. . e fe el that 50me-

thing has been left out. Lence (tl:.oW;h this is a notoriou5 Philistine

heresy) we suspect frOIï:' 4iot 115 life that his philosophy hasnot really found

room for ail the things which it a drr:its to Le i nportant. His enthusiasm for

the i'amily, his sli<3htly pedantic references to Ilocal culture 1 (by which

is k eél.nt nearly all that most men live for); t Lese sound a little abstract

fror:1 the r.:an who could o!ù~r live in London. l And "VIe Ifould not refer to his

personal existence in this Philistine fas hion, ciid we not feel (as with

Pound) that he had once relied too n~chon a s pecial and very restricted

sense of culture. His life I5till reminds us of Dabbitt's, and it is in-

deed possible that Babbitt tlknew tao much.!! His continuous voice of

l His explanation thOl.t London has its own !!loc4l.1 culture, Il becau!e it is
really a collection of villages -- no, this does not resolve this issue.
 404

culture and r:lii.turity l;-,ôi.Y seen at time~ to have forgotten that P1atonic

hint of ','lhich he once remincied us, "that nothing in thi:s vlOr1d i~ who11y

~eriou~. " And yet this P1atonic hint shou1d only bave been cop.firmed by

hi~ own Christianity.

l say this to suggest the ùirections in which .cJ.iot'3 po1iti-

cal ideas most need to be taken ..,rith .. f;r~in of salt. rl'here is a bia~

in favour ai' 13abbitt' ~ h~nitas, and awa;," frOIù ;'lhat BabLitt ca11ed

hw:nanitariani3nl. Chie1'l:.', we fee1 uncor:J.·ort~b1e before what is perhaps

tao great a condescen~ion tm'fards the Philistine. John stuart kU1 wa~
~

probab1y one 01 the greatest of these; hi3 capacity for he3itation ano.

doubt ntaKes l'liu stand head ami shou1<iers acove many of his 1ibera1 3UC-

cessors. He r-.ay or i.lay not h ::.ve been a Philistine; th..t \'muld not in

any case L'cake him a fa1se prophet. It is at lea~t as ir:lportant that

the I:lessage of hi11 contime to be taueht in our secondary 8choo1s, a~

it i~ that the message of Arnold be taught in the univer~ities. For the

labour of Lill, also, will never be o.one: other aspects of our ~ociety

beside Us culture, star.d in need of eterna1 vigilance.

 Also, we often wonder whether Eliot does not make his phantom

too tangible, when he describes the decline of culture to-day. l can-

not presume to judge finally on auch matters. Nevertheless, l would

have found the structure of his political ideas more complete, if they

had concluded with the Berne ultimate serenity as do His Four Quartetsi

IISin is Behovely, but

All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be welle Il 1

Clearly, however, his politieal ideas do note He cannot aeem to forgive

the behovely sina of the world, not, at leaat, in that delicate matter he

calls culture. 2

Nonetheless, culture i8 important; in the propaganda of democracy

ae a whole, and especially among the intellectuals, who continually pass

beyond religion in search of something better. The combined effect of

liberals and radicals will only make culture still more important in the

future. And it is undeniable that the consciously refined culture of

"the elite" maintains and develops (though it be many degrees removed) the

health of culture as a wholej even though there would seem to be long

periods of lafterglow l (of which present-day Europe may well furnish an

lllLittle Gidding, Il 11. 168-170, Four 9.uarteta, p. 41. Eliot i i

here paraphrasing the words of the mediaeval mystic Mother Julian of Norwich.
Ronald Knox has suggested that the peasimism of Pascal was not fully Chris-
tian, as it IIdid not emerge" into the full serenity of these words. One
wonders what Knox would say of the Pascalian element in his friend Eliot.
(Knox, Enthusiasm, p. 202)

2It is a natural failing of all comprehensive political theories,

that we tend to hear too mueh of the special needs of their authors. As
we are today most accustomed to the political theories of professora, pro-
fessional scribblers, and the petty intelligentaia, we are more accustomed
to their intellectual bias, which tends to set rather abaolute values by
the freedoms of thought and expression. Perhaps Eliotls own intellectual
bias ia not really more pronounceda it is just that he speaks from the far
more uncommon and hence unfarniliar viewpoint of the Iman of culturel.
example) when the two can continue to flourish independently. Renee it

ia no paradox that the fate of 'Christian sensibility' should be a

quêstion for political theory, or that its decay should contribute to

the decay of our society.

Most of us are a little way liberals, a little way radicals,

and still, in a little way, Christiane. We like to look at our world

sceptically, without previous commitment; we like to suggest improvementa

where it needs fixing. By so doing, we become 'intellectuals'. But when

our doubt and dispassion extend to our own intellectual activity, we be-

come lese and less anxiouB to sever ouraelves from the manifold experiences

of the pasto And the more we seek from the pest, the more 'civilized' we

become. Simply, we have read more. And the more we become "civilized,"

the more we tend to become "conservative ll -- though not in such a way

that we need ever approach, or forgive, "the stupid party." The more ."e

are acquainted with the past, the more concerned we are to preserve it;

for 'the best' is very good, indeed very very much better than ourselve ••

(To some of us, knowledge la succeeded by love; and, around the age of

fort y, we can perhaps expect a 'conversion'. At present, 1t is only the

knowledge that is in question.) To his dismay, the intellectual'e voice

grows more and more 'orthodox', firm though he may be in his 'suspension

of belief and disbelief'. Re writes BO that his new friends of the past

and future may approve; and therefore he is charged with 'contempt' of the

present. But most of us, l repeat, are liberals, and radicals, and orthodox,

only a little way. We would be grateful for a prophet who reconciled theae

claims. That too would be 'political', if the disintegratlon of the intel-

lectual class is aa politically serioua as has been suggested.

 - ... - ,

Here vagueness must suffiee: we have no time for what Mann-

heim would eall "a soeiology of the intelligentaia. Il But it i8 the elue

to Eliot's possible importance:not as a prophet, but as a fellow

sufferer in chaos. He has laid little claim to original thinking in any

special field outside of epistemology. Oertainly his significance gua

Ohristian philosopher ie out-shadowed by Maritain, gua Oariatian economht

by Tawney, qua Ohristian soeiologist by Temple or Demant. (Qua any such

functlon, indeed, he cannot be compared with these men; and inside the

church, hie influence ls understandably emall.) But his defence of the

clerisy intrigues us because of the strength of his free-thinking; his

defence of social classes, becauee of hie willingness to be 'revolutionary'.

Like ourselvee, Eliot also was "something of a liberal ll and eomething of

a radical too, as weIl as a Ohristian with some acquaintance of the arts.

In his attempt to adjust the claims of these various vocations, he must

be commended to the attention of aIl contemporary intellectuals, and

hence to the "s tudent" of politice.

But perhaps a final word ls neceseary in commending Eliot

(whose specialty le 'culture') to the specialist ln political theory. l

doubt it. The" specialist ll in political the ory is now an ana~onisml

himself a late feature of a liberal faith in the specialization of 'science'.

The most conspicuous feature of this century bas been the tendency to

what Ortega calls 'total politicalism' the accelera~ed expansion of

politice outside the former scope of poli tics. No longer ls this expansio~

merely economic an issue which Europe resolved in the 19th Oentury --

it has extended to the nature and purpos9 of education, and to the in-

fluence if not positive formation of public opinion.

 This growth has diminished, as well as aggravated, the value

of a special training in politics. It ie now les8 commonly suggested,

as it wa8 80 often in the 1920ls,that political acience could provide

the basis of a more rational re-organization of society as a whole

(though the applicability of ita suggestions to more technical problems,

such aa electoral systems or committee procedure, should not be contested.)

In the 19)0 1 8 one group of professora insisted that the clue to political

studies was now to be found in economicsj a competing group held that

the road ahead lay in analytical or social psychology. Meanwhile, out-

side the universitiea were those critics of liberalism who claimed that

the deficiency of our politics lay in its lack of philosophy.

We have attempted to show how Eliot falt that all of thes8

observations were partly true, though especially the last. As our poli-

tics become more and more Itotal l , the same must be true of our political

theory (and also of our economics, and our psychology). The answers to

all of these must be discussed in closer and closer proximity to the final

question of the end of man; and whether on this subject we profess ig-

norance, insight, or revelation, we are nonetheless back in what was

once the field of theology. l am convinced that on this question Eliot

waa not "confused,1I "immature," or "insincere," despite these allegations

from Laski, Dewey, Max Eastman, or the other 'social scientists l who.e

cries we have already heard. Indeed, Eliotls voice emerges above thia

din as one of both philosophie and critical acuity, combined with not a

little of that Iwisdom' in which he found political acience so conspicuou.ly

wanting.
 To-day, the political ècientist finds himself driven more

and more ta the discussion of 'method' or think1ng, and to the deflnition

of the objectives of our 'society', 'clvilization', or 'way of life'.

There are still a few like Professor F. O. S. Northrup who tell us that

political science itself can define these ends. Against such a view is

that of Eliot'e, that e techn1cal study can never replace the need for

wlsdom, nor our intellect isolated from its need of interacting discipline

by our emotions.

l find it hard not to take sides whole-heartedly with Eliot in

this matter. Politics ls both more and less than an art, and it is both

more and 1ess than a science. Oorrespondingly, l wou1d suggest that the

truths of politicel theory are mid-way between 'artistic' (or 'literary')

and 'scientific' truths. There are indeed isolable facts of observation

which can be dealt with as a science: some of these can even satisfy

our ('Benthamite') craving for calculable certainty. Yet we should

learn also ta read our political theory as 'literature', that is, our

reading and appreciation should not be too closely limited by our own

convictions as to what is right. For often the truths of political judg-

ment are, like those of literature, never the whole truth: they are re-

peated attempts to impose new form on intractable msterial. We ahould

beware of teaching politics as a 'science', if it tempts us to think

that we can ignore, as in physics, aIl texts and viewpoints but the most

recent and 'up-to-date'. Instead l think we should read, as Eliot suggesta,

by setting sside our democratic or other prejudices (though not so far 88

to put them wholly out of mind) in a preliminary "suspension of belief

and diabelief. d
 Then perhaps we ahall have more reaeoned discrimination when

we embark upon the selection and definition of our 'basic goal-values'.

They are indeed, as Professor Spitz has reminded us, in one respect at

least llke the flavours of ice creamj that is, no demonstrative argument

can help us. But if we believe in that taste which is the virtue of the

critical faculty, then we shall have the courage to discriminate. (Pope,

after aIl, ~ a better poet than Churchill.) And if we allow our

taste to guide us, then l believe that we ahall have to judge between

Eliot and those social scientiste we have cited in aIl the fundamental

questions disputed by them. The intellectual who believes in these

criteria of taste, will, l think, agree that Laski1s and Hook'a views on

civilization are among thoee university theories which Eliot called

"crude, and raw, and provincial," reflecting far too much of the hectic

immaturity which rulee the ideological marketplace. Eliot may have

written nothing as 'useful' as these latter men; but on the ultimate

questions to which we are aIl driven back, he is considered where they

are merely emthusiastic. To scmeone like Eliot, the 'basic goal-values'

enumerated by some social scientists, cannot but be intellectually re-

pugnant. Possibly, indeed, the wide circulation given to such value-

preferences can help explain the disdain with which the idea of 'liberal

democracy' was treated by the European intelligentsia between the wara.

The truths of taste, of tact, of discrimination, are not the

whole truthj still lese are they always the most helpful or the most

practicall but they stand in perpetual need of defence againat the uneasy

hostility of the utllltarlan or calculating mind. The Benthamite,

need1ea8 to say, will a1ways be in the majority, and thia is goodj but

the Benthamite need not a1ways strike out in outrage and anger, as Rob-

bine doee at Eliot, at what he simp1y has not tried to understand.

So the student of po1itica1 the ory shou1d read Eliot for the same reason

that he shou1d read aIl books that are intelligent and ignore those he

finds to be stupid. He shou1d read them, not because they are true;

but because, 1ike Mt. Everest, they are there. The belief and the truth

must be elsewhere: in politics, our be1iefs shou1d rare1y be more than

a continuous murmurj of our lips moving rapidly in assent and dissent.

Whether Christianity is to survive or to disappear as our "collective

faith," we should a110w neither politics, nor acience, nor culture, to

become a substitute.

The 1ast siren of the intel1ectuals will 1ikely be culture.

If l have warned so often against treating Culture as a muse, something

divine1y inspiring, l have 1ike1y been preaching to myse1f. But civi1-

ization, whatever it is, is (like happines8) a condition of something

else; and, as Christopher Dawson has pointed out, it is a pathway to

something better.

If l had written this thesis to suit my own pleasures, l wou1d

have defined culture at the outset aa 'organized collective irration-

ality'. By this means we could distinguish a society's cultural from

its economic (i.e. 'rational' or 'rationalized l ) activity.1 To-day we

1The distinction is clear1y one of degree, rather than kind.

The building of houses ia clearly an economic activity. But when the
Germans continue to roof houses with thatch and tiles, rather than tar and
tar-paper, we are aware of the cultural imponent in such activity. And
fir-bush on the ridge-pole of an incompleted German house is a fit aymbol
of a pure1y 'cultural' institution.
 "" , ...

are more and more concerned with the massive 'rationallzation' (and

consequent dislocation) of our society, which the last two centuries have

so eccelerated. The result, of course, cen be e more rether than lesa

complex society, so that we need not fear thet such rationalization

will drive culture out of our lives. But the higheat intelligences of

each generation soon find that, in the world they must learn somehow to

live in, 'rationalization', like 'reason', is not enough. This humbling

of the intellect can be viewed either from the individual or the 80cio-

historie point of view: but l suspect that the two phenomene are the

seme. To end on a slightly cryptic note, l would recall that to the

naive intelligence of the simple soul -- l'anima semplicetta -- religion,

too, will appear as 'organized collective irrationality,.l But l do not

wish to define religion in any way; only to suggest its fundemental

$ocial relationship to culture. Eliot's political theory i6 but one

of meny to-dey which have lad us back to this fundamental relationship.

We must continue to adjust the limitations of our reason, collective and

individual. In facing these limitations, we must ask how far this reason

can be emancipated, emancipated towards "science" from the claima of

either culture or religion, in a world which ia no better than it la.

l Hltis such a madneaa

As scaree befit us, were we not natural men.
But, being there,
AU honour and euatom do edorn it. 11
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
l. T. S. ELIOT
A. Primary ~ources

To give a complete 1ist of al1 the Eliot materia1 cited in this

the sis would be only to duplicate the purpose of the invaluable bib1iograp~
of Donald Gallup, as weIl as to approach it somewhat in length. lt has
seemed more profitable to 1ist only those writings of T. S. Eliot,
published and unpublished, which are most worthy of stuqy by those
interested in Eliot's political ideas. Complete bibliographical citations
ror all further quotations used have alreaqy been provided in the footnotes
to the main texte To facilitate the use of this bibliograp~ in conjunction
with Gallup's, l have used chronological rather than alphabetical arder.

1.) Books and Pamphlets by T. S. Eliot

The Sacred Wood. Essays on poetry and Criticism. London: Methuen and Co.,
192Ô~-

For Lancelot Andrewes. Essays on Style and Order. London: Faber and Gwyer,
1928.
Thoughts After Lambeth. London: Faber and Faber, 1931.

Se1ected Essays: 1917-1932. London: Faber and Faber, 1932.

The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. Studies in the Relation of
Criticism to Poetry in England. London: Faber and Faber, 1933.

After Strange Gods. A Primer of Modern Here~. The Page-Barbour Lectures

at the UIÙversity of virginia, 1933. London: Faber and Faber, 1934.

The Rock: A Pageant Play written for performance at Sadler's Wells Theatre
28 May - 9 June 1934 on beha1f of the forty-five churches fund of the
diocese of London. London: Faber and Faber, 1934.
Murder in the Cathedral. London: Faber and Faber, 1935.

Essays Ancient and Modern. l New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1936.

The Idea of a Christian ~ociety. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1940.
Reunion by Destruction. Ref1ections on a Scheme for Church Union in South
!ndia. London: The Pax House, 1943.

What Is a Classic? London: Faber and Faber, 1945.

Notes TO\-lards a Definition of Culture. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.,
1948.

1
. l have cited American edltions wherever these have been the sources
of the references given in the footnotes.
Religiou~ DraL~: l,~ediaev:ù .:00 Eodern. New YDrk: Bouse of Book~, 1954.

2.) Book~ .. nd Pamphlets Edited. or with Contribution:5, by T .S. Eliot.

Eliot, Charlotte. Savonarola. A Dr~~tic Poem. London: R. Cobden-

Sanderson, 1926. \iith an introduction by T.S. Bliot, pp. vii-xii.

Foerster, NOI'lJl&n, l ed.). HUlI1iUlism and America; .o.;;5:5ay~ on the Clutlook

of l-iodern Civilis...tion. New York: Fûrrar and Hinehart, 1930.
Contains IIReligion l'fithout lrum.-nismll by T.S. Eliot, pp. 105-ll2.

Baillie, John, (ed.). Revelation. By Gustê.f Aulen, l';a.rl B.-.rth, Sergius

Bulgakoff, L,.C. D'Arcy, T. S. hliot, \i;,lter E. Horton, \'lilli~
Temple. London: l"aber and Faber, 1937. '1. By T.S. Eliot': pp. 1-39.

Zabel, h.D. (ed.). Literary Opinion in America. Bss.:.ys Iilustrating

the Statu~, l'.ethods, arrl Problems of Criticism in the United
States Since the l'i...r. New York: hOlXper and Brothers; 1937.
Contains IIPoetry -.nd Propaganda," by T.S • .l!J.iot, pp. 25-38.

Authors Take Sides on the Spa.nish \Var. London: Left Heview, 1937.
Con~ists of answers ta a questionnaire sent to variou:5 writers
in June 1937. T:S. Eliot's brief reply appear:5 under the heading
"Neutral 'III on p. (29).

The Church Looks Ahe...d. Bro.,dca~t Talks by J.H. Oldham, l~urice B.

Reckitt, Philip h.. iret, Dorothy L. S..yers, LG. D'Arcy, S.J.,
V.A. Demant, T .S. lUiot. Lomon: F•. ber é~nd Fw.ber, 1941.
lITowardl!! a Christian l:l,dt ... in," by T.3. ~liot, pp. lo6-il7.

h.lvern, 1941. The Life of the Church and the G'rder of Society.
Being the Proceedings of the Archbishop of York's Conference.
London: Longman 1 s, Green, 1941. Conto.:.ins "Tlle Christ Ïé.'.n Concept
of Bciucation," by T.S. Eliot, pp. 261-213.

Friendship, Prop;resB, Civilisation. Three ',v'ar-time Speeches to the

Anglo-Swedish Society by the Rt. Eon. Lord 3empiil, .h.? .C.,
L... rold lhcolson, T.S • ..:J.iot. London: The ,,'.nglo-Swedish Society, 1943.
Contidns "Civilist.l.tion: The r;ature of Cultur.ü _~-31;,:;,tions," by
T.S. ~liot, pp. 15-20.

Reciitt, J..<:.urice L. (ed.). Prospect for Christenè.om. ';':;ssays in Catholic

Social ~i.econstruction. Lonc:on: FL.ber ~~nd F;;,ber, 1945. Cont .. ins
"Cultur~;,l Forces in the Hllr.lan Oràer,1I by '", .S. Eliot, pp. 57-69.

ruot, T.S., .mà HoeUering, George. The Film of l.urder in the

Cathedral. New York: H-.rcourt Br.. ce, 1952.
3.) Contributtôns by T.S. Eliot to Periodicals
The fol1owing abbreviations are used: TLS (Times
Literary Supplement, London), and NEW (New English
Week1y). Articles avai1ab1e in book form are here omitted.
"An American Cri tic," New Statesman, VII. 168 (June
24, 1916) 284. Gallup has confused this essay on
Paul Elmer More with that printed in ~he Sacred
Wood: Gallup, op. cit., p. 80.
"London Letter," Dial, LXXII. 5 (May 1922) pp. 510-513
"A COffimentary," Criterion, III. 10 (Jan. 1925) pp. 161-163
"On the Eve, A Dialogue," Criterion, III. 10 (Jan. 1925)
pp. 278-281
"The Idea of a Literary Review," Criterion, IV. 1. (.Jp.n':'l
1926) pp. 1-6
"A COillmentary," Cri terlon, IV. 2 (Apr. 1926) pp. 221-223
"Mr. Read and M. Fernandez," Criterion, IV. 4 (Oct. 1926)
pp. 751-757
"A Note on Poetry and Belief," Enemy, 1 (Jan. 1927) pp. 15-17
"Political Theor1sts," Cr1ter1on, VI. 1 (July 1927) pp. 69-73
"A Commentary," Criterion, VI. 2 (Aug. 1927) pp. 97-100
"Mr. Mldd1eton Murry's Synthesis,1I Cr1ter1on, VI. 4
(Oct. 1927) pp. 340-347
"A Commentary," Cr1ter1on, VI. 5 (Nov. 1927) pp. 385-388
liA Commentary," Crlterlon, VII. 2 (Feb. 1928) pp. 97-99
"The Action França1se, M. r.laurra8 and Mr. Ward," Crlterlon,
VII. 3 (Mar. 1928) pp. 195-203
"Par11ament and the New Prayer Book," (A Letter to the
Editor), New Ade1phi, 1. 4 (June 1928) pp. 345-346
"The Idea1ism of Julien Benda," Cambridge Review, XLIX.
1218 (June 6, 1928) pp. 485-488. Reprinted in The
New Republi«, LVII. 732 (Pt. 2)(Dec. 12, 1928)
pp. 105-107 (which cited)
"A Commentary," Criterion, VIII. 30 (Sept. 1928) pp. 1-6
"Civilisation: 1928 Mode1," Criterion, VIII. 30 (Sept.
1928) pp. 161-164
"Three Reformers," TLS, 1397 (Nov. 8, 1928) p. 818
Il The Li tera ture of Eliacism," Cri terion, VIII. 31 (Dec.
1928) pp. 280-~90
"A Commentary," Criterion, VIII. 32 (Apr. 1929) pp. 377-381
"A Corn:nentary," Criterion, VIII. 33 (Ju1y 1929) pp. 575-579
"Mr. Barnes and Mr. Rowse,1I Criterion, VIII. 33 (Ju1y
1929) pp. 682-691
"A Com::'1.en tary , " Criterion, IX. 35 (Jan. 1930) pp. 181-184
"Poet:ry and Propaganda," Bookman, LXX. 6 (Feb. 1930)
pp. 595-602
"A. Commentary," Criterion, IX. 36 (Apr. 1930) pp. 381-385
"A Commentary, " Criterion, IX. 37 (Ju1y 1930) pp. 587-590
"A Com:nentary," Criterion. X. 38 (Oct. 193C) pp. 1-4
"A Co;nmentary, Il Criterion, X. 39 (Jan. 1931) pp. 307-314
liA Commentary, " Criterion, X. 40 (Apr. 1931) pp. 481-490

(A review of) "The Prospects of Humanism,1I Eng1ish

Review, LIlI. 1 (June 1931) pp. 118, 120
"A Commentary," Criterion, X. 41 (July 1931) pp. 709-716
(A review of) "Essays of a Catho1i.c Layman in Eng1and,"
Eng1ish Review, LIlI. 2 (Ju1y 1931) pp. 245-246
"A Commentary," Griterion, XI. 42 (Oct. 1931) pp. 65-72
"A Com:nentary," Criterion, XI. 43 (Jan. 1932) pp. 268-275
IIChristlanlty and Com:nunism," Listener, VII. 166 (Mar. 16,
1932) pp. 382-383
"Religion and Science: A Phantom Dilemma," Listener,
VII. 167 (Mar. 23, 1932) pp. 428-429
"The Search for l(oral Sancj:;ion," Listener, VII. 168
(Mar. 30, 1932) pp. 445-446, 480
"A Commentary," Criterion, XI. 44 (Apr. 1932) pp. 467-473
"Building up the Christian Wor1d," Listener, VII. 169
(Apr. 6, 1932) pp. 501-§02
"A Com'n entary, " Criterion, XI. 45 (Ju1y 1932) pp. 676-683
"A. Commentary," Cri terion, XII. 46 (Oct. 1932) pp. 73-79
"A COimlentary, " Criterion, XII. 47 (Jan. 1933) pp. 244-249
liA Commentary, " Cri terion, XII. 48 (Apr. 1933) pp. 468-473

liA Commentary, " Jriterion, XII. 49 (Ju1y 1933) pp. 642-647

liA Commentary," Criterion, XIII. 50 (Oct. 1933) pp. 115-120

"The Modern Di1emma~" Christian Register, CIl. 41

(Oct. 19, 1933 pp. 675-676
liA Gommentary,1I Criterion, XIII. 51 (Jan. 1934) pp. 270-278
IIThe B1ackshirts," (A Letter to the Editor), Church
Times, CXI. 3, 706 (Feb. 2, 1934) p. 116
"A Commentary," Criterion, XIII. 53 (Apr. 1934) pp. 451-454
"A 6ommentary," Criterion, XIII. 53 (Ju1y 193~) pp. 624-630
Il The Prob1em of Education," Harvard Advocate. OXXI. 1
(Freshman Number 1934) pp. 11-12
"A Commentary,1I Criterion, XIV. 54 (Oct. 1934) pp. 86-90
"A Commentary," Criterion. XIV. 55 (Jan. 1935) pp. 260-264
"Notes on the Way (1)," Time and Tide, XVI. 1 (Jan. 5, 1935)
pp. 6-7
"Notes on the \'lay (II)," Time and Tide, XVI. 2 (Jan. 12,
1935) pp. 33-34
"Notes on the Way (III)," Tlme and Tlde, XVI. 3 (Jan. 19,
1935) pp. 8.<]-90
"Notes on the Way (IV),II Time and Tide, XVI. 4 (Jan. 26, 1935)
pp. 118, 120-121
"Douglas in the Church Assemb1y~" (A Letter to the Editor)
NEW, VI. 18 (Feb. 14, 1935) pp. 382-383
"Views and Reviews (1)," NE\'/, VII. 8 (Jane 6, 1935) pp. 151-152
liA Cornmentary," Crlterion, XV. 58 (Oct. 1935) pp. 65-69
"A Commentary," Criterion, XY. 59 (Jan. 1936) pp. 265-269
 .",

"The Chur ch as Action: Note on a Recent Correspondence,"

NEW, VIII. 23 (Mar. 19, 1936) p. 451
liA Commentary," Criterion, XVI. 62 (Oct. 1936) pp. 63-69
tlA Commentary," Criterion, XVI. 63 (Jan. 1937) pp. 289-293
"Mr. Reckitt, Mr. Tomlin, and The Crisis," NEW, X. 20
(Feb. 25, 1937) pp. 391-393
"A Commentary,1I Criterion, JOlI. 64 (Apr. 1937) pp. 469-474
HA Commentary," Criterion, XVII. 66 (Oct. 1937) pp. 81-86
IIThe Lion and the Fox" (of Wyndham. Lewis), Twentieth
Century Verse, 6/7 (Nov./Dec. 1937) pp. 6-9
"A Commentary," Criterion, XVII. 67 (Jan. 1938) pp. 254-259
"A Commentary," Criterion, XvII. 68 (Apr. 1938) pp. 478-485
fiA Commentary," Criterion, XVII. 69 (July 1938) pp. 686-692
"A Commentary," Criterion, XVIII. 70 (Oct. 1938) pp. 58-62
t(J. Commentary)"Last fiords," Crlterion, XVIII. 71 (Jan.
1939) pp. 269-27§
"A Commentary (1)," NEW, XV. 25 (Oct. 5, 1939) pp. 331-332
HA Sub-Pagan Society?" NEW, XYI. 9 (Dec. 14, 1939) pp. 125-126
tl Chris tian Society (" (A Let ter to the Edi tor), NEW, XVI. 15
(Feb. 1, 1940) pp. 226-227
ttThe English Tradi tion: SOIDe Thoughts as a Preface to Study, tt
Christendom, X. 38 (June 1940) pp. 101-108 "
(A review of) liMan and Society," Spectator, 5841 (June 7,
1940) p. 782
(A review of)"Hopousia," Purpose, XII. 3/4 (Ju1y/Dec •. 1940)
pp. 154-158
Christian News~Letter, Nos. 42, 43, 44 (Aug. 14, 21,28, 1940)
Written by T.S. Eliot as guest-editor
"The English Tradition: Addres8 to the School of Sociology,"
Christendom, X. 40 (Dec. 1940) pp. 226-237
"A Commentary ' (II)," NEW, XVIII. 7 (Dec. 5,1940) pp. 75-76
.' 1.
 ""\ .-.

"Notes toward a Defini tion of Culture; H

I. NEW, XXII. 14 (Jan. 21, 1943) pp. 117-118
II. ~, XXII. 15 (Jan. 28, 1943) pp. 129-130
LII. ~, XXII. 16 (Feb. 4, 1943) pp. 136-137
IV. NEW, XXII. 17 (Feb. 11, 1943) pp. 145-146.
Reprinted \'1i th minor revisions, in the Partisan
Review, XI. 2 (Spring 1944) pp. 145-157. Published
after further revision as "Cultural Forces in the
Human Order" in Prospect for Christendom (1945) and,
still further revised, as Chapter l of Notes towards
the Defini tion of Culture. (,q~).
IIAristocracy," (A Letter to the Editor) Times, London, 49832
(Apr. 17, 1944) p. 5
"The Res,~onsibili ty
of the Man of Letters in the Cultural
Restoration of Europe," Norseman, II. 4 (July/Aug. 1944)
p;>. 243-248
"Full Employment and the Responsibility of Christians,"
Christian News-Letter, 230 (Mar. 21, 1945) pp. 7-12
"The Class and the Elite," New English Review, XI. 6 (Oct.
1945) p. 49Ç-509. Published in revised form as Chapter
II of Notes~towards a Definition~6f Culture
("Hommage ~ Charles Maurras"), Aspects de la France et du
Monde, II. 8 (Apr. 25, 1948) p. 6
"Middleton Murry' s • The Free Society'," Adelphi, XXIV. ·4
(July/Sept. 1948) pp. 245-247
"The Aims of Education: Il
1. Measure, II. 1 (Dec. 1950) p~. 3-16
II. Measure, II. 2 (Spring 1951) pp. 191-203
III. Measure, II. 3 (Summer 1951) pp. 285-297
IV. Measure, II. 4 (Autumn 1951) pp. 362-375
 T. S. ELIOT
B. Secondary Sources
In keeping with the principle of the first section
of this bibliography, l have listed only that secondary
material which is of especial interest to the student of
T.S. Eliot's political ideas. Other works and articles
used are given full bibliographical citation in the
footnotes to the main text; in sorne cases, an appraisal
of their value will also be found.
Beer, Ernst. Thomas Stearns Eliot und der Antiliberalismus
des XX. Jahrhunderts. Wien: W. Braumüller, 1953.
OOker, F.W. IIS ome Present-Day Critics of Liberalism,1I
American Political Science Review, XLVII. l
(March 1953) pp. 1-27.
Dakin, A.H. Man the Measure; an essay on humanism as religion.
Princeton: University Press, 1939.
Frosini, Vittorio. "Chiesa e Stato nel Pensiero di T.S. Eliot,"
Occidente, Rivista Bimestrale di Studi POlitici, VIII.
3/4 (May/Aug. 1952) pp. 191-224.
Gallup, Donald. T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography. Lond'on: Faber
and Faber, 1952.
Mordell, Albert. T.S. Eliotts Deficlencies as a Social Oritic.
Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius :Publications, c. 1951.
Nott, Kathleen. The Emperor's Clothes. London: Heinemann, 1953.
Robbins, Rossell Hope. The T.S. Eliot My th. New York:
Henry Schuman, 1951.
Spitz, David. Patterns of Anti-democratic Thought; an
analysis and a criticism. New York: Macmillan, 1949.
II. 'l'HE BACKGFt.Cmm CF 'l'. S • .i!:LICT' S POLITICAL IDEAS

A. Revlewa
It aeems foollsh to offer what would be, ln effect,
a bibliography of twentleth-century politlcal theory.
Instead, l have offered a short list of those periodlcals,
the study of which wlll cast most light on the activities,
wt:'tings, and readlnga of not only Eliot, but hls closest
associates and opponents. They are still perhapa ~hè ~r beat
if not the on1y source of informatlon on the po11te1l1gentsla,
and of the attitude of English men of lettera towards
poli tics.
One review has been of such import~mce ln the
composition of thls thesls that l must mention it first
of aIl, hoping that in the future It will continue to
reach at 1east nine hundred readers.
Crlterion, a quarter1y review. Edited by T.S. Eliot.
Vols. I-XVIII (Oct. 1922-Jan. 1929) (Monthly
Criterion, 1927-1928) Published by R. Cobden-
Sanderson (1922-1925), Faber and Gwyer (1926-1929),
Faber and Faber (1929-1939).

The Adelphi. London. Monthly and Quarterly. Continued

1927-1930 as the New Adelphi. Edited 1923-1930
by J.M. Murry, since 1930 by Max Plowmen and
Richard Rees. The Adelphl ref1ected Murry's
successive inte rests in romanticlsm, communism,
pecifism, and orthodoxy.
The American Review. New York. ~l$~ I-IX (April 1933-
Oct. 1937) Superseding The Bookman. A Catho1ic
and Distributist review, with articles by Hoffman
Nickerson, Austin Warren, a.nd Eric Gill
The Athenaeum; a journal of 1iteaature, science, the
fine arts, music and the drama. London: J. Francls
(et a11a)(1828-1921). Once the journal of F.D.
M8.urice; edl ted by J.M. Murry 1919-1921, durlng
which period Eliot was a frequent contributor.
Christendom; a journal of Christian Sociology. Publlshed
by the Lea~ue of the Kingdom of God. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell {1931- ). Edited by M.B. Reckitt, with
articles by Demant, Charles Smyth, Ruth Kenyon,
Bro. George Every, S.S.M., B.nd T.S. Eliot.
The Dublin Review; a Quarterly and Critical Journal.
London: Burna Oatea and Waahbourne. Edited
by Algar Thorold (d. 1934). A Catholic intellectual
with articles on art and politics by Christopher
Dawson, Montgomery Belgion, Michael de la Bedoyere,
Nicholas Eerdyaev.
The Egoiat, an individualist review. London: (1914-1919)
Edited by Harriet Shaw Weaver, aasisted by (1914-
1917) Richard Aldimgton, and (1917-1919) T.S.
Eliot.
The Modern Scot. Edinburgh: (Spring 1930-Jan. 1936)
United with The Scottish Standard to form Outlook.
Its edi tor, "Hugh ~lacDiarmid", later edi ted
The Voice of Scotland, shifting from Monetary
Reform to plans for a "Celtic U.S.S.R."
The Nation and The Athenaeum. London: (1921-1931).Later
incorporated with The New Statesman. When
re-organized by J.M. Keynes aa an out1et for the
Liberal Party and for Bloomsbury, Eliot waa invited
to become Literary Editor. Instead he contributed
reviews, 1923-1929.
The New Age; a week1y review of politica, 1iterature and
art. London: (1894-1938) Edited by A.R. Orage
(1907-1922)~ during which period Gui1d Socialism
and the avant ,&:jarde recei ved equal encouragement.
The New English Weekly and The New Age, a review of
public affaira, literature, and the arts. London:
(1932- ). The intellectual weekly of the
Monetary Reform movernent and of many prominent
men of letters. Edited by A.R. Orage (d. 1934) and
Philip Mairet. T.S. Eliot later joined the
editorial board.
The New Statesrnan and Nation. incorpore.ting 'fhe Athenaeum.
London. Edited by Kingsley Ma rtin. Included here as
useful companion-reading to the New EnSlish Weekly.
~Ïl0ticontributed reviews, (1916-1917).
Purpoae, a quarterly magazine. London: Vols I-XII (Jan. 1929-
Dec. 1940). Edited by W.T. Syrnons and Philip Mairet.
A literary and rnonetary reform quarterly with a
apecial interest in the Individuel Psychology of
Alfred Adler and the 80c110gical theorles of J.D.
Unwin.
The Times Literary Supplement. London. Interesting as
the 'official' or 'representative' review of
English literature throu3h thls periode
Eliot was a frequent contributor from 1919 to 1935.
The Townsman, a quarterly review. (1938- ). Edi ted
by Ronald Duncan, assisted by Montgomery Butchart.
A literary and a.grarian journal, linked with the
Monetary Reform movement and the Farmer's Action
Council.

B. Books
1.) Political Theorists
It has been difficult in this section to find
sufficient exact criteria of exclusion. The reader
who is especially interested in what l have called
the 'polintellectual' activities of Great Britain
is referred to the supplemental bibliography in
Appendix I. .

Arnold, Matthew. Culture and.Anarchy. Edited with an

introduction by J. Dover Wilson. Cambridge:
University Press, 1946.
Babbi tt, Irving ~ Democra.cy and Leadership. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1924.
__-=_. Literature and the American College. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1908 •
• Rousseau and Romantlcism. Boston: Houghton
---:-::'~

Mifflin, 1919.
Bell, Clive. Civilization, an essaye New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1928.
Benda, Julien. Belphegor. Translated by S.J.I.Lawson
with an introduction by Irving Babbitt. New York:
Payson and Clarke, 1929 •

---:--. • 'l'he Treason of the Intellectuals. Transla.ted

by Richard Aldington. New York: W. Morrow, 1928.
PB.w·son, Christopher. Religion and aul ture. London:
Sheed and Ward, 1948.
_ _ _ _ • Religion and the Modern State. London: Sheed
and Ward, 1935.
Demant, V.A. God. Man. and Society. An Introduction
to Christian 50ciology. London: Student Christian
~lovement, 1933.
Hulme, Thomas Ernest. Speculations; essaya on humanism
and the philosophy of art. Edited by Herbert
Read. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1924.
Lasserre,/P~erre. Le romantisme français. Paris:
Societe du Mercure de France, 1907.
Lewis, Percy Wyndham. The Art of Being Ruled. London:
Chatto and Windus, 1926.
Mannheim, Karl. Diagnosis of our Time; wartime essays
of a sociologist. London: Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trubner, 1943.
______~. Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction;
studies in modern social structure. London:
Ke gan Paul,Trench, Trubner, 1940.
Maritain, Jacques. R~flexions sur l'intelligence et
sur sa vie propre. Paris: Desc1~e, 1931.
__-=_. Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes,
New York: G. Scribner's, 1929.
Rousseau.
,
Massis, Henri. Defense de l'Occiq§~~. Faris: Plon, 1927.
Maurras, Charles. ROill2.ntisme et r~volution~ (Includes
L'avenir de liintelli~ence (1904) and Trois id~es
politiques ~1898) .) Paris: Nouvelle librairie
nationale~ 1922.

More, Paul Elmer. Aristocracy and Justice. Shelburne

Essays, 9th Series. Boston: Houghton l'1iff1in, 1915 •
• The De~on of the Absolute. New She1burne
----=-
Essays. Vol~ l. Princeton: University Press, 1928.
Orage, A.R. POlitlcal and Economic Writinga. Arranged
by Montgomery Butchart wi th the advice of !liiaurice
Colbourne, Hi1deric Cousens, Will Dyson, T.S. Eliot,
Philip I,lairet, A. l~ewsome, Ivlaurlce Reckitt, Vf.T.
Symons. London: Stanley Nott, 1936.
Penty, A.J. Means and Ends. London: Faber and Faber, 1932.
~~* . Towards a Chris tian Socio1ogy. New York:
Macmillan, 1923.
Reckitt, Maurice B. Faith and Society. A study of the
structure, outlook and opportunity of the Christian
Social Movement in Great Britain and the United
States of America. London: Longman's, Green, 1932.
The Return of Christendom. By a Group of Churchmen.
With an Introduction by Bishop Gore and an
Epilogue by G.K. Chesterton. (Includes articles
by M.B. Reckitt, Rev. P.E.T. Widdrington, and
A.J. Penty.) London: Allen and Unwin, 1922.
,
Seilliere, Ernest. Le mal ro~antigue: essai sur
l'imp~rialisme irrationnel. Paris: Plon, 1908.

Sorel, Georges. Reflections on Violence. Translated

with an introduction and bibliography by T.E.
Hulme. London: Allen and Unwin, 1916.

2.) Secondary Sources

Bochenski, I.M. Europaische Philosophie der Gegenwart.
Bern: A. Francke, 1947.
Buthman, William C. The Rise of Integral Nationalism
in France. Wi th specia.l reference to the ideas and
activities of Charles Maurras. New York:
Golumbia University Press, 1939.
Clement, N.H. Romanticism in France. New York: Modern
Language Association, 1939.
Eastwood, Dorothy. The Revival of Pascal; a study of
his relation to modern French thought. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1936.
Fausset, Hugh l'Anson. The Proving of Psyche. New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1929.
Friedrich, Hugo. Das anti-romantische Denken im modernen
Fra.nkreich; sein Sys tem und seine Herkunft.
Müenchen: M. Hueber, 1935.
Gerin-Ricard, Lazare de, and Truc, Louis. Histoire
de l'Action Fran~aise. Paris: Valdès, 1949.
Goldring, Douglas. The Nineteen Twenties; a general
survey and some personal memories. London:
Nicholson and "ia tson, 1945.
Graves, Robert, and Hodge, Alan. The Long Week-end: a
social history of Great Britain, 1918-1939. London:
Faber and Fa.ber, 1940.
Johnstone, J.K. The B100msbury Group; a study of E.M.
Forster, Lytton Strache;t;, Virginia Woolf, and their
circle. London: Secker and Warburg, 1954.
Lloyd, Roger B. The Church of England in the Twentieth
Century. London: Longman's, Green, 1947-50. 2 Vols.
Massis, Henri. Jugements. Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1923-24. 2 Vols.
________ • Maurras et notre temps. Paris: La Palatine, 1951.
Mercier, Louis J.A. American Humanism and the New Age.
Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1948.
Mirsky, Prinoe Dmitri Petrovich. The Intelligentsia of
Great Britain. Translated by Alec Brown. New York:
Covici Friede, 1935.
Nicho1s, James H. Democracy and the Churches. Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1951.
Roberts, Michael. -T.E. Hulme. London: Faber and Faber, 1938.
Soltau, Roger. French Political Thought in the Nineteenth
Century. Newhaven: Yale University Press, 1931.
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SUPPLEMENT
Some New AlternatiTes to Capitalism in British Political
The ory , 1931-1936.

The above tit1e i8 as tentatiYe as the work it

introduoes. l had hoped to supp1y a bib1iography on
The British Politelligentsia and the Depression; but
l s Ollll round tha t l had ne i ther the t ime nor the
faoi1iiies at MY disposal for such a task. The present
offerlng has no such clear definitlon. It show. some
of t he li tera ture surrounding the move .ents of ChI' 18 tian
80ciology, Catholic social act~on, and Monetary Refarm;
but it is clearly incomplete. ~t is not even a olos.
approximation to the books read b; Eliot himself in this
period, though Many of thoàe books are included.
Nor can l guarantee that the contents of this
supplement will aeet the u8ual standards or scholarly
aecuracy. The de80riptions of subject-matter, in
partioular, are almost entirely at second band.
Nevertheless, the original reasons for this
8upplement remain. It was intended, firstly, to reflect
the wide interest which was current in certain alternatives
to capitalism; and, secondly, to aoquâlnt the interested
reader with some of the key figures in these movements.
One will perhaps exouse the incompleteness of the
following essay if they agree that it is time suoh work
was begun. Rightly or wrongly, a great Many of these
items are overlooked by the 800iologieal and eoonomie
1iterature of the liberal universities, and by their
libraries as welle Yet l th1nk they adumbrate Eliot's
critique of British liberalism in the 1930 ' s. ETen
.here their dlagnosis and prognoals la not the same, they
seem to reflect some of the · general symptoms he descpibed.
 1931
Banks, Paul. Metro 01is, or the destiny of citiss.
1
C.W. Daniel. The follies of urbanization.)
Dawson, Christopher. Christianity and the New Age. Sheed
am Ward.
________ • Progres8 and Religion. Sheed and Ward.
Demant, V.A. (ed.) The Just Price. S.C.M.
____~~~. This Unemployment: disaster or opportunity?
S.C.M.
Hobson, J.A. God and Mammon: the relations of religion
and economics. Watts. (A rationalist demonstration
that religion has surrendered to plutocracy.)
Hyde, Lawrence. The Prospects of Humanism. Gerald Howe.
Kenyon, Ruth. The Catholic Faith and the Industrial Order.
P. Allan.
Lewis, Wyndham. Hitler. Chatto and Windus.
Mairet, Philip. Aristocracy and the Meaning of Class Rule.
C.W. Daniel. (Democracy by itself is inadequate, but
leaves room for the emergence of "uiocratic n
(self-elected) elites.)
McDowell, P. The Church and Economies. Sheed and Ward.
(The teachings of the Mediaeval Church on commerce,
usury, the Just price.)
Shove, Commandbr Herbert. The Fairy Ring of Commerce. The
Distributist League. (To show that industrialism lives
parasitically off agricplture.)
Symons, W.T. The Coming of Community. C.W. Daniel. (Th8
messages of Major Douglas and Dr. Adler combined, in
a di thyramb to the new communi ty. )
Watt, Lewis. The Future of Caiitalism. Catholic Social
Guild. (An argument for Neo-Corportatist" organization
of industry by a Catholic Professor of Moral Philosophy.
 1932

Baker, Augustus. Money and Prices. Dent. (Begins with

the Douglas theory; ends with legislated price-fixing.)
Dawson, Christopher. The Modern Dilemma. Sheed and Ward.
Douglas, C.H. Warnlng Democracy. C.M. Grieve. (A series of
monetary essays with a technical slant.)
Gardiner, Rolf. World without End. Cobden-Sanderson.
(Internationalism via the folk-dance.)
Garratt, G.T. The Mugwumps and the Labour Party. Hogarth
Press. (An ex-Labourite explosion sgainst Labour
Liberalism. )
Lewis, Wyndham. Apes, Japes, and Hitlerism. Uawsworth.

----• The Doom of Youth. Chatto and Windus.

Lymin~ton, Viscount. Horn, Hoof, and Corn. Faber and Faber.
(A plan to revive British agriculture.)
McEachran, F. The Unit Y of Europe. New Europe Group
Publication. (A cultural and rellgLous argument.)
Penty, A.J. Means and Ends. Faber and Faber. (Agriculture,
guild re-organization, the primacy of the Individual.)
Pope, A.G. The Alternative to Communism. Cecil Palmer.
(The pacifism, mysticism, and One-Worldism of the
now-forgotten "New Political Fellowship, Il whlch
included Nicholas Murray Butler, the Marquess of
Tavlstock, George Lansbury, and Arthur Kitson.)
Reckitt, M.B. Faith and Society. A study of the structure,
out look and opportunity of the Chxistlan Social
Kovement in Great Britain and the United States of
America. Longman's.
1933

Baker, ~ugustus. The Control of Prices: an outline of

prosperity. Dent. (Priee-fixing to end profiteering,
followad by the establishment of National Guilds.)
Dawson, Christopher. Enquiries into Religion and Culture.
Sheed and Ward.
Dearmer, Percy (ed.). Christianity and the Crisis. Gollancz.
~he liheral world and Christian Sociology.)
 430

Dyson, Will. Artist among the Banker8. Dent. (Calls on

all artists to engage in the battle for oredit reform.)
Gill, Eric. Beauty Looks a/ter Herself. Sheed and Ward.
(How art is to survive amid industrialism.)
________• Unemployment. Faber and Faber. (Calls for a
newartisanry, rather than the leisure state.)
Lewis, Wyndham. The Old Gang and the New Gang. Desmond
Harmsworth. (The ooni:PIraoy to keep the younger
generation out of politlos.)
Penty, A.J. Communism and the Alternative. S.C.M.
Porteus, Hugh Gordon. Wyndham Lewis: a disoursive exposition.
Desmond Harmsworth.
Sharp, Thomas. Town and Countryside; some aspeots or urban
and rural development. Oxford University Press. (An
attaok, not only on unoontrolled speoulation in
building and land, but also on the measures of town-
planning hitherto proposed.)

1934

Demant, V.A. God, Man and Sooiety; an introduotion to

Christian Sooiology. S.C.M. (Applies Christian
Sool010gy to suoh praotioal problems as armaments.
employment, and finanoe.)
Douglas, C.H. The Doullas Manual. Compiled by Philip
Mairet. Stanley ott.
Entwhistle, R.M. Religion and Revolution. C.W. Daniel.
Gill, Erio. Art and a Changing Civilization. John Lana.
________ • Money and Morals. Faber and Faber.
Goad, H.E. The Working of a cor.orate State. Nioho18on and
Watson. (Diseusses Italy. ith an introduotion by the
Rt. Hon. Walter Elliot, Ministar of Agriculture.)
Hobson, J.A. Democraoy and a Changing Civilization. John Lane.
Hollis, Christopher. The Breakdown of Money. An histor.lcal
explanation. Sheed and Ward.
Holter, E.S. The A.B.C. of Sooial Credit. Stanley Nott.
 '431

Kirk, E.T.R.-R. The Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of

Mammon? Industrial Christian Fellowship.
Peck, W.G. Christianity and the Modern Chaos. S.P.C.K.
Power, William. My Scotland. The Porpoise Press.
(Scottish nationalism against England and the machine.)
Reekitt, M.B. A Christian Sociology for To-day. Longman's.
(An abridgment of Faith and Society.)

Wilson, R.M. Monarchy or Money Power. Eyre and Spottiswoode.

1935

Demant, V.A. (ed.). Faith that Illuminates. The Centenary

.Press. (A group of essays by Christian Sociologists,
including one by T.S. Eliot.)
Gordon-Cumming, M. Money in Industry. C.W. Daniel.
Hudson, Cyril E. Preface to a Christian Sociology. Allen
and Unwin.
Kenyon, Ruth. Fascism and Christianity. Industrial Christian
Fellowship.
Kirk, P.T.R.-R. The Christian Attitude to the State. The
historieal development of the relation between church
and state. Industrial Christian Fellowship.
MacGeer, G.G. The Conquest of Poverty. A denunciation of the
present banking and monetary system. Gardenvale.
Mark, J. Where i8 the Money to Come from? With an account
of the monetary experiments of Guernsey, Schwanen-
kirchen, Woergl and the scrip and barter groups of
the United States. C.W. Daniel.
Oldham, J.H. Church, Community, and State: a world issue. S.C.M.
Orage, A.R. Politicians and the Public Service. (1)
(Reprinted from the New Engllah weekly.>
Orage, A.R. Seleeted Essays and Critical Writings. Edited
by Herbert Read and Denis Saurat. Stanley Hott.
(Orage's non-political writings.)
Pamphlets on the New Economics. Stanley Nott.
Wlth pamphlets by C.R. Douglas, the Marquess of
Tavistock, the Earl of Tankerville, A.R. Orage,
Hewlett Johnson, William Ward, Ezra Pound, "Alf're d
Venison," Helen Corke, Maurice Colbourne, Herbert
Read, Storm Jameson, Bonamy Dobree, H.M.K., A.L.
Gibson.
Planning for Employmen t. A prelim1nary study by s ome
members of Parliament. Macmillan. (Functionalism
arter the pattern of S.G. Robson.tne group includes
Harold MacMillan.)
Porteous, James A.A. The New Unionism. Allen and Unwin.
(A programme f'or full employment, family allowances,
and a functionalist second chamber.)
Reckitt, M.B. Relifion and Social Purpose. Three lectures
given to the ork College Diocesan Clergy School,
1934. S.P.C.K.
Scott, J.W. Self-Subsistenoe for the Unem 10 ed Faber
and Faber. Local and individual employment as known
in the Middle Ages.)
Street, A.G. Thinking Aloud. Faber and Faber. (Englandfs
dependency on her rural economy.)
Thomas, George Malcolm. Scotland, that Distressed Area.
The POrpOiS8 Press.(only a consciousness of ber
nationhood can lift Scotland out of her finanoe-
and-machine-made decay.)

1936

Bell, Bernard Iddings. A Catholic Looks at his World. The

Centenary Press.
Butchart, Montgomery. To-morrowfs Money. By seven of
tO-day's leading monetary heretics. Stanley Nott.
(The s.e ven are Gesell, Kitson, Soddy, McNair Wilson,
C.H. Douglas, G.D.H. Cole, and Jeffrey Mark.)
Craven-Ellis, W. The Rebuilding of' Britaln. Allen and Unwin.
(A practical plan for slum clearance.)
Demant, V.A. Christian Polit:. Faber and Faber.
Gill, Eric. The Necessity of Belief. Faber and Faber.
Hob.on, J.A. Wealth and Lite, a study in values. Kacmillan.
 <B3

Hollis, Christopher. The Two Nations. A financial history

of England from the standpoint of a monetary
reformer. Routledge.
Kenyon, Ruth. Money Matters. Church Literature Association.
Lewis, Wyndham. Left Wings o'Yer Europe; or, How to make
a war about nothing. Jonathan Cape. (Lewis, now
willing to be called a fascist, finds Hitler
nationalism preferable to a planned and united
world. )
Lloyd, Roger B. Christianity, History and Civilisation.
Lovat Dickson and Thompson. (To prove that civilisation
"is, in the last resort, spiritual. ")
Lofthouse, W.F., D.D. Christianity in the Social State.
The Unicorn Press.
Mairet, Philip. A.R. Orage, a Memoir. With an introduction
by G.K. Chesterton. Dent.
Oldham, J.H. The Question of the Ohurch in the World of
Today. Edinburgh House Press.
Orage, A.R. Political and Economie Writings. Arranged by
Montgomery Butchart, with the advIoe of Maurice
COlbourne, Hilderic Cousens, Will Dyson, T.S. Eliot,
Philip ~airet, A. Newsome, Maurice Reckitt, W.T.
Symons. Stanley Nott.
Peck, W.G. The Catholic Fa! th and the Soel al Order.
Ohurch Literature Association.
Plow.man, Max. The Faith Called Pacifism. Dent. (A plea
for Individuai and collective salvation by one of the
leaders of the 'AdelphI' school.)
Stapledon, R.G. The Land No. and To-morrow. Faber and !t'aber.
(Describes the Immense potential of land with modern
technology.)