"ELEMENTS THAT ARE WANTED"
373
says, "does not consider that if certain emotional states, certain
developments of character and what in the highest sense can he
called 'saintliness' are inherently and by inspection known to he
good, then the satisfactory explanation of the world must he an
explanation which will admit the 'reality' of these values." This
sentence, which could not have been carelessly written, indicates
that Mr. Eliot is perhaps closer than he would admit to the prag–
matic theology of Matthew Arnold which he so much disdains.
But the exact nature of Mr. Eliot's theology is not for the moment
important. What touches our problem of a whole new intellectual
world and what I should ]ike to take hold of, not only for itself
but for what it indicates beyond itself, is the morality with which
Mr. Eliot is concerned. "I am inclined," he said some time ago, "to
approach public affairs from the point of view of the moralist,"
and over and over again he has insisted that to think of politics
and economics as independent of morality is impossible: impos–
sible in an ethical sense-the political and economic theorist
should not
so consider them; and impossible in a practical sense–
the theorist
cannot
construct his theories except on the ground (often
unexpressed) of moral assumptions. "I feel no confidence in any
scheme for putting the world in order," Mr. Eliot said, "until the
proposer has answered satisfactorily the question: What is the
good life?"
Everybody, of course, approves of morality. Even Leon
Trotsky, who was suspicious of the morality of all moralists, spoke
well of it. But, like Trotsky, most people think of morality in
a somewhat ambiguous fashion: it is something to he cultivated
after the particular revolution they want is accomplished, hut just
now it is only in the way; or they think of it as whatever helps to
bring the revolution about. But Mr. Eliot thinks of morality as
absolute and not as a means hut an end; and, what is more, he
believes that it is at every moment a present end and not one
indefinitely postponable. He does not mean merely social good
and the doing of it (though this enters too) and he does not mean
anything which is to be judged only from a utilitarian point of
'fiew. He means something that is personal in a way we have for–
pltten and which, in a way we have denied, connects personal
action with the order of the universe. When he says that he is a
moralist in politics he means most importantly that politics is to
