"ELEMENTS THAT ARE WANTED"
377
the Marxist, that the direction of the world is that of a never-ceas–
iDg
improvement. So far as Marxism goes, this idea seems to
ave a discrepancy with the Marxist dialectic, for it depends on
astandard of judgment which, if not an absolute, is so close to an
absolute as to be indistinguishable from it-the judgment of direc–
tion, the certainty of what "higher" signifies and what "better"
signifies. One has only to hear
a
Marxist defend (as many a Marx–
ist
will)
the belief that through the ages even art shows a definable
progress and improvement to understand how untenable the notion
is
in
any of its usual statements. And the progress which is held to
be
observable in art is held to be no less observable in human
relations.
And from the notion of progress has grown that contempt for
the past and that worship of the future which so characteristically
marks the radical thought of our time. The past is seen as a series
of
necessary failures which perhaps have their value as, in the
dialectical way, they contribute to what comes after. The past has
been a failure: the present-what can it matter in the light of the
perfecting future? And from-or with-a sense of the past as
failure, and of the present as nothing better than a willing tribu–
tary
to the future, comes the sense of the wrongness of the human
fJ118lity at any given moment. For, while they have always violently
reprobated any such notion as Original Sin and by and large have
held the belief that, by nature, man is good, most radical philos–
ophies have contradicted themselves by implying that man, in his
fJ118lity, in his kind, will be wholly changed by socialism in fine
ways that we cannot predict: man will be good not as some men
llave been, but good in new and unspecified fashions. At the bottom
of
at least popular Marxism there has always been a kind of dis–
pet with humanity as it is and a perfect faith in humanity as it
is
to be.
Mr. Eliot, as I have said in passing, has his own disgust; his
lield morally responsible for their own deeds and that only history and environment
Ill
accountable. I think no one can reject this generous assumption. But questions
-.1
arise concerning what method we are to use in the judgment of men who are our
..WS
in moral and intellectual training. And the same question about a method of
jldgment must arise about oneself, for in actual practice we do not easily tolerate
f10ple who are content to ascribe their personal-! do not mean their practical–
llilures to circumstance alone. That novelists have not dealt with this problem seems
II me to bear out what I said about the failure of the novel in the hands of the radical
ilellectual. Two exceptions must be noted: Malraux's
Man's Fate
and Silone'e
Bread
• /riM.
