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later criticism has shown his pained surprise at any manifestation
of life that is not canonically correct. But at least Mr. Eliot's
feelings are appropriate to the universe he assumes, and at least he
is aware of them and makes provision for them. Of his universe
Mr. Eliot predicates two things: a divine ordination and an abso·
lute morality. From these two assumptions spring two practical
conclusions which are worthy of note. The first is that the life of
man involves a dual allegiance, one to the Universal Church which
represents the divinely ordained universe and one to the nation
and the National Church which represent temporal necessities;
and the commitment of the National Church to an absolute moral·
ity makes, within the nation itself, a dualism, for the National
Church, in its function, may be in disagreement with the national
state. This dualism constitutes, Mr. Eliot believes, a barrier against
monistic solutions of political problems such as statism or racism,
and the tensions it creates are, for him, the distinguishing mark of
a Christian society. The second thing implied by Mr. Eliot's as–
sumptions is that there exists a moral goal never to be reached and
a political ideal never to be realized. The world, we are told, will
never be left wholly without glory, but all earthly societies are
sordidly inadequate beside the ideal. This moral Platonism puts,
of course, a check upon the hopes of man and restricts the possi·
bility of "progress" yet its tragic presuppositions have this good
result: that they bar any such notion as that of a
final
conflict and
prevent us from envisaging any such ultimate moral victory as will
permit the "withering away of the state"; they make us admit that
the conflict is everlasting and in doing so they permit us to exercise
a kind of charity by which we may value the humanity of the pres–
ent equally with that of the future.
We say that our assumptions arise from our needs and must
suit our intentions, and so they must; and perhaps in relatively
recent times intelligent men of religion have been more honest in
admitting the necessary assumptive elements in thought than have
the radical philosophers with their tendency to hold all assumption
illegitimate. Mr. Eliot shares this relative honesty and his thought
benefits from it and our thought may benefit from the virtues his
thought has. But if our assumptions spring from our needs, it
is
nevertheless still true that the validity of our needs and the rela·
tions between our intentions and our needs may be logically and
