THE SENSE OF THE PAST
241
simplified. I hope it has not seemed that I have said that ideas,
and the ideas of the past do not influence us. They do indeed, but
in
far more complex ways than any political prosecutor of ideas
ever imagines and only in so far as they become ideas of the pres·
ent. All that I am arguing against is the notion that ideas exist
apart from the thinker and the situation. Behind every idea that
is effective lies the human will and an idea is good or bad, morally
speaking, according as the human will that uses it is good
ot
bad.
I have oversimplified for emphasis, because I want to point
out that we are facing a possibly dangerous cultural situation in
which we of our profession have a considerable responsibility. In
a recent essay, E. M. Forster
~poke
of the intellectual remorse
which many of the English feel: they feel that if they had played
less and theorized less all this mess would not have come about
and, as Mr. Forster says, "the jelly of civilization would have slid
out of. its mould and stood upright in a beautiful shape." And this
belief, he implies, is the result of an inadequate sense of the past:
the jelly never stands upright in a beautiful shape. "Viewed real·
istically," he says, "the past is merely a series of messes, succeed·
ing one another by discoverable laws no doubt, and certainly
marked by an increasing growth of human interference; but messes
all the same." And we may say that in response to these messes ,
ideas develop, each trying to deal with its particular mess. To
keep clear the perception that each idea inevitably relates to its
particular mess and can have only a suggestive relation to any
other mess is, it seems to me, a necessary work of our profession
in
its historical function.
