32
PARTISAN REVIEW
I conclude these citations with a passage written somewhat
before the crisis had reached its present intensity. In a book G.
K. Chesterton wrote after a visit to this country, he spoke as
follows of the prospects of democracy in this country. "As far
as that democracy becomes or remains Catholic and Christian,
that democracy will remain democratic. . . . Men will more and
more realize that there is no meaning in democracy if there is
no meaning in anything; and that there is no meaning in anything
if the universe has not a centre of significance and an authority
that is the basis of our rights."
I should not have supposed that advance was to have been
expected in greater realization of the truism that if there is no
meaning in anything, there is no meaning in democracy. The
nub of the passage clearly resides in assertion that the rights
and freedom which constitute democracy have no validity or signi·
ficance save as they are referable to some centre and authority
entirely outside nature and outside men's connections with one
another in society. This intrinsically sceptical, even cynical and
pessimistic, view of human nature is at the bottom of all the
asseverations that naturalism is destructive of the values associated
with democracy, including belief in the dignity of man and the
worth of human life. This disparaging view (to put it mildly)
is the basis upon which rests the whole enterprise of condemning
naturalism, no matter in what fine philosophical language the
condemnation is set forth. The fact of the case is that naturalism
finds the values in question, the worth and dignity of men and
women, founded in human nature itself, in the connections, actual
and potential, of human beings with one another in their natural
social relationships. Not only that, but it is ready at any time to
maintain the thesis that a foundation within man and nature is
a much sounder one than is one alleged to exist outside the con–
stitution of man and nature.
I do not suppose it is a matter of just expediency or policy
in winning adherents that keeps in the dim background the his–
toric origin of the view that human nature is inherently too de–
praved to be trusted. But it is well to recall that its source is the
Pauline (and Augustinian) interpretation of an ancient ;Hebrew
legend about Adam and Eve in the Paradise of Eden. Adherents
of the Christian faith who have been influenced by geology, his–
tory, anthropology, and literary criticism prefer, quite under-
