NEW FAILURE OF NERVE
3
human interests; the mystical apotheosis of "the leader" and
elites; contempt for all political organizations and social programs
because of the obvious failure of some of them, together with the
belief that good will is sufficient to settle thorny problems of
economic and social reconstruction; posturing about the cultiva–
tion of spiritual purity; the refurbishing of theological and meta–
physical dogmas about the infinite as necessary presuppositions of
knowledge of the finite; a concern with mystery rather than with
problems, and the belief that myth and mysteries are modes of
knowledge; a veritable campaign to "prove" that without a belief
in God and immortality, democracy-or even plain moral decency
--{!annot be reasonably justified.
Liberalism - not the 19th century ideology or social
theology of laissez-faire which was already moribund before
the First World War-but liberalism as an intellectual temper,
as faith in intelligence, as a tradition of the free market in the
world of ideas is everywhere on the defensive. Before"the onrush
of cataclysmic social and historical changes, large sections of the
intellectuals and clerks of the Western world are abandoning the
hard-won critical positions of the last few centuries. In the schools,
the churches, and in the literary arts, the tom-tom of theology and
the bagpipes of transcendental metaphysics are growing more
insistent and shrill. We are told that our children cannot be
properly educated unless they are inoculated with "proper" reli–
gious beliefs; that theology and metaphysics must be given a domi–
nant place in the curriculum of our universities; that churchmen
should cultivate sacred theology before applying the social gospel;
that business needs an inspired church that speaks authoritatively
about absolutes,-this by the editors of
Fortune;
that what is
basically at stake in this war is Christian civilization despite our
gallant Chinese, Moslem, and Russian allies; that the stability
of the state depends on an
unquestioned
acceptance of a unifying
dogma, sometimes identified with the hierarchial authoritarianism
of Catholicism, sometimes with democracy; that none of the arts
and no form of literature can achieve imaginative distinction
without "postulating a transcendental reality."
Obscurantism is
no longer apologetic;
it
has now become precious
and
wilful.
Fundamentalism is no longer beyond the pale;
it
has
donned a
top hat
and
gone high church.
