396
PARTISAN REVIEW
genres,
the unrebuked mistakes of prize committees, publishers,
etc., the general insolence of entrepreneurs,-in fact the general
failure to understand what is going on which marks the small
remaining section of American life still interested in literature.
The intellectual, being nervous, is subject to all the floating
airs of modern religion (present in quantity, no matter how
fogged and misted into the semblance of something else). One
must not forget that religious enthusiasm (and intolerance) has
always been inextricably mixed with every materialist idea;
has been a concomi·tant of all material push since Calvin. In–
tellectuals range through the finest gradations of kind and
quality: from those who are merely educated neurotics, usually
with strong hidden reactionary tendencies, through mediocrities
of all kinds, to men of real brains and sensibility, more or less
stiffened into various respectabilities or substitutes for respecta–
bility. The number of Ignorant Specialists is large. The num–
ber of hysterics and compulsives is also large. It is natural that
the truly sensitive intellectual should have spiritual needs; for
such a person the necessity for that one moment in life when
one is forced to see reality without wraps and unrationalized, is
strong. This necessity leads to a real break-through into matul"–
iiy on the part of some individuals. For the less sensitive, the
spiritual necessity hardly exists; they require not steadying
insight but emotional outlet. It 'is in this class that we find the
hot-gospellers, the morally pretentious, the reformers and the
seekers of closed systems of salvation. These men and women
are not entirely the products of an imperfect culture (for the
type appeared in quantity in France in the 19th century) but
of a culture somehow blocked and mixed; and of the impact
of this curious situation upon natures more simply constituted
than they themselves suppose. Flaubert wrote down an approxi–
mation of the type in
BouvaTd
et Pecuchet.
He gave the two
simple-minded copyists a set of manias which is still complete
for the dislocated middle-class mind of our time; manias rang–
ing from ·the collecting of antiques to an absorption in various
forms of science and politics. These two prototypes of the
middle-class yearner with a few retouches could represent not
only the modern lecture-listening audience, but many of "the
