NOTIONS OF CULTURE
309
world than in the medieval one. Yet Mr. Eliot nowhere faces this
problem; in fact he implies throughout that the modem tradition
would carry on, only under more favorable conditions. Thus, in dis–
cussing the nature of the elite, he apparently conceives it as a kind
of hereditary caste that would naturally transmit its social interests
and its cultural norms, for he assigns it a permanent social status over
and above the sum of its achievement. How, then, would it convert
itself into an intellectual hierarchy of a religious community? And
what place would be occupied by those bohemian and dissident move–
ments that periodically refresh and revolutionize art, being more
concerned with making a new tradition than preserving an old one?
In general, Mr. Eliot seems to think of the elite as a conserva–
tive force, perhaps because he has his eye mainly on the past. And
though he deplores our museum culture, he himself tends to view cul–
ture as a vast museum, presided over by the elite, who stock it with
the proper objects, and so order our taste as to appreciate only the
chosen works. The truth is, however, that even if we wanted to im–
provise so highly civilized an exchange between creator and consumer,
a strict regimentation would be necessary not only to purge the folk
of its "popular" art but also to transform the elite into cultural war–
dens. For, as Koestler points out elsewhere in this issue of
PARTISAN
REVIEW,
the inelligentsia-or the elite, as Mr. Eliot prefers to call
it-is scarcely an agency for the conservation of culture or the im–
provement of taste; on the contrary, its role is that of independent
thinking and innovation in the arts. Hence the most advanced sec–
tions of the elite tend to be radical, dissident, and uncompromising,
and to relate themselves, however indirectly or unconsciously, to those
social forces that challenge the economic and cultural exploitation of
man. Thus the will to independence of the elite may be said to have
a political meaning, insofar as it constitutes an attack on the conditions
that create and imprison the elite. And if this will to independence
has now become inseparable from the sheer effort to survive, it is be–
cause society is now finding it just as profitable to rationalize the
production of ideas as the production of commodities.
Mr. Eliot observes at one point that the totalitarian "tendency–
dissimulated as a reaction from overt disorder-towards the unifi–
cation of thought and behavior, in an artificial pattern" is a form
of escape from the overwhelming freedoms of modem society-an
idea, incidentally, that has been more fully developed by Eric Fromm.
Yet I cannot help feeling that it is just such a yearning for intellec–
tual security and authority that lies behind Mr. Eliot's vision of a
compact and orderly ecclesiastical culture.
