310
PARTISAN REVIEW
I.
A.
RICHARDS
THE PART
OF
MR. ELioT's
Notes on Culture
which I am ventur–
ing to discuss touches on education. With most of his argument I seem
to myself to be in reluctant agreement. I agree with
his
choice of a
definition for 'culture.' His choice does pick out "world and imperial
problems" and the "common danger to all the races of the world."
It
separates our concern with these from "the preservation of windmills."
It combines rightly the "culture of a class" and "of a whole people"
--"two meanings . .. to be kept distinct but always in relation." It
deeply remembers the soil throughout.
Why be reluctant then? Because the outcomes of this view are
so black and disheartening. "The effects of an industrial civilization
have combined to deprive the mass of humanity of its native culture."
Mr. Eliot knows these "commonplaces of observation," and I do not
doubt that they are as dismaying to him as to anyone. A million dis–
turbances of relative rates of needed change have led us to a condition
so grave that the victims are ceasing to know the causes of the trouble.
Another more violent and far wider industrial or technical revolution
is upon us with still more dangerous local accelerations in our ways,
still more disastrous to our balance. We are forgetting even what we
would be. It looks as though this time all the cultures everywhere
would be replaced by artifacts-advertisement, pulps, comics, soap
opl':'ra and screen entertainment, televised or direct-the familiar
threat to the unfamiliar leisure. And as though the resistances and
defenses our culture puts up at all levels-mass education, populari–
zation, scholarly toil, research and museum mindedness-will with
the best intentions merely join in the attack, destroying the culture
from within as the sales and production pressures converge on it from
without.
Facing this darkness, Mr. Eliot has faith to offer us-faith in
the possibility of "a common faith and order." That prompts to some
action no doubt. It has prompted him in all his work including the
writing of these clarifying Notes. I am not underestimating Mr. Eliot's
importance as a defender of the faith. I think he has rallied the
broken and made the continuance of the struggle possible in countless
cases. But reflection, prayer and patient waiting for a miraculous
deliverance is not, he would himself insist, their whole duty for all
men. There is much to be done which is being neglected. And with this
I come to his remarks on Education.
"Culture," he says, "is certainly
not
Education, and to think that
