260
PARTISAN REVIEW
imitate Chesterton on a much less brilliant level. There are such phrases
as, "I like to write only dangerous books" which in their puerile vanity
make it hard for the reader to take the whole thing seriously.
More serious than immaturity (Rougemont belongs to the genera–
tion which, raised between two wars, never had sufficient opportunity
to mature and has something of a birthright to immaturity) is the basic
confusion of the whole approach. This consists of identifying man's
capacity for evil and the problem of evil as such with the "evils of our
time" loosely and generally speaking. This leads to the introduction of
the Devil in person who serves simply as common denominator. Although
his
existence
is
proved with a nice trick of Chestertonian logic ("Those
who stick to old wives' tales-'I can't believe in a gent with
r~d
horns
and a long tail'-are those who refuse to believe in the Devil because
of the image they form of him which is drawn from old wives' tales"),
he is nothing but a personification of Heidegger's Nothingness that al–
ready through its "begetting nothingness" was something of an acting
subject. (The Devil is the "messenger of Nothingness," "serves Nothing,"
is "the agent of Nothingness," "tends to Nothingness," etc.)
This, of course, would be simply an attempt to explain the new
experiences with the categories of the nineteen-twenties. But Rougemont
does not stop there; his "flight from reality" is more complicated and
more interesting to watch. Much against his will and though fearing
and predicting "modern gnosticism," he fall s into the worst pitfalls of
gnostic speculation. His ultimate consolation is his confidence that in an
eternal fight between God and the Devil, the good and the evil forces,
victory is already won "from the point of view of eternity," that "our
misdeeds and those of the Devil change nothing in the Order of this
world" and that, consequently, "what concerns us in this century is to
make ourselves immediate participants in this victory." This can but
lead to the conclusion that all we have to do is "sanctify ourselves" for
the purpose of joining the right, the eternally winning side. It is precisely
this metaphysical opportunism, this escape from reality into a cosmic
fight in which man has only to join the forces of light to be saved from
the forces of darkness, this confidence that the order o£ the world cannot
be changed no matter what man does-which makes gnosticism so
attractive to modern speculation and may promote it to the place of
the most dangerous and wide-spread 'heresy' of tomorrow.
\-Vhen all this has been said, one has the duty of recommending
the book anew. Whether one likes it or not, it is a true
document humain.
Whether one agrees with Denis de Rougemont or not, he belongs to
those who, in his own words, "are all in the sinking ship, and at the same
time ... are all in the ship that has launched the torpedo.'' Those who
know this, who do not want to get awa y from this not ve1'y comfortable
position, are not numerous, and they are the only ones who ma tter.
HANNAH ARENDT
