VARIETY
to them in the form of the cinema,
the newspapers and broadcasting.
Science has been given to them in
the form of weapons and the in–
t<o•rnal combustion engine. Intox–
icated by the one, they let fly with
the other. By "the people" of
course I do not simply mean "the
humble." I mean cabinet minis–
ters and manufacturers, preachers
and demagogues, generals, comed–
ians and all
th~
rest of the ignor–
ant, uninitiated mob who differ
from their fellows only by the de–
gree of their greed and the meas–
ure of their temporary success.
In modern war, the people have
consented to take the place of in–
animate forces. Inundation and
drought destroyed Ba:bylon and
Egypt. The bubonic plague devas–
tated Europe from the sixth to the
eighteenth century. These terrors
have been largely removed from
us, and in their place it is human
beings who rise up and obliterate
each other. That is to say, them–
selves. The modern plagues are
inorganic. Men rain down upon
each other mineral bodies. Natural
respect for the individual has
gone. Against the overwhelming
pressure of the impersonal and the
inorganic, respect for the indivi–
dual must be restored if necessary
by artificial means. That is the
process of modern education. It is
the chief responsibility of poets,
artists and intellectuals.
I do not wish to indulge in
speculations about the future until
this present incubus is off. Nor
have I seen anybody about the
place who looked to me in the least
like a prophet. Let prophecy rest.
I have seen a great many who died
281
before the war but are still walk–
ing about like zombies, and I have
met a few of those who are un–
questionably capable of survival.
I should like to be one of these. I
should like to be capable of re–
ceiving the full shock of the f uture
as
it shakes itself loose
~and
be–
comes the present. I know that I
shall be largely occupied with my
private and domestic life as it is
at present.
It
is closely defined, and
enough is contained in it to keep
me from whoring after strange
gods for a long while to come. I
feel that these five years have made
little fundamental difference to
me, to my attitudes, to my ways
of looking at things and feeling
2.bout them and sorting them out.
But they have brought me a spate
of rather turgid new experience
with which I shall presently have
to deal.
My general philosophy I
would describe as a modified fatal–
ism. I believe that men are over–
whelmingly conditioned by cir–
cumstance and by certain laws of
succession and recurrence in their
lives. I find that I was writing, two
months before the war:
It is folly to wish that a thing
may not take place,
Before the dissolution of this
earth
Every possibility will have been
made actual,
And that which is must be.
This is still my belief. I am told
that it was argued at length by a
Jesuit called Campanella in a book
called
The City of Gold.
But I also
believe that at certain exceptional
moments a man may be so posi-
