B. Well,
do
they go back up the
mountain or not?
A. Perhaps, but they're not quite
at the bottom yet, I believe.
Let's drop the image; here's the
point. We are an animal that
hates coercion but must do
everything together. At only
two periods are there two really
conflicting factions-before the
start of the adventure and at
its end.
If
you find almost no
opposition now, it may explain
why my boss can afford to be
so bland and patronizing. The
Human Race, meaning the
noisier part of it, decided for
the time being that it wanted to
be engineers and not saints.
B. What about Huxley and his
crew?
A. They're household saints and
don't affect the situation.
B. Well, you haven't lost yourself
in your job, have you? Or else
your magazine would not be
such a monument to fear.
A.
Of course not. You apparently
have to talk in absolutes. A
"healthy" amount of fear is one
of our virtues. We've given up
absolutes in principle; that's
part of the bargain. Your
fashionable "little magazines,"
which in some respects pretend
to hate our guts, are usually
with us in the big things. They
intensify the cry for "objectiv-
1255
ity" and "reliable analyses," as
if the end-result of a true sci–
entific investigation must al–
ways be to dissolve the possi–
bility of absolute truth. So our
naturalism only means loyalty
to the engineer's convention–
the mechanical, the social, the
political, and the artistic engi–
neer.
B. This all sounds like a hoax to
me. How can you work believ–
ing it?
R. W. Flint
by ALLEN
TATE
On the Limits
of Poetry:
Selected Essays
Tate's most important essays
over 20 years, written in what
Mark Van Doren has called:
"prose as concentrated, as pas–
sionate, as irreducible as good
poetry is."
$4.00
THE SWALLOW PRESS AND
WILLIAM MORROW
&
CO.
425 Fourth Avenue
New York City 16
