PARTISAN REVIEW
has its cult, its priests and its faithful. The priests speak with convic–
tion to the masses about the "interests" and "needs" of the worshipped
value and demand sacrifices for the sake of its prosperity. The State
thirsts for power, the Nation for unity, Industry for development, and
so on; thus, although phantoms themselves, they actually rule the
world, and the more abstract a value, the more voracious and ruthless
it is. Perhaps we can speak of the last war as only an unprecedented
hecatomb, which a few conceptualized values, having concluded an al–
liance among themselves, demanded of Europe through the intermediary
of their priests.
Yet in each abstract value, however its insatiable belly may have
swelled, there gleams a spark of the divinity which can arouse our emo–
tions. In it each individual unconsciously venerates the sanctity of some
ineradicable aspiration that he has in common with all men; and it is
only through this living feeling that the value is strong. Whether I eat
to gratify my hunger, or whether I cover my nakedness, or pray to God
-my business is only mine, it is so simple and personal. And now my
personality is given social status, is elevated into impersonality, and from
there still higher, into the empyrean of the superpersonal principles, and
lo and behold, the single feeling finds itself included in a most com–
plex hierarchically centralized order; the simple prayer has been lost in
the boundless gigantic structure of Theology, Religion, the Church. What
was a need of my heart, has been declared my sacred duty, has been
taken from my hands as something beloved, and placed above me, as
an anointed sovereign.
The poor heart, like a mother, loves its offspring even in the tyrant,
but she also weeps obeying his impersonal will. And there comes a
moment when love conquers submissiveness: the mother overthrows the
tyrant in order once again to embrace him as a son. That is how Luther
with his ardent heart destroyed the cult, the theology, the papal Church,
in order to liberate simple personal faith from a complicated system.
Likewise the French Revolution dispelled the mysticism of the throne
and placed the individual man in a more direct and intimate relation to
authority. And now a new rebellion is shaking the earth-this is the
truth of labor and possession striving to free itself from age-old com–
plications, from the monstrous fetters of social and abstract ideas.
Mankind still has a long way to go. Lutheran Christianity, the
Republic, and Socialism have done only half the task; we still have to
create conditions under which individuality can once again become
completely individual, as it was born. However, the past has not been
in vain. Man will return to his origin transformed, because his sub-
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