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PARTISAN REVIEW
this extent, then we who have carried on the quarrel are no doubt to
blame. I, for one, am willing to take the fault to myself-a literary
person is always likely to be a little provincial in argument and to deal
with what is closest to his immediate literary interest. But whether or
not I have been able to make it plain in my own work, the quarrel with
the liberal mind directs itself beyond
PM
and
The New R epublic.
I have in view the ideas of our powerful teachers' colleges, the as–
sumptions of our social scientists, the theories of education that are now
animating our colleges and universities, the notions of the new schools
of psychoanalysis, the formulations of the professors of literature, parti–
cularly of American literature. Here are indeed the residuary legatees
of the Enlightenment, and how eagerly they will tell you so, and how
vehemently they will defend themselves from any question by pointing
to the fine legality of the testament. This is the liberal culture that my
own criticism has ultimately, if with insufficient explicitness, been directed
against, although not, I would say, with quite the purpose of "demolish–
ing" it. I only do not want to see it go its way unquestioned, un–
checked and unmodified because I believe that, unless purged and en–
lightened by a critical effort of great seriousness, it will inevitably corrupt
and betray itself into the very opposite of its avowed intention of lib–
eration.
Lionel Trilling
ART , ARISTOCRACY, AND REASON
Mr. Trilling is so persuasive that for a moment he almost
made me believe that I had really said the things he says I did. And
the reader, who has less cause to remember accurately, may be even more
confused at this point as to precisely who said precisely what, and before
his confusion turns to apathy and boredom I think some review of the
situation is called for to make clear again the main lines of the contro–
versy.
The ball was started rolling by Mr. Chase in two pieces ("Dissent
.on Billy Budd," PR, November 1948; and "The Progressive Hawthorne,"
PR, January 1949) that had some harsh things to say about liberals and
liberal attitudes. His excoriations of liberalism were not unfamiliar, but
in the present case his rhetorical intensity was such that he gave many
people the impression that he was pouring out the baby with the bath,
that in his great and laudable zeal to correct certain errors of the lib-
