THE LIBERAL MIND
653
part, I welcome Mr. Barrett's suggestion that I step out of the wings
and into the candid glare of the spotlight, only insisting that he do the
same.
Richard Chase
A REJOINDER TO MR. BARRETT
In
his
Variety
in the March issue, Mr. William Barrett refers
in a very gracious manner to my critical effort of the last decade and h e
characterizes its intention in a way that I should be happy to think is
accurate. He then goes on to say, in reference to my strictures on the
liberal mind, that he is puzzled about "the precise limits" at which my
criticism might halt in its objections to the culture of liberalism; and
he puts certain questions which are not, I take it, wholly rhetorical.
Mr. Barrett asks whether liberalism is not properly to be defined
by its naturalistic and pragmatic beliefs rather than by a particular politi–
cal, and presumably cultural, content. And he asks:
"If
the fund amental
attitudes of liberalism are the objects of our criticism, ought we not
to push our inquiry to its historical source and question the values of
the Enlightenment itself?"
I t is to be observed of Mr. Barrett's questions that they are, con–
sidered in their polemical intent,
forcing
questions. I conceive that they
are intended to force Mr. Richard Chase and myself, or any critic of
liberalism, to the wall of- let us for brevity be blunt about it-religion.
In
sum Mr. Barrett is saying to Mr. Chase and me something like
this: "Very well then-you have this habit of raising all sorts of objec–
tions to liberalism. I will give you a chance to say that you mean Stal–
inism and not liberalism at all. But if you don't say that, then you must
admit that when you attack liberalism as it now exists, you are really
attacking naturalism, pragmatism and the values of the Enlightenment,
and then the only frank and logical course open to you is to admit fur–
ther that you want dogmatism and supernaturalism-that, in short, you
are ripe to declare for religion."
Mr. Chase will of course speak for himself, but I expect that he
will join me in rejecting Mr. Barrett's alternatives. My own reason for
rejecting them is not that I regard the religious alternative with horror.
My conception of the nature of our life is of a kind which prevents me
from supposing that the person who elects religion is, by that, neurotic
or ill-willed or intellectually discredited. I should add, for one can easily
