CULTURE RELIGION, AND MR. ELIOT
153
and democratic culture, suggest that the philistinism of a more open
and Western socialism would be hardly less stifling.
The habit of democratic social scientists and academicians is to
regard popular culture as something given, as something to be amused
by, something to be studied for its psychological and sociological revela–
tions, something social scientists attempt to alter only if it creates un–
democratic tensions and maladjustments, as in its use of racial stereotypes,
or fails to support national morale in time of stress. They do not feel
responsibility for the total adequacy of this culture as compared
to
the
cultures of the past, or make a qualitative judgment of what is required
culturally which influences them definitely in what would otherwise be
purely economic or political decisions.
One does not have to abandon naturalistic humanism or accept what
is genuinely reactionary in Eliot's attitude, to believe that this sense
of responsibility will develop. With the moderation of faith in Emer–
sonian individualism and in an immediate future that will somehow take
care of everything, interest is bound to increase in the way in which
the culture of the present can create a pattern of expectancies which is
consistent with the actualities of life and yet transcends them. It can
tr:mscend them by providing symbols and customs which give a sense
of communion not only with other members of society but with the sig–
nificant experiences of the past.
It
will be valued not only for the way
in which it satisfies intelligence and the sense of beauty, but for the
~
{:ent
to
which it provides, on both conscious and unconscious levels,
')')sit"ve social means of mastering the anxieties, conflicts and ultimate
";, ,.,,·dy
of human experience.
Robert
Go.hal1
Davis
TWENTY-SEVEN STORIES
NINETEEN STORI ES.
By
Gr~ h~m
Greene. Vi ki ng Press. $2.75.
A TREE OF NIGHT AND OTHER STORIES.
By
Trum~n C~pote. R~ndom
House. $2 .75.
Graham Greene, who writes two kinds of books, serious novels
and entertainments, is never as serious or entertaining a writer as when
he writes a simple story about childhood, leaving out crooks, spies, con–
fidential agents and his own brand of Anxiety. There are several such
stories in the present collection and they are the best in the volume
(three of them, in fact, are good), because they were written without the
intention of distilling from the steam of the pot boiler a moral critique
